Macrame For Horses

A friend asked me the other day if I'd ever heard of macrame halters. Well I've never seen any macrame halters, never even heard of any. But I do have a macrame headstall packed away in my closet. My friend's question took me back quite a few years.

Macrame was popular about 40 years ago. Everyone was doing it & it was everywhere. Macrame is the art of tying knots into crafty items. I can remember dozens of plant hangers in our house. My mom was a macrame genius who tied knots daily, creating some really ornate items.

It was about this time that two friends & I decided we wanted macrame headstalls. Cathy & Vicky's moms weren't artsy at all & my mom told me to do it myself if I wanted a headstall. So we 3 friends borrowed a macrame book from my mom & started on our projects. We used the ordinary white twine that you can still buy in every hardware store today. Along the cheekpiece I tied in brown, wooden beads for decoration. I can no longer remember what colors Cathy & Vicky used. I glued sheepskin on the underside of my headstall, not only to help stabilize it but to provide softness next to my mare's face. I used brown & white rug yarn to braid matching reins.

The day came when we were going to go trail riding for the first time in our new, macrame headstalls. They really did look good on our mares. Now young girls are never content to walk & amble along the trail & we were the typical young teens. We started galloping our horses along the riverbed, having a great time. As our horses picked up speed we reined them in to slow them down. The only problem was that Cathy & Vicky had used regular, knitting yarn for their braided reins. As I stopped my mare, their mares continue to run because their reins had stretched, & stretched, & stretched. Finally the yarn reach it's no-stretch zone & they got their mares stopped. I'm sitting here giggling at the memory. I thought we'd all fall off we were laughing so hard. Cathy's headstall had also stretched so the bit was hanging below her mare's mouth. Needless to say, we never rode in our macrame headstalls again. But I've kept mine all these years as a reminder of a wonderful mare & a fun time with friends. So would I want a macrame halter? Uh, probably not.