Shaker gourd

[perkyrusalka.livejournal.com]

I'm working on making a shaker gourd for my dad's Christmas present. I have the dried gourd, I even have the Job's tear seeds for the rattly bits; what I can't figure out is how to do the netting. There's got to be an easy way to do this-would it be best to try to crochet something around the gourd, or do all the netting and then figure out how to tie it on the gourd? For that matter, is there some way of doing the netting other than crochet that might be easier? I'm planning on using plain hemp string, if I can find some that's thin enough.

Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:
(This picture is borrowed from motherlandmusic.com, for the record.)