With flights grounded during lockdown, cabin crew member Candice Fur’s salary was put on hold. Instead of “numbing out on Netflix” during those winter months, the enterprising 38-year-old started something new – she taught herself how to do macramé.

Macramé is the art of knotting string or rope into patterns. In her Sea Point flat in Cape Town, Fur set up a strict routine: wake up at 6:30am, coffee, meditation, exercise, then breakfast and creation time.

Cape Town airline cabin controller Candice Fur. (Photo: Supplied)

For guidance, she turned to YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram.

“I was going to be on my own for lockdown,” she says. “I mean, nobody knew how long lockdown was going to be. But even before the initial three weeks or whatever, I thought to myself, ‘okay, I’m going to have to keep myself occupied. I don’t want to just numb out on Netflix.’ 

“So I bought every sort of craft you can think of. I’m not even a creative person… well, that’s what I thought.”

She bought paint, cement to make pot plants, candle-making tools. 

“My mom gave me knitting needles and wool. Honestly, I thought of everything possible. And one of the things was a ball of rope. My sister had started doing these macramé plant hangers. And she said it’s really fun. 

“Initially I wasn’t up for it. I kind of associated macramé with old-fashioned doily things. But after a while, I had done everything else and was left with the ball of rope. I was like, okay, let’s give it a bash.”

It was May when she turned to macramé, teaching herself to make plant hangers, bags and yoga straps. And she enjoyed it.

“It was a learning process,” says Fur. “To start on it, I needed a loop which I didn’t even have. So I ended up taking apart a belt. Later, at one stage, I bought new rope that’s not very tightly woven. 

“The cotton was flying in the air… it was tickling my nose, getting in my eyes, little pieces all over the place. I’m better now, and much quicker. It all depends on how intricate the pattern is, and how thick the rope.”

The perfectionist in Fur liked macramé’s forgiving nature: if you tie a wrong knot, you simply undo and redo it.

“Initially I did a few plant hangers and got quite excited about it,” she says. 

“I started an Instagram page [@i_so_knot] and put up pictures. And shame, it was quite sweet… even some of the other cabin crew members were buying plant hangers. I don’t know where they were getting the money. 

“I wanted to say: ‘Are you sure you want to spend your money on this? Thank you for supporting, but are you sure?’”

On the Zoom screen, she shrugs and laughs.

Fur’s job title at a major national airline is cabin controller, the crew manager on board an aircraft who, for instance, makes the announcements. 

Since flights stopped, she has been claiming the Covid-19 TERS grant (from the Unemployment Insurance Fund), while waiting to be called back to work. 

She says lockdown taught her to get by on less: “Basically, I have realised how easy it is to live on less. There’s a lot of good you can take out of lockdown.”

At the moment, Fur makes two or three plant hangers a day. As her macramé output increased, she also honed her sales pitch.

“Initially the sales were mainly from friends and people I knew. But I had to change my mindset. One of my products is yoga straps… for carrying yoga mats. 

“So recently, when I started going back to yoga classes, people would say things like, ‘Oh, it’s such a nice yoga strap’. Normally I would tell them I made it, but instead, I trained myself to say, ‘Oh, I’m selling it’. There’s a difference. So I had to change my mindset to try and push my products a bit more.”

A friend is helping Fur create a website to showcase her wares. Her pieces are stocked at Montebello in Newlands and some local markets are showing an interest. 

“Mostly I make things on demand,” she says. “Like if somebody sees something they want, then I can make it up within a few days or so.”

Fur’s new business is a lesson in stepping out of our comfort zones. 

“I’m one of four girls,” she says. “My sisters studied arts… they are all very artsy and creative. I’m the opposite. I’m more of a gym-going person. I’m more on the athletics side. 

“I flew, I did yoga, I did athletic stuff… creativity wasn’t a part of my make-up. And now this. So it’s all a great surprise.” DM/MC