Punane Pesa

Tarsani köis finally found its place

Lately I have developed a small problem. Well… actually quite a big one. I simply cannot walk past the discounted plants in Maxima. Some escape home with me, while others stay in the shop waiting for their new owner. The result is that I now have more plants at home than there is room for on the windowsills. I needed to find a new solution for this little “Tarsani köis”.

The idea was to hang it from the curtain rail. There it gets the morning sun, light throughout the day and, most importantly… room to grow and climb in the future.

So I knotted a new plant hanger for it.

Choosing the colour took a little thought. On the table were white, dark green and this wine-red shade. My first thought was white again, but in the end the reddish wine colour won. Now that the hanger is in place, I am very happy with the choice. The same shade already appears in my lampshade and goes beautifully with the colours in the room.

I like making things that have a story of their own. Not simply buying something ready-made from a shop, but taking some cord and making it myself. It may not turn out perfect, but it turns out my way.

And the new resident seems happy with its place too.

Now all that remains is to wait and see when this “Tarsani köis” decides to become a real Tarzan and set off along the curtain rail to conquer the world. 🌿😊

Metsakiige

When AI calculates… and gets it wrong. But sometimes that is exactly where the best idea begins. 🧶

Lately I have been completely caught up in macramé. After finishing my first plant hanger, I felt I wanted to make more. This time I chose green cord because the plan was to put a fern in it.

I found a tutorial on YouTube and started getting everything ready.

According to the tutorial, I needed to cut:

• 6 cords, each 3 metres long
• 25 cords, each 1.5 metres long
• 18 cords, each 1 metre long

I thought I would let artificial intelligence work out how many linear metres of cord I needed altogether.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

😄 Quite a lot, as it turned out.

First my dear AI decided that what I was actually asking for was… area.

I looked at the answer and could only think:

“I didn’t ask for square metres…”

Once we had sorted out that confusion, the AI finally added up the linear metres.

The answer was:

49 metres.

When all the cords had been cut, I looked at my 100-metre roll of cord and its label and thought I had been completely ripped off. There seemed to be only twenty metres or so left on the roll.

I took a photo, sent it to the AI and asked whether it was possible that I had been cheated.

It turned out I had not.

It was the AI whose wires had got crossed for a moment. First it calculated area, then some mysterious linear metres. The actual correct answer was 73.5 metres.

One simple conclusion came out of that:

Trust, but verify.

I am old-school, and I do not like ceramic plant pots without saucers. As far as I am concerned, a plant pot should have a saucer underneath it for excess water to drain into.

That meant the plant hanger needed a wider base.

I found a suitable tutorial and followed it.

Even while watching the tutorial, it crossed my mind that the promised finished length, about 63 cm, might be too short for me.

But once the cords have already been cut to the lengths given in the tutorial, there is not much that can be changed.

I finished it.

I hung it from the ceiling.

I took a couple of steps back and looked…

It is not what I had imagined.

Too high.

Somehow… not quite right.

We shall see. Perhaps I will get used to it.

But one thought kept nagging at me.

Before blindly following a pretty tutorial, it is worth using one’s own head for a moment and thinking about whether the solution actually suits one’s home and one’s needs.

That was the moment I realised what a big problem there really is in the world of handicrafts.

Tutorials are very good at showing how to make something.

But they almost never tell you how much material was actually used.

And if you try to calculate it yourself before starting, even artificial intelligence can get it spectacularly wrong with complete confidence. 😄

From that one mistake, a much bigger idea began to grow out of my conversation with AI.

What if there were a handicraft database?

One where people could record, once they had finished a project:

• how much cord or yarn was actually used;
• what size the finished item was;
• what material was used;
• what size crochet hook or knitting needles were used.

Then the next person would no longer have to guess.

They could work from real experience.

And perhaps that is the nicest part of this whole plant hanger story.

Not that yet another macramé piece was finished.

But that one completely wrong calculation gave rise to an idea that might help many handicraft enthusiasts in the future.

Sometimes the best ideas come from precisely those moments when someone says:

“Hang on… that can’t possibly be right.” 😊🧶