An acclaimed artist celebrates the creative possibilities of macramé and knots in this memoir and guide featuring projects and tutorials.
Every day for a year, artist Windy Chien learned to tie a new kind of knot and then shared the results on Instagram—a project that both reinvented her life and revolutionized knot art. In The Year of Knots, Chien describes how knot-making led her on a path of discovery.
She shares projects, tutorials, and transformative personal stories, all aimed at inspiring readers to make knotting—and creativity in general—part of a meditative daily practice.
The knots in this book are gorgeously documented step-by-step. Knotted projects abound—from wall hangings to a necklace, a dog leash, a hanging light, and more. At the heart of the story is the simple, empowering idea that a single year is all the time you need to make a life-changing creative leap.
Windy Chien works at the intersection of function, design, history, and aesthetics to illuminate what is most fascinating about knots: the journey of the line. Her sculpture ranges in size from a knot that can fit in the palm of a child's hand to majestic, room-sized installations. Following long careers at Apple and in the music industry, she launched her studio in 2015. Chien’s clients include IBM, the Four Seasons, and the National Geographic Society, and her work has been covered by Wired, the New York Times and Martha Stewart.