I got a book on macrame recently, and it's given me the opportunity for one of my favorite things: comparing!
It's funny: friendship bracelets are basically a branch of macrame (a rebellious branch, but still), but the focus is pretty different. For one thing, in macrame the spaces between the knots are as important as the knots themselves (negative and positive space, you might call it). Also, each individual knot is key, while in FBs you almost want the knots to fade into the background. In FBs, pattern and color are key. You rarely see bright color in macrame. Maybe that's why I like FBs better.
One thing I noticed, though: in my aforementioned book, the author doesn't really give you any patterns. There are diagrams for the knots and suggestions on what to do with them, but the actual design is up to you. Now, I don't know enough about macrame to guess whether this is the general outlook, but I kind of like the idea of not being scared to experiment. I noticed a lot of knew FB knotters on forums and such are very nervous to try things: "I can't read patterns...I don't know what to do first", "How do you arrange the strings?", "How is this made?" ...and I can say this because I still am pretty hesitant to experiment. I think I've gotten more willing lately, though, and the macrame book helped. And this sounds really cheesy, but you could apply that to life in general. See? I made this post relevant to the rest of the world.
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2 comments:
You're right about FBs - color is key and the knotting is secondary. When I first learned micro-macrame I had to do a lot of experimenting just to figure out how to make diagonal double half hitches. Finally a friend who does tatting showed me how to make those knots and I was able to expand my repertoire. It also taught me not to slavishly follow someone else's designs but to combine what I had learned in different patterns.
I like the idea about importance of negative space. It's something we've dealt with in my design class just recently. Creative use of it could look very appealing.
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