Help getting tight knots

[bsav]

Hello,

I'm a total beginner here and I'm not even sure if what I'm doing is crochet.  I built a rocking chair and part of the chair will have a woven cord.  I'm using 100% cotton 3mm macrame cord.  This is my first crochet project and I'm using two found crochet hooks.  One is a plastic 6.5mm hook with a matte finish and the other is one of the ubiquitous anodized aluminum high gloss 5.5mm hooks.

I finished the weave in one direction on both the seat bottom and chair back and was able to get a super taut weave.  I started the cross weave today and I'm having a terrible time.  I can't seem to keep things tight and the aluminum hook keeps slipping out.  I'm sure that part of the problem is the design of the chair prevents having the hooks in the optimal position.  With the weave in the first direction, I was able to keep a bit of slack and then once I pulled the loop through, I was then able to really pull everything tight.  That doesn't seem to be working on the cross weave.  Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I know for sure that I really dislike the high gloss aluminum hook.  I also tried a 3.125mm hook and did not have any luck with that - way too flimsy.

Can anyone give me some pointers or tell me where to find good video tutorials for exactly what I'm doing.  I'm such a beginner that I don't even know what questions to ask google.  See pictures.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Brian

[NCcountrygal]

Places to learn more. 
https://www.wickerwoman.com/chair-seat-weaving

https://www.instructables.com/Weave-Chair-Seats-With-Paracord/