There’s a knot for that…

Dearest readers, I’m back from the Pacific Northwest, exhausted, crazy busy, and picking up the speaker for the Jockey Hollow Guild meeting at the airport in just a few short hours, for another three day workshop in weaving.  I have so much to tell, so much joy and hard work, so worth it, but alas, no time to tell it all in…

Meanwhile, during my 3 mile walk this morning with my trusty office assistant and walking partner, I mentioned my poor wind chimes.  Another casualty of the wicked winter from hell and actually, just age.  My late husband gifted me these beautiful Mongolian wind chimes perfectly tuned and the sound is just magical.  They stopped chiming, and I discovered that the wind catcher thing that hangs from the clapper thing that makes the tubes chime had blown off and landed about 100 feet away in some bush, which I accidentally found during yard clean up a couple weeks ago.  With the lovely weather I really miss my wind chimes.  I had just tried to tie it back on, but alas, all the cords had rotted away, and the next wind storm we get, I’ll have a pile of tubes sitting in the pond.  The chimes hang off the balcony outside my bedroom, basically right over the pond.  

Anyway, my assistant came up to the studio for work, and we took a look at the situation.  She said she had a tube of black nylon cord that could work, and scampered home to get it.  Have I mentioned she lives 484 steps from my house?  

I brought in the chimes, and proceeded to discreetly mark the tubes, take accurate measurements of how far they suspend, trace the root of the seven cords, for six tubes and the center clapper.  I made drawings.  The problem was, each cord started attached to the center welded pin down the middle of the tube.  I had no idea how we were going to manage that.  

Cynthia looked down the tube and looked at me and said, I think that’s a hangman’s noose knot.  REALLY?

She tried it out on a peg from my warping wheel, and after a couple of tries, figured it out.  We dropped the cord down the tube with a fishing weight, turned the tube over and then dropped the weight back up the tube so the cord would loop over the welded bar in the middle of the tube.  Then she made this hangman’s noose knot. She pulled the long end and the knot slipped right down the tube in place.  I have no idea how she knew how to do this knot, something about making 5000 rosaries for a Catholic organization she once worked for, my eyes crossed and I just thought the whole thing hysterical.  We carefully worked together, figuring out each step and each knot as we reassembled the chimes.  We got it outside and hung it up and I wanted to cry.  My beautiful wind chimes started singing again, and I could have hugged her.  I actually think I did.  Bosses aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing, but she made me so happy.  Who knew?  A hangman’s noose knot, from a Catholic rosary, for Mongolian chimes…

Stay tuned, there is so much to tell!