Mounting Cord on the Dowel With a Lark's Head
Okay. You've got your dowel sanded, your cord cut for your first row. Now we actually start.
The first knot you learn in macrame isn't really a knot. It's called a lark's head, and it's how you attach cord to the dowel in the first place. Everything else in this class sits on top of this one move, so let's go slow.
What a lark's head is doing
You're not tying the cord to the dowel. You're folding it in half and looping it through itself around the dowel so it grips. No knot involved yet, just a fold and a pull. Once you've done a few you'll wonder why it needed a name at all.
The steps
- Take one cut strand. Find the middle, fold it in half so you've got a loop at the top and two loose ends at the bottom.
- Lay the loop over the dowel, behind it, so the loop is sticking up in back and the two ends hang down in front.
- Reach behind the dowel, grab the loop, and pull it down and forward over the front of the dowel.
- Pull the two loose ends up through that loop.
- Snug it down. Both ends should hang even, and the loop should sit snug against the dowel, not loose, not choked so tight it won't slide at all.
That's it. Do that with every strand, working left to right, and you've got your whole row mounted.
Where people mess up
So here's where I always mess up, or used to. If you fold the cord in half but don't keep it even, one side ends up four inches longer than the other. Doesn't matter much on the first strand, you can eyeball it and adjust before you snug it down. But if you're not paying attention it compounds, and by strand twelve you've got a ragged mess of mismatched lengths. Fold it in half, actually check it's in half, then loop it.
The other one: people pull the loop too tight before checking it's oriented right, front loop toward you, ends coming down through it. If you snug it down backward it still looks like a lark's head from the front, but it sits wrong and won't lay flat later. Cheap fix, just undo it and flip it. Nobody's going to know you did it twice.
Spacing
Leave a little room between each mounted cord, maybe a half inch, unless you want a dense look, in which case snug them right up against each other. There's no rule here. I usually eyeball it and adjust the first three or four before I commit to a spacing for the whole row, because once you're forty strands in, you're not undoing it.
The story, because I'll tell on myself
The first hanging I ever finished, I got the lark's heads mounted, worked the whole thing, hung it up in the front room feeling pretty good about myself. Deborah looked at it a long minute. Didn't say much at first. Then she said the fringe was crooked.
It was crooked. Bottom of the fringe looked like a set of stairs, not a straight line, and once she said it I couldn't unsee it. But the lark's heads at the top, the actual mounting row, those were fine. Even, snug, all facing the right way. That's the row that holds the whole piece up, so getting that part right early paid off even when the ending was a mess.
That hanging's still up in the front room. Crooked fringe and all. I never fixed it.
An opinion, since we're here
You don't need a pattern for this part. Some kits will tell you exactly how many strands, exactly what spacing, exactly where to start. Fine if that helps you feel steady, but honestly, once you've got the lark's head down, you can just start mounting cord and see how the row looks. Adjust as you go. A wall hanging doesn't need to be engineered. It needs enough good knots in a row that it holds together and looks like you meant it.
A word on your hands
If you've got any stiffness or soreness in your fingers, this is a knot that's rough on the first ten repetitions and then gets easy. Take a break if your hands cramp up. There's no prize for doing all forty strands in one sitting, and a sore hand ties worse knots anyway.
Before next time
Practice the lark's head on a scrap piece of cord and dowel until you can do it without checking the steps, five or six times is usually enough. Next lesson we tie the square knot, and that one goes faster if this one's already in your hands.