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?