The four knots that build almost everything

A twenty-eight inch wall hanging can carry several hundred knots. It looks like a technique that would take a season to learn. It is really four knots, repeated and combined, and you can hold all four in your head by the end of an afternoon.

• The lark's head mounts the cord onto the dowel. Every piece starts here.
• The square knot is the workhorse — the flat, braided block that fills the body of a panel.
• The half hitch tilts, and tilting is how you get chevrons and diagonals.
• The gathering knot binds a bundle, which is how plant hangers hold their shape.

Everything else is arrangement. The chevron on the wall hanging is half hitches walked diagonally across the cords. The cradle on a plant hanger is square knots tied between neighbouring pairs so the mesh opens into a bowl.

Where the hours actually go

Not in the knotting. In the combing — dragging out the plied cord at the bottom into a fringe that hangs evenly — and in the trimming, which happens with the piece already on the wall, because a fringe cut flat on a table hangs crooked when it is hung.