The most interesting item, though, was the lampshade someone had painstakingly macramed, probably sometime in the early 1970s. It was a nice job of knot-tying, executed in the traditional brown twine. The knots were very square and even. But as everyone who has seen a macramé plant hanger knows, there's plenty of space between those knots — which made the piece a failure as a lampshade. For all the light muting it provided, one might as well have stared into the bare bulb. Still, it was a work of art of sorts, and remains the only one of its kind I've ever seen.