Another simple tablet-woven band (Double X Double O) and Bonus Fingerlooping (3-loop experiment)

I saw a photo of a band and wanted to re-create it.  Attempt #1 is not quite right, but it's still reasonably attractive.  I knew it wasn't quite right but forgot that I wanted to adjust my chart.  I had already warped it up when I remembered, which seems very silly when I say that but that's more or less how it happened.

This is a very simple pattern.  I call it Double X Double O.  Maybe I'll do some variations on this in the future.   I do like having the two-tone background color.

I've charted up attempt #2 and will probably try again.  Not that I need to re-create what I saw, but it's an interesting exercise.

I'm still having issues with different motifs being different lengths.  As far as I can tell, the width is the same and I'm beating the weft the same.  But apparently not.  Or the cotton is more stretched out in some areas than others.  Or it's something about where the weight is, how close my weaving is to the cards, how twisted the edge cards are, how long the band sat under tension before weaving (though I tried to let it sit for a while each time).  Or maybe it'll go away after blocking.

I kept the weight fairly low compared to what I usually do for this many cards, and I kept the weft fairly loose in order to widen the band (to reduce the apparent elongation of the motifs).  The unblocked length is about 63" and the unblocked width is about 7/8" wide.  It's destined for a gift.

---------------

Next up is a fingerloop braid.  I decided it was time to try a new-to-me way to make longer braids.  I've done the crochet-chain method before (I think I came up with it on the fly), but wanted to try other methods from Ingrid Crickmore's website.

I am doing 3 loops, all different colors, fairly short.  I'm doing a flat braid (twist the left-hand loop, don't twist the right-hand loop) using the V-fell method.  I did the method of making a slip knot, braiding one end, then undoing the slip knot and braiding the other end.

In terms of tension, it's pretty consistent.  I can see the join, though, because I know where to look and because there is a slight color pattern disruption.  The pattern is symmetric around the joining point.

But I don't have a flat braid.  Huh?  It looks like an unorthodox braid, even, with one side slightly domed with a V-type pattern and another side with a more interwoven look.  It is almost but not quite triangular in cross-section.  It has a gentle spiral along the length of the braid which is actually rather attractive.  If it's unorthodox, that would also explain why the braid isn't flat.  Is it even possible to make an unorthodox 3-loop braid?

So what did I do?  My guess is that I wasn't paying attention and came up with yet another variation on a 3-loop braid.  I thought I was using my middle finger on one hand, going through the middle-finger loop on the other hand, and picking up the index finger loop from that other hand.  But what was I really doing?  And what should I have been doing?

I should set this up again and actually watch what my hands are doing.

And I need to play around more with doing braids this way so that the center join is less obvious, and also to see what exactly happens to flat braids at the center (i.e., does it open up from the other side of the braid, in which case I'll reverse the crossed loop vs non-crossed hands?).  Until then, though, I think I feel comfortable doing single-color square braids.

As always, attempt #1 just goes to show what a noob I am.  I like the results but am rather mystified as to how I got there, and it wasn't quite what I was trying to do.  On to attempt #2!  (Check out the further exposition from Ingrid Crickmore, here.  Apparently she has worked through these issues already.  Except for the part where she was making a mystery braid, though she probably did that, too, at various points in her self-education.

---------------------

My list of things I want to do is SOOOO long.  Dunno what I'll get to next.

Adventures in finger dexterity (9-loop fingerloop braid)

A 9-loop V-fell square fingerlooped braid.  Instructions here, though I didn't really need them since the 9-loop is pretty easily extrapolated from the 7- and 5-loop square braids.  The website does show how to hold one's thumb as well as giving a reminder about which thumb loop is the upper/outside loop (in order to twist or not-twist it properly and in order to transfer the index finger loop to the thumb properly).

I kept dropping loops and my fingers weren't sure they wanted to walk the loops.  Which is all quite normal for a new-to-me braid,  I was definitely starting to get better by the end.

Next time I might do this as a flat braid instead of a square, since the principles are the same.  At this point, making this braid is pretty slow given my current lack of finger dexterity.  I'm sure it'll get better with practice!

Ingrid Crickmore recommended trying the 9-loop square before getting too fast/comfortable with the 7-loop braid, since there are indeed some new finger muscles that have to be encouraged to play along.

Yay.

So... I will continue to play around with all the structures I have practiced so far, along with having some color fun (different color loops, bicolor loops, various forms of loop-switching).  And when I'm in the mood for something new, I will play around with some of the other structures I haven't tried yet such as the Spanish braids and the Grene Dorge braids and unorthodox variations, etc.  Eventually I'll find another person who knows how to do fingerloop braiding and see how the multi-person braids work.

On the whole, now that I've done a 9-loop square braid and found it easy to understand, I feel pretty comfortable with my knowledge and my ability to make a lot of the common fingerlooped braids that have been documented.  I'm no longer a complete noob even if I'm still barely past the beginning of the journey.  There's still so much to learn and to think about.  I am grateful to the people who have written books (and booklets) and put up websites about fingerloop braids.  It's been enormously helpful.

I also have a tablet-weaving band project I'm nearing the end of.  It's very simple but still kind of cute.  It's intended as a gift.  I'll probably add photos later today or in my next post.

Fingerlooping along with 5-loop bicolor-loop braids

Here is the braid I did yesterday.  Part of it is a standard V-fell 5-loop square braid (orthodox), and part of it is a standard V-feel 5-loop unorthodox braid (the common one where the only loop gone through is the one next to the traveling loop).  It looked pretty much the same from the side I was looking at, so I didn't quite notice until I got to the end and saw that the backside was different.  Both are nice braids, but I wasn't intending on doing a mixed braid like this.

The intention was to do the "edge plus one solid loop" 5-loop triangle braid on this page.  The other braid is described elsewhere on Ingrid Crickmore's website here as a "bicolor striping plus contrast loop(s)" square braid.

I'm not sure how well the photo shows fronts and backs.  Oh, well, I'll know it when I see it, and this blog is meant for my own purposes rather than to entertain the masses.

I decided that it would be easier to cut more thread and make another braid instead of unbraiding the above.  I switched it around a little bit -- a, b, and c on one hand are the dark color (blue).  The other hand has bicolor loops (blue/red) with red uppermost.  I just did a plain V-fell 5-loop square braid.

I like how it turned out.  Though I wasn't able to keep the tension consistent throughout, which I didn't quite realize until after I was done and had soaked the braid in warm water for a while.  Something to keep working on, I suppose.  I did zone out while braiding this pair of braids, but luckily I didn't switch to a different structure or color pattern while not paying attention.

Although the triangle braid is fun to make, I prefer the color pattern on the square braid.  As seems typical with unorthodox braids, the top and bottom are not symmetric/identical.  That's cool, but it bothered me with this particular color set-up.

Now to think about what I want to do next...

Gotta pay attention...

When making a fingerlooped braid, it is better if one pays attention, so that one doesn't forget what's going on and switch to a different braid structure in the middle of it all.

Harumph.

Oh, well, it's a nice little sampler.  It'll be easier to do another braid rather than try to unbraid this one.

The downside of doing a lot of different braids, I guess.

Back to basics -- another two-hole two-color brick-patterned tablet-woven band

Well, "basics" for me, that is.  I keep making this pattern.  I like it and I like the results and I've given away pretty much all of the other ones I've done.  This one is also destined to be given away.

Happy sigh.  I do like this pattern.  The photo doesn't clearly show how yellow the background really is.  It's very much University of Oregon green and yellow, which I didn't fully realize until I was already weaving.

The band hasn't been blocked yet, but I measured it as 3/8" (11mm) wide and 68" (172cm) long.  There are 14 tablets, 4 of which are 4-threaded edge tablets (two per side) and 10 of which are pattern tablets that have 2 threads per tablet.

I'll probably warp up another few of these soon-ish, since there are people who want me to make a band for them.

I'm also intrigued by a dead-simple band from Archaeological Textiles Review 55.  It's "a reconstructed tablet-woven band from Drabesu Liepinas burial ground" from an article on the use of color in Latvian textiles from the 3rd to 14th centuries, with the band apparently being from an 11th century grave.  There's nothing even remotely complex about it, just a simple threaded-in dotted pattern that is always turned forward.  Also, there's no guarantee that a reconstructed band accurately reproduces the archaeologic find.  But I find the band pleasing to look at it, and it would be quick to weave.

My cheap-cotton stash is starting to get low.  I'm not sure if I'll backfill colors that run out, or just make the switch to better quality materials.  If it's the second, I'll use the cheap stuff in increasingly weird color combos until I run out, interspersing tablet-weaving, inkle-weaving, and braiding.  We'll see!  It is a relatively nice weight to weave with and the cotton is at least slightly shiny.  It's relatively economic, too.

I'm not sure what's next, but probably more fingerloop braiding mixed with tablet weaving (and other things I do that aren't narrow wares and thus aren't included in this blog).

Guajiro Rattail Braids (7-loop fingerloop braids)

Another 7-loop braid sampler...

These are the Yaliwanasu braids from the Guajiro Indians.  I've already played with the 4-loop braids, and now it's time for the 7-loop braids!

Yaliwanasu is translated as Rattail, but really, it's some other kind of local rodent rather than a rat.

Three different braids are described.  All are done with V-fell hand positions, where the operator finger is the pinky.

The first is a pigtail-type braid, similar to the one I did earlier (Tollemarche 62 aka A Lace Broad Party), except that this is done V-fell rather than A-fell.  In other words, the pinky finger is the operator finger, and the traveling loop is on the index finger of the other hand.

The second has the operator finger (the pinky) go through the pinky-finger loop of the opposite hand, skip the ring- and middle-fingers, and pick up the index finger upper loop (to reverse/cross the loop) as the traveling loop.  Walk the loops and repeat with the other hand, etc.

The third is like the second, except that the operator finger goes through the pinky and ring fingers instead of just the pinky finger.

I then did a braid where I skipped the pinky and ring fingers and went through the middle finger before taking the index finger.  It looks a lot like the previous one except not as flat.  Both are oblong or trapezoid-ish braid cross-sections with one side (the bottom, wider side) looking like a pigtail braid and the other (upper, narrower side) looking like two Vs.  (Braid 2 has one side looking like a pigtail and the other looking like a compact interlacement.)

Finally, I repeated the Guajiro braids (2, 3, 1) to double-check, and then stopped.

My fingers were not happy about moving loops.  Drop drop drop -- I eventually transferred them by hand to keep things more or less in order.  I was using a slightly different hand position from usual, plus I was using acrylic.  But clearly my fingers need more exercise!  It also took a while to figure out exactly what I was supposed to be doing.  The instructions are a little bit unclear about which loops are the upper or lower, especially since the general instructions say that taking the upper loop leaves the loop open and taking the lower loop leaves the loop closed, while the specific braid instructions say the opposite (to take the upper loop in order to cross the loop).  The general instructions do say something about how outer-inner corresponds to upper-lower for this particular braid.  Eventually I just did something that seemed to work and then just tried to kept it consistent.

 All of the braids are perfectly cute.

The messed-up areas of the braid are where I indeed messed up.  For braid 3, it seemed like it was harder to keep the braid tension consistent without any extra loops popping out.  Just being aware of it was enough to keep it under control.

So now I've done all the Guajiro braids that were described in L-M BRIC Illustrated Instruction Series  #10.  Yay.  There are several others described in the newsletter but not in the illustrated instruction series.  Hmm, what next?

Today's fingerloop braids (6 loop and 7 loop square braids)

Well, yesterday's and today's braids.  I did sets of two braids since these will be given away as gifts and the giftee requested pairs of braids if I was going to do shorter lengths (i.e. less than 1-2 yards).

This first one is a 6-loop square braid, as described here by Ingrid Crickmore, except, of course, that I did it as a square braid instead of a flat braid.

I chose the "3 Ws" pattern -- the A fingers get color A, the B fingers get color B, and the C fingers get color C.  I used the V-fell braiding orientation, using the little or pinky finger of one hand, going through the loops on the other hand, and picking up the index-finger loop of that other hand, reversed, to bring back.  Shift the loops and continue.

It's very cute and I hadn't remembered that I'd already used that color combination and basic pattern in a different braid not long ago (a 5-loop square braid shown in the February 21, 2024 post)!  The two braids are different in thickness and have a slightly different hand.  The 3 color Vs are stacked more evenly, of course.

This is the second even-number mixed-square braid I've done, I think.  I did one earlier with 4 loops (a 3-loop square on one side, a 5-loop square on the other).  They're an interesting variant to add to my repertoire.  I should do some of the flat braids, too, since I do like many of the color arrangements that are shown on Ingrid Crickmore's website (and want to design my own, too).  I'll no doubt do the 8-loop mixed braid at some point, and beyond.

This second pic is a 7-loop square braid, also done in the V-fell orientation.  Six loops are dark purple and one is light purple.  It's definitely larger than 5-loop square braids!

Both are nice braids, and I'm starting to get more dexterous when moving loops from finger to finger, at least with V-fell.

It's time to play more with colors, I think.  And also to explore other braid structures.  And do more flat braids, since I want to see if I can get the tension on those a bit tighter without collapsing the braid into a square again.

I'm still a newbie, but it's interesting to look back and see how I've progressed in the last month and a bit.

I won't be teaching the 7-loop Celtic braid at the end of the month, alas.  They wanted something simpler.  So I'll teach the 2-strand fingerloop braid again, yay!  I'm also teaching the 7-strand Fill the Gap disk braid again.

More Fingerloop Braiding for the first week of March (5 loop and 7 loop braids)

I'm quickly running out of good post titles that aren't exactly the same as all the others.  I have that problem with tablet weaving, too.  And everything else, I suppose.

These have been done in the past few days, interspersed with other things, of course.

This first braid is made from some kind of perle weaving cotton, probably #10-ish.  I bought the cotton a zillion years ago, when I was looking for fine threads suitable for doily knitting.  It was during a time when good cotton thread in finer sizes was becoming very scarce in local stores, especially in colors.  The cotton was way too soft and uneven to work well with doilies, so it's been slowly getting used up in other projects.  I am pretty sure I'll be using some of this for tablet-weaving, too, assuming it's not too soft to take the tension and potential abrasion.

The pattern is a basic 5-loop square braid using bi-color loops.  Color A is on top for the left hand, Color B is on top for the right hand.  I'm pretty sure I did this as a V-fell loop.

This seems to be what the old fingerloop-braiding manuscripts call a "lace baston" -- according to the Silkewerk site, this is Tollemache 6 (a lace bastonne), Harleian 5 (a lace baston), and Serene 6 (a lace bastuve of 5 bows).  The fingerloop.org site claims it's #4 in Harley 2320, and #18 in "To Make Pursestrings" as documented in the book Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd by Janet Arnold.  Also, this is a braid that Ingrid Crickmore shows on her site as one of the color variations for 5-loop square braids.

Clearly different people refer to things from the old manuscripts in different ways, but I don't care all that much about the historic provenance.  It's a completely obvious color variation once for 5-loop square braids.

The braids are tiny!  The cotton really packs down tightly compared to the big-box-store crochet cottons, though the latter are somewhat thicker and more tightly plied, to be fair.

Also, I am still pretty terrible at recovering after a mistake.  Each braid has one spot where things went off the rails and I had to try to recover.  Sigh.  As I experienced with tablet-weaving, I expect it'll take me a while to understand how to fix my mistakes and then also get the loops back on my fingers in the correct order.

This braid really does show mistakes since the patterns is vertical stripes.  Our eyes REALLY notice anything that breaks the lines.

This one would be fun for switching around the loops (by doing a round of non-reversed loops or giving the loops another twist, to reverse which color is on top) and going back and forth in little checks or broken stripes.

The braids are pretty cute, though, in spite of the mistake in each one.  I've been doing pairs of them to use as drawstrings and ties.

This second braid is another sampler/experimental braid.  Since it's dark green and since I'm a terrible photographer, it's hard to see the details.  I'm writing down what I did and what I think about it so I don't forget!

All of these were done V-fell, where the ring finger is the operator finger and it usually picks up the index finger loop from the other hand.

The first part is a braid I've done before -- the ring finger picks up the index-finger loop from the other hand, and I picked up the loop reversed even though it doesn't really matter.

I believe this to be the 5-loop version of the "lace broad party" I did a few days ago.  It looks perfectly reasonable and is a nice, tight braid that looks like a pigtail.  It isn't as extravagantly indented as the 7-loop version.

The second part is an unorthdox braid, as Noemi Speiser would have it.  My ring-finger is the operator loop.  It skips the ring finger of the other hand, goes through the middle-finger loop, and picks up the index-finger (reversed).  This turns out fairly flat, a V or herringbone on the back, a flat interlacement on the front.  I'm pretty sure this is the classic, everyone-does-it, 5-loop fingerloop braid.

I then did something slightly different, picking up the index-finger loop after going through the ring-finger loop and skipping over the middle finger loop, again with a reversed loop.  It looks different from the above, rather triangular.  The bottom is a V.  The top looks like a small V sitting on top, sort of a wedge-shaped triangle.  I think this might be the same as one of the triangle or D-shaped braids in Ingrid Crickmore's website?

(And ugh, I might already not remember in which order I did these.)

I then repeated the two braids to make sure I was really seeing a difference.  Yup.  For funsies, I didn't reverse the traveling loop.  The braids are pretty much the same, maybe a trifle fluffier and looser, with the top side sitting higher above the bottom side.

Then I finished up with an inch or two of the basic square braid.

I am not 100% certain if I have sections 2/4 and 3/5 correct.  Goldfish brain...  But it does show that it makes a difference which loops get skipped vs gone through.  Dunno if there's a difference if I had gone under rather than over the loop.

It makes a minor difference whether the loop is taken reversed or open.  So that seems to be characteristic of a braid where some or all loops are skipped rather than gone through.  Which I knew, but it's always nice to double-check.  It'll make it easier to switch colors (by taking loops reversed instead of unreversed or vice versa) really unobtrusively, too.

Here are Ingrid Crickmore's thoughts on Unorthodox Braids, which seem to be concepts I was playing around with in this braid (though I didn't read her thoughts until after I'd done this braid.)  Hmm, she says it makes no difference whether one consistently goes under or over loops, but it does make a little bit of difference which way one twists the loops that get reversed.  Very cool.

This third pic is the 7-loop Celtic Braid again.  I might want to teach this braid in a few weeks, so I need to practice!  This is still slentre style; I haven't tried a V-fell or A-fell version yet.  I think I usually took the loop crossed, though some of it might have been with open loops.  Given that no loops go through each other, crossed vs uncrossed shouldn't really make much difference.

I did try some different things with this braid, not just the basic Celtic Braid.  I started and ended with the version I did before, where the operator finger goes over-under-over-through.  Then I tried over-over-under-through.  I like that version, too.  It's very neat-looking on both sides. Whereas the first version is almost identical on both sides and is flat and wide, the second is narrower and thicker and not quite identical.  One side looks like interlacements and the other more like a herringbone (somewhere between Vs and interlacements).

Then I tried under-over-under-through and under-under-over-through and various other things and didn't like them.  So I finished up with a little bit more of the original.

My fingers are slowly improving at loop-walking.  More practice is needed!  I might try this one in a thicker twine or hemp or something to see if it would make a useful braided belt.

This fourth loop is another mish-mash of 7-loop braids.  What the heck, it's time to try the 7-loop square braid.  It went swimmingly, yay!  Then a bit of flat braiding (loop reversed on one hand, unreversed on the other), more square, then flat braiding but taking the unreversed loop from the other hand, and finishing up with a really short section of split braids.

I did this as a V-fell braid, not that it matters much.  My fingers were not too bad at walking the loops up, whew.  I didn't even need to look up what to do -- just extrapolated the pattern from the 3 and 5 loop braids.  The little finger is the operator finger, and it goes through the loops on the pinky, ring, and middle fingers of the other hand before picking up the index finger traveling loop.

I did need to open up the flat braids; they wanted to stay folded up.  The side on which the flat braid opened did indeed depend on which had took reversed vs unreversed loops.

The two split braids look like pigtail braids, not like little 7-strand braids.  That's slightly disappointing.  The square braid is very square-looking, nice.

What's next?  I'm not sure, as usual.  More braids, I guess!  I'll trawl the usual sources for ideas and things to try.

I should do more sets of braids to use as drawstrings and lacing and start experimenting more with color patterns.  I should do a little write-up if I end up teaching the Celtic Braid.  I also might crank out a few tablet-weaving bands for gifts.

Fingerlooping along... (5 strand square and 7 strand flat)

This photo shows a pair of fingerloop braids that will be given away.  It's made from the cotton crochet stash, like most of the others I'm giving away.  Four loops yellow, one loop red, the standard 5-loop square/round braid where the operator finger goes through two loops then takes the traveling loop reversed, A-fell braiding method.

It's pretty cute.  Of course.

This second photo is a new-to-me braid.  It's 7-strands, and done in the usual ugly worsted weight acrylic yarn I use for experiments.  I saw a reference to a youtube video that showed how to braid this.  They call it a Celtic Braid.  It is braided using the slentre braiding technique -- palms mostly facing down, index finger is the operator finger and it takes the little-finger loop from the other hand.  I'm sure it can be braided using other hand positions, but doing it this way was very straightforward.

This was fairly quick and easy to do, though my finger dexterity still needs a lot of work!  No loops actually go through any other loops.  So it probably doesn't matter much whether the loop is taken reversed or unreversed, and it would be pretty straightforward to do this as a freehand or finger-weaving braid.  The braid itself is nice, a cute little flat interlaced braid.  You can probably see a few mistakes or loose tension areas in the braid, but that's not unexpected given that this was my first time doing this braid.

This might make an acceptable belt/sash, especially if done in something other than acrylic.

That's it from me today!  Nothing too different from before, but I'm practicing the various skills and trying more new braids.  I will continue to do braids that help me develop finger independence and dexterity.  I can already tell that moving loops from my pinky finger to my ring finger was a little easier today than it was yesterday.

Today's fingerloop braids

Well, so far.  Maybe there will be more later today, though if so, I'll try to wait until at least tomorrow to inflict them on my imaginary audience.

This is a 7-strand braid.  My fingers really did not want to cooperate in walking down loops! Dunno if that's because it's a 7-strand A-fell braid or because of the angle I held it at or my fingers just weren't having it.

This is a pigtail-type braid.  The place I saw it described/explained was very careful to take the loops reversed in a particular direction.  Hmmm.  I tried reversing it in the other direction and not reversing it at all and it didn't seem to make any difference.  Then I figured out that this was a braid called "A Lace Broad Party" and the instructions on silkewerk.com (from a saved version on archive.org) specifically mention that it makes no difference whether or not the loops get reversed.  Hah.  Dunno if it makes a difference with bi-color loops.  Probably not, since no loops go through any other loops.

Anyway, this is apparently Tollemache 62 and thus a genuine historic braid.  No loops get pulled through any other loops.  The empty index finger picks up the pinky-finger loop from the other hand.  The loops get lowered, repeat with other hand, etc.

It's pretty much the same thing I was doing with pigtail-style braids with 5 and 3 loops.  And indeed, it can generalize to other numbers of loops, and it can also be done freehand, and can also be done by going through some loops while going under/over others.

It's a pretty cute braid, of course.  But wow, I think I need to work on finger dexterity and finger independence!

Also, although I'm still playing around with 4- and 5-loop braids, I'm ready to also start exploring more braids that have more than 5 loops.

This yellow braid is actually 2 different braids.  I changed about halfway through.  They are both 4-loop braids.

The first one is from a handout I apparently found online somewhere.  It is from Eowyn de Wever, "Fingerloop Braiding; A sampler of four braids on 8 loops and 2 colours", from a class that she taught at some point since these are referred to as class notes.

The braid I did is "The Square Braid on 4 loops." This is supposed to be a helpful transition braid between an 8-loop spiral and a barleycorn-type braid.

I did that for about half or a bit more than half of the length of the braid, then got tired of dropping loops and my fingers not wanting to move loops around.

The second half of the braid is from The Weaver's Journal 37, Summer 1985.  There's an article in there by Noemi Speiser, "Unusual Braids Produced by Loop Manipulation", p.15-18, 67-73.  A lot of it is about the joys of track plans.  Luckily she includes the basic fingerloop manipulations as a guide for how the plans correspond to the braids.  I mean, I do understand what the track plans represent.  But I'm still having trouble backing out the finger/loop movements from only the track plan.  Clearly I need to practice more and do a few exercises in working with both the track plan and the fingerloop diagrams at the same time, or taking the one and generating the other, or both.

The braid I did is the 4-loop braid from Figure 8 on p.70. It was a lot more satisfactory than the first braid, not nearly as annoying to do.  Speiser says that this braid was found on "an old European purse."

I'll have to try these again using loops of different colors.  I may also switch the pigtail braid to V-fell to see if it's less annoying that way.

It's kind of fun to see how the two yellow braids look relatively similar (as monocolor braids) even though they have different structures.  Also, the Speiser braid tends to spiral.

Each braid has 3 faces, I think.  For the Speiser braid, they are all Vs or herringbones.  For the de Wever braid, there are 2 faces of Vs/herringbones and one that looks sort of like the flat face of a 3-loop flat braid (i.e. it shows interlacements).

All of these braids were meant as samplers/experiments, which is part of why the tension is inconsistent.  Well, part of it was general new-braid and finger-dexterity awkwardness.  But I really did want to see what the 7-loop Lace Broad Party looked like at different tensions.

I'd also like to work through the rest of the braids in the Speiser article as well as doing the braid in the connected article by Adele Cahlander on p. 15-16, "Detective Story: Unraveling the Mystery of a 7-loop braid."  Which also means I need to go back through her sling-braiding books/articles to look for fingerloop braids.  The last time I really looked at them, I was more interested in the square braids that are done freehand or on a marudai.

And alas, there's nothing about fingerloop braiding in the few things I have, including her book on Sling Braiding in the Andes.  Harumph.  I don't recall anything about fingerlooping in the book referenced in the article.  The book referenced by Cahlendar was that Andean knitting book by Cynthia LeCount, and in particular, the strap on a Bolivian monedero.  As I recall, most of LeCount's book was about the amazing knitted chullos.  I'll have to see if I own that book and if so, if anything is said about the strap or about braiding in general.

Inspired by the above, I did a few more samplers.

I tried to do a 3-loop braid, going through 0 loops, taking the loops alternately above and below the uninvolved loop.  I don't know if I was messing up or what, but I kept undoing what I'd just done.  Frustrating.  Similar for going through 2 loops while taking the moving loop reversed on one side and unreversed on the other.  It's apparently difficult to count to 3 and/or keep my fingers straight as to which is the operator loop, which is the moving loop, and what happens to loop between the two.  Or it just ends up not looking very interesting.  Sigh.

So I added a fourth loop and played again.  That was more successful!

It's hard to see, but first I did a combo 3-5 square braid, using V-fell braiding, inspired by Ingrid Crickmore's mention of the 6-loop braid done as a combo 5-7 square braid.  For one hand it was like a 3-loop braid and the other hand was like a 5-loop braid.  I took both loops reversed.  Yes, success!  It is a perfectly lovely little braid with a triangular cross-section, easy to do as long as I can count to two.  Two sides have herringbone Vs and the third shows a small, neat interlacement.

Then I took the loop reversed for the first move (when my operator finger went through 1 loop on the other side) and unreversed for the second move (when my operator finger went through 2 loops on the other side).  This makes a nice little flat braid, yay!  There are 2 Vs on each side.

Then I did the opposite -- taking the loop unreversed when going through 1 loop, taking it reversed when going through 2 loops.  This does not make a flat braid.  It's similar to the first, a triangular cross section, though I think all three sides are Vs and none show an interlacement.

Finally, since there wasn't much length left, I did the 4-loop spiral braid, varying whether I reversed loops and also varying which loop went through which loop (i.e. always the right loop on the outside, reversing the left loop, versus always the upper finger loop on the outside, reversing the lower finger loop).  They're subtly different but not enormously so, as I think I already knew.

Dunno what I'll do next, but I have a lot of potential things to try.  Plus there are some tablet weaving things I want to play with.  And I'm vaguely feeling the urge to pull out the marudai.  But I'll probably keep fingerlooping for a while even if I do start something else.

Fingerlooping -- a few things I want to think about

A quick and not very exciting post....

I only have this one braid for a pic.  It's a basic 3-strand round braid, one strand each of orange, purple, and blue.  I think I did it with an A-fell method, but it might have been a mixed method.  In other words, the index finger was the operator finger, and I picked up the middle-finger loop from the other hand, but I can't remember which of the loops the operator finger went through before picking up the traveling loop.  Whatever.  It makes a minimal difference in the final braid as long as I'm consistent, which I think I was.

I had set out to do a flat 3-loop braid but kept messing up, sigh.  So I switched to this easier one where I didn't have to pay as much attention.  It still took me more tries than I should admit to braid consistently with the same moves each time.

-----------------------

There is nothing particularly interesting about this post, but I wanted to write down a few thoughts for consideration later.  They're still incomplete/ignorant newbie thoughts which no doubt will seem laughable to real experts.

Things that might matter for fingerloop braiding (and variations to consider).

1. A fell, V fell, Slentre, Mixed, Kute-uchi, Freehand/Stand braiding styles.

I am not sure this matters much.  Different finger/loop set-ups might be easier or harder to manipulate depending on finger dexterity and how many loops there are.  For example, Ingrid Crickmore says that she likes V-fell since it's easier to add a loop on the thumb in fingerloop braids when the operator finger is the pinky finger rather than the index finger, which means that 9-loop braids are more easily done than with A-fell methods.  For A-fell, it's easier for many people to use their index finger as the operator finger rather than ring finger or pinky.

The different methods tend to be more common in specific geographic regions.  Some of this is no doubt due to technology transfer, when people learn how to make these kinds of braids from people who are from (or were exposed to) some other culture/region.  Some is independent re-invention.  I think the L-M BRIC newsletter said that some regions/cultures used a couple of different methods.

I suspect there may be some characteristic mistakes in fingerloop vs freehand/stand braiding, but I don't want to think about this just yet.

I don't know if/how braiding style interacts with the spinning/plying twist in the strands.

Not all braids can be fingerlooped.

2. Taking the loops reversed or unreversed, and also, in which direction they are reversed.

This is a pretty big one for some braids -- it can mean the difference between double, square/round, and flat-opening braids.  It allows one to insert open loops or finish off with mini-braids, by changing things around during the start, middle, or end of the braids.

For other braids, it seems not to make much difference in the appearance of the braid, though if one is using bicolor loops it might make some difference.  (which means that one can take loops reversed or unreversed to make interesting color patterns)

For some braids, it makes a subtle difference.  I mean, it's a structural difference, sure, and will affect how color patterns turn out (especially for bicolor loops but also sometimes single color) but the appearance is only somewhat different at a casual glance rather than being really different.

One can mix which loops get reversed or not.  For example, flat braids are reversed on one hand and unreversed on the other.  Are there braids where some of the moves are reversed and some not?

Changing things mid-braid is possible, as discussed above.  This is especially true for the braids where reversed/unreversed makes a big difference.

It looks to me like one can twist the loop in either direction.  Does this make a difference?  Is it affected by the ply/spin direction of the threads?  Can/should one vary this, either by which hand does what or by turns or randomly?

Which way to reverse the loop is somewhat dependent on the braiding style, maybe -- it sometimes seems easier to hook around the bottom or over the top for a particular braid and hand/finger set-up in order for a loop to reverse.  I believe there are also braids that give the loop a full 360 degree twist rather than 180.

It's also very possible (and desirable) to do different things with each hand (or finger), so that some loops are taken reversed and some not, or taken reversed for one hand and not the other, or for some moves and not others.  The square/split/flat braids are an example of this (one hand reversed and one not).  So are the barleycorn braids, I think (some braiding moves that reverse, and the lateral exchange which can be either reversed or unreversed, I believe).

3. Which and how many loops are entered before the operator finger picks up the traveling loop.

This is the big one for a lot of braids.  Of course.  It's a big part of how one can get a whole family of braids from X number of loops.

One can go through 0 loops, 1 loop, 2, etc., up to all of them.

If one doesn't go through all of the loops, one's operator finger can skip over or under some of them on the way to the traveling loop.

If one skips over some of them, it can make a difference which ones get skipped over and which way they get skipped over (under or over).

Is this going to be consistent along the braid, or for one hand and not the other, or changing up and down the braid for various purposes?

Does it matter which way one enters the loops before picking up the traveling loop?

4.  Loop exchanges (aka lateral exchanges).

Loop exchange braids keep the loops in pairs and swap them.  This too has a few variations.

Which loop is on the outside -- does it alternate, is it always the same for each hand or each color, etc.?

Are the loops taken unreversed or reversed?

What if one changes the loops by simply swapping the positions rather than loops going through each other?  (I seem to recall that one ends up with a lot of independent twisted strands.)

The order in which the loop-exchanges happen is also a factor.  This too can change throughout the braid.

5.  Moving loops without working them.

This, I suppose, is partly included in the above categories (going through 0 loops, swapping positions, etc.)

But...  I've done that one braid (the 4-loop Guajiro one) that has one move loops from one finger to another finger, on the same hand, before doing the next bit of movement of loops between hands (which involves loops going through each other).

So...  if the loops are moved without working them, it should come up with something similar to a freehand braid that is done with pairs of threads, right?  But it gets more complicated with a mix of moving and looping-through.

And again, it makes a difference how the loops move, and over/under which other loops, and possibly whether or not they get twisted when they move.

6.  Colors/textures.

Obviously one can do all kinds of fun things with color and texture -- all strands the same, some strands different, some strands bicolor/mixed-texture, etc.  Plus there are ways to switch around in mid-braid in addition to a braid that is consistent throughout its length.

I will at some point carefully read Ingrid Crickmore's page on how to plot this out.  She gives instructions she's already worked out for several braid structures.  For those that aren't worked out and/or aren't easy to figure out, if and when I am willing to do the work, I can set up a bi-color loop sequence and work it out for myself.

7.  Multi-person braids and braids using kute-uchi (though I think a lot of the kute-uchi braids can be done with fingers/hands).  I haven't even begun to consider these yet.

8.  Do I care about track plans?  Noemi Speiser sure does.  I haven't decided yet.  Also, would it help for me to learn a bit about the mathematics of braids, especially as a way to describe/categorize them?  Again, I haven't decided.  I'll have to see what mathematicians care about and see how it intersects with what I care about.  What are good methods with which to record braids, while being as unambiguous and specific as possible?

9.  Which fingerloop braids correspond to which kumihimo or freehand braids?  The structure of a braid doesn't necessarily tell you how it was made, especially if you only have a bit in the middle to look at.  But it's fun to know several different methods for accomplishing the same thing, so one can do whatever seems most suitable given one's needs/wants at the time.

10.  History, teaching, etc.  How do I find out more about cords/braids throughout history/archaeology/anthropology?  What, if anything, do I want to teach to others?  There's also the related thing of braid characteristics and their uses throughout time.  For example, some braids may be stronger/weaker and/or more/less elastic, grippy, etc., than others, more suitable for different fibers and sizes, more useful as pursestrings or ropes or fabric edges, etc.

So, that's just a few beginning thoughts based on my limited-so-far explorations.  I might add more to this later as I think of or encounter more variables.  Humans are so endlessly inventive; it's very cool to see what others have come up with, in addition to which ones they tend to keep and use most often.

Another 5 loop braid experiment

Yeah, more photos that all kind of look alike, too indistinct to make out details, and full of extraneous/confusing spots, such as when a loop got dropped and put back on the finger backwards, or a short experimental section that went very wrong, or inconsistent tension because I didn't care and didn't have a good anchor point, or a cat tried to help at various points.

And yet, informative for me, which is why I'm writing this down as a way to remember what I did and why.

Yeah, I know these are a trifle hard to see.  These are from Jean Leader's fingerloop braid seminar done for the Braids and Band groups.io mailing list in 2021.  In particular, these are from Part 3:  Some More Braids.

On the handout, she has a couple of braids that are classified as "5-loop braids with some loops missed."  She shows one where the loops are taken with no turns, and then one where the loops are taken reversed (i.e. with turns).  She has various color patterns as examples, and I chose the variation with 5 bi-color loops, with color A on top and color B on bottom for all 5 loops.

These are all done in the A-fell method, by the way.  Loops are on abc on one hand and bc on the other.  The operator finger a goes through the loop on b (on the same hand), skips over the top of loop c (on the same hand) and then picks up the loop on c of the other hand.  Walk down the loops and repeat.

So...  The first braid is taken with loops unturned.  The front and back are similar - each looks like a single column of knit stitches (or a V or a herringbone, I guess), with color A on one side and color B on the other.  Now that I've finished the braid and looked at it more closely, I guess there's a bit of a ditch on the color A side (the color that was the top color of the loops) but it's not hugely obvious.  The overall braid shape is oblong, slightly parallelogram-shaped or trapezoid-shaped in the cross-section with the edge thread of the bottom showing slightly along one side of the top. 

For grins, I then did 5 moves with crossed loops, and then resumed the uncrossed loops.  This was kind of fun -- as planned, color A was now on top and color B on the bottom, with the subtle ditch on the B side.

Then I switched to doing the all-crossed loop braid, where the loop is always taken reversed.  This means that color A and B switch sides as they circle around the fingers on both hands.  This also looks like the classic Broad Lace of 5 bows, with the ditch on the bottom now opened up more to show the flat interlacement of the loops, with the top looking like 2 Vs and being rather convex/curved.  The center V of the top is higher than the 2 threads on each side, if that makes sense.  It really does look like the ditch/groove on the bottom just opens up and flattens out the braid overall, making it shorter and wider.

Then I did the thing where I took the loop reversed with one hand and un-reversed with the other.  It looks pretty similar to the first braid but with the bottom a little more opened up so the ditch is more visible.  It does not become a flat braid the way the the square braid does.

OK, now it's time for V-fell, though I did a little bit of braiding while not going through any loops besides the moving loop to make sure I wasn't going to unbraid everything the way that Ingrid Crickmore warns us about.  I did a bit by taking the other-hand loop c above the loops, and some by taking it under.  I'd like to re-do this because it looks like one of them (the taking-the-loop-under) has an interesting interlacement pattern on top with a herringbone on the bottom, and it appears slightly fatter than the one done by going over the top.  Dunno...

I switched to V-fell, with a few fumbles until my fingers caught the pattern again.

Loops were on fingers abc on one side and ab on the other.  The empty c finger went through the other c, skipped b, and picked up a.  I think.  Argh, maybe I skipped c and went through b!  If so, the following maybe not be applicable!

I did the same thing as before -- loops unreversed, loops reversed, one hand reversed and the other unreversed.

Ingrid Crickmore's triangle braid is one of these, the one with loops reversed.  It does look slightly different from the other braids.  Not significantly so, but somewhat if one really takes a look at it vs the A-fell equivalent.  (though I must remember that I might not have skipped over the same loop for the A-fell and V-fell braids)

Conclusions -- these are all cute braids and easy to do.  For all of them, the bottom is wider than the top.  They are all pretty easy to do.  They're all relatively similar-looking at first glance, with the difference being how obvious the groove in the bottom is and how much it spreads out.  It's interesting that there's not a ton of difference in how the braid looks, at first glance and not counting the color pattern, whether both hands to the same moves or if each hand does something different (reversed vs un-reversed).

With the unreversed-turn braids, I like the idea of being able to switch colors more or less at will by doing 5 moves with crossed loops to flip the colors.

I would like to repeat this experiment by changing out whether the loop closest to the moving loop gets gone through or gone over.  (in other words, for v-fell, do I go through c, over b, and pick up a, or do I go over c, through b, and pick up a).  I'll probably do it with 5 different single-color loops instead of bi-color loops.  Or maybe 10 different colors if I'm feeling very ambitious, to really see the path of each thread.

But on the whole, this was an enlightening set of experiments on the difference various factors make in a 5-loop braid where some loops are missed.