DIY hanging planter

Sam and I spent the weekend in Vermont visiting my family, and while there we acquired a lot of new greenery for our apartment. Usually we take the bus but this time we rented a car, which afforded us the rare opportunity to cart home a veritable bounty. From my dad we received a host of veggies, fruits, and herbs from his amazing garden -- string beans, snap peas, hot peppers (three varieties), rosemary, basil, cherry tomatoes, onions, a zucchini, two peaches, carrots...and I'm probably forgetting things.

From my mom we received several house plants. She and my stepdad are in the process of preparing their house to rent out in the medium term while they live aboard a sail boat and travel the seas for a few years, so paring down their possessions is a must. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, since there are a few places in the apartment where I've recently been thinking that some greenery would be a nice addition. In one case, I've decided that a hanging planter would add some height and help balance out the space -- the empty corner above the bookshelf in the study:

So with three new plants, I figured the time was ripe for a DIY hanging planter project. As usual, I found inspiration by googling around, and came across some simple macrame designs that I liked:

(from hello there home)

(from Refinery 29)

I decided to go with the simple knotting approach used in the second photo above, which happened to have a pretty clear tutorial posted alongside it. The only difference is that I used white yarn for my project and was a little concerned about strength so I used 16 pieces of yarn instead of 8 in order to double up every strand (so every piece of cord in the photo above was two pieces of yarn in my version).

After cutting 16 4-foot pieces of white yarn, my first step was to knot them all together at one end:

Then I just followed the knotting instructions from Refinery 29 with everything laid out on the floor like so:

(look at the Refinery 29 tutorial for full instructions, I just wanted to show how I doubled up all the strands)

And with a few simple knots and approximately 5 minutes, I had a handy new device to hang my chosen plant! Then I simply drilled a hole in the ceiling where I wanted it to hang, installed a simple white hook meant to hang plants and such from drywall ceilings, and voila!

I still have to figure out a permanent home for the other two plants (right now they're just hanging out on the pedestal table in the study), but it felt good to get one of them settled so quickly!