Kumihimo

This ancient form of braiding was taught by Mick Mcnulty (one of my absolute favorite teachers in Austin) at Nomadic Notions. I immediately fell into a rhythm with this weaving and can't seem to put it down once I've started. It makes me feel calm, similar to how I feel when doing viking knitting. There are a ton of different weave patterns, and the materials students have used in class are varied. Leather, lace, yarn, beads, ribbon, silk, rubber, suede, satin rattail, cloth. Lots of fun although I'm not quite sure what to do with it? This isn't a jewelry piece that I'll probably ever wear but I would like to finish at least a couple of them. As you can see I made quite a few in a one week period between the first and second class. I really enjoyed making them because I could watch movies at the same time.

The two rainbow ones are using different gauges or thickness cording, and the larger one has 16 instead of 8 plies. I cut the color-shifting cords so they started generally at the same place in the color pattern on all plies used.

The easiest material to work with is by far the satin rattail. By changing the color line up and/or the weave pattern you get different final pattern results. I can only imagine the number of pattern varieties that are possible. The brown/black and red/white weaves use a slightly more complicated weave pattern, but I really love the look of these patterns.

I had a blast trying different materials and weaves. In this "furry" one, I used just about ever type of material I had on hand, including suede, rattail, chenille yarn, gold cord, satin ribbon

, chiffon ribbon, beaded cord, and two different types of eyelash yarn. I also did this again with different types of orange and yellow yarn and up close it actually looks like some variety of tweed.

I did finally make one into a necklace which I love. I'm waiting for more kumihimo/viking knit end-caps so that I can finish off more.

The black and green one will be a bit more challenging as I need to make this into a double rope clasp of some sort to accommodate the glass focal piece I found at a local bead show that works really well to make that particular strand not look quite so much like a jump rope! :)