If ever you throw away old shoes – save the shoestrings !

1) Recipes from Home and Abroad : If ever you throw away old shoes – save the shoestrings !, 2) New blog on the kid : Can an Old Sack be Renewed by Macramé?

I did when last I threw away worn out shoes and I am not regretting it.

I am repairing a sack in macramé. Now some surfaces around original sack (which has many holes by now) I find best to cover in simple fishnet manner. But what is the simplest fishnet ?

One model is of course the one in which flat knots of row a are tied around strings for the flat knots of row b like in tight macramé – but with spacing. There you need a ruler or some solid or at least not too wobbly flat very oblong object of uniform breadth, like 1 inch or 1 inch 6 lines. But there is another model where old shoestrings become very much more relevant.

Between two strands of already done macramé (like my « skeleton » for the macramé sack) and these around the original sack filled with the luggage it is carrying, you tie up the shoestrings back and forth, vertically or horizontally. After each crossing, you tie it slightly around the strand and then around it again a bit further before going back, the shoestring grid is to be parallel.

Now comes the rub : you take the string you want to use – rather long – and attach it by a larkhead to the strands « around the web », then you « wrap » it around that outer strand and around the shoestring parallel, all the way to opposite strand. Then you attach it there, even if only turning it loosely around it. Then you go back in a parallel row, next shoestring being one part you « wrap » it around and the strings around first shoestring (where they go around it) the other part you wrap it around. Continue through all shoestring parallels until reaching opposite strand from first you « wrapped » the string around. Or until its double length is finished, then attach a new string with a larkhead until finishing the « fishnet ».

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
Epiphany Day
6-I-2015

PS : 1) don't forget to take away shoestrings when finished, if you have done it correctly, the « fishnet » should stay interlocked - as I suppose you have seen the net on the seat in front of you on some airlines; 2) if shoestrings don't suffice for the whole length, you can start unravelling in the back where the « fishnet » is already interlocked and tie in front; 3) obviously you could use used chopsticks as well, a pair will suffice for reason given in « two », you can take the first away once the second is used and tie it in front of the first one, and so on, and you get new chopsticks of wood next time you eat at a sushi bar or a China food./HGL