Last year I had a pot of snapdragons that bloomed off and on all summer, despite the fact that I really didn’t take any care of them. Last week I bought myself a little sixpack of snapdragons, and potted them up together. We’ve been using the deck a lot more so far this year than we had been before, so I didn’t want them sitting on the table where they would make a mess that would have to be cleaned up all the time to use the table.
The deck came with a plant hanging hook that was perfect for the little pot of flowers. We straightened and sorted almost all day this past Sunday and early on I unearthed some cotton yarn, suitable for the purpose and in desirable colors (unlike the red/cream/ecru stuff which was all I’d found before). I made this up as I went along and it would be perhaps overly gracing it to call it “macrame,” but it is a plant hanger made by knotting yarn.
Instructions behind the cut (if you’re on a blog archive page).
My lengths were determined by what I had available, but they worked very well. My original yarn strands were about 14 1/2 feet long, which I doubled and tied overhand at each end. Then I crossed the doubled strands and tied them to hold them together. If I were doing this again that is the step I would change most substantially: I would cross two through two and then tie them each close to the crossover, instead of only crossing each through one or two of the others and tying them further out.
After that I would still make knots about 2″ from the crossover point, which is roughly where my first knots were (photo 1), and continue as I did: knots 4″ from the previous set (photo 2) and knots 3″ further out than that (photo 3). My pot was about 7″ across at the top and if you have a larger pot it’s the 3″ distance to increase.
Each time I tied knots I tied them between different pairs of (doubled) strands, partly for stability and partly for looks.
After I set the pot into the basket I brought all the strands up together, settling things so the pot would hang flat, and tied three tight overhand knots at the top. I trimmed my yarn ends (with the original knots holding the doubled strands together) above the third knot, and hung the pot by putting the hook between the lower two knots. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes, and that was with photographing.
If you have a heavier pot I would add another strand to each doubled set, and if you have a much larger pot than mine, you should add more around. A fifth set of strands would take you far.