Knotical

Last year Linda and I went to a garage sale up in Falmouth, Maine. The garage was really a newly built barn, with pulleys and hanging canoes and kayaks, snowboards, skis, etc... of a very outdoorsy family. Mixed in with some newer furniture and knick knacks were some old camping equipment and these intricately knotted, awesome, immense macrame rope hangings. The man told me they were made by his late father while at sea as an officer in the Navy during World War II, during the down time, as knot practice. These are the type of beautiful, cool, handmade, one-of-a kind things we love finding, and as much as we would've liked to have kept the pair together, at 20 dollars each, both were unfortunately out of our budget, even for masterpieces of American maritime craft (it was a lean year). So we chose the more intricate one with the three baskets, and drove away, my face symbolically pressed forlornly against the back window. 

Then, as luck would have it, a few weeks ago the same family had another sale, and the other macrame was still there, draped over a canoe, apparently unwanted by anyone but us, and this time for 10 dollars- a nice reward for spending the past year on the widow's walk.