More February Fingerloop Braids

 I keep forgetting to record and write down what I've been playing with lately.  I have been busy with non-narrow-ware things, too, of course.

Here are a few of the recent braids.

This one is a plain 5-loop square braid (apparently this is "a round lace of five bows" in the Medieval European sources).  I made it from something finer than #10 cotton, dunno if it was #20 or #30 or what.  Wow, so fine!  It took a lot longer than I expected based on how long the #10 takes.  I was surprised at the thinness and gauge of the braid.

This next one is a new-to-me braid made from the instructions on this page: https://loopbraider.com/2017/08/07/uo-triangle-5-7-9tut/   I did the 5-loop variation because I'm doing 5-loop braids at the moment, mostly.

Except that Ingrid Crickmore sez that this is merely the V-fell version of the common D-shaped A-fell 5-loop braid.  Hmm.  It's like the square braid except that the operator finger only goes through 1 loop instead of 2 loops before picking up the traveling loop.

Dunno if she's right that it's the same structure or not.  I'll have to redo this one in several colors of yarn and then do the A-fell version to see what I think.  She discusses it (I'm not sure how accurately, but I don't have enough experience yet to assess it) here: https://loopbraider.com/uo-vfell-afell-mystery/

Since I've been thinking about different patterns of picking up, skipping, swapping, going through, reversing, etc., various loops in these braids, this inspires me to keep on experimenting.

This maybe does look a little bit different from the one I did with the A-fell method.  It's still flat on one side and rounded on the other, but the flat side looks a bit different and more compact.  Maybe.  I need to make this again both A-fell and V-fell and try a few other things to see what differences there are, if any.

This last one in today's post is from L-M BRIC News Illustrated Instruction Series No. 10.  It is a braid that is done by the Guajiro Indians from Colombia, as described by Marta R. Zapata.  This braid is called Makusua, meaning maize blossoms.  It has 4 loops, with each loop acting as a single element. Masaka Kinoshita writes this about it: "You may see this recipe as an application to the 1-m technique of the free-end method of making a 4-element round braid commonly seen the world over, that is, exchanging a pair of diagonally positioned elements one pair after the other."

It took me a little while to catch the rhythm of it, but it definitely sped up and got more consistent as I kept going.

There are two pairs of loops.  Each pair swaps with itself but not with the loops in the other pair.  It is not like the spiral braid because the loops do not go through each other.

I forgot to take a photo, but several days ago I also did a 5-loop braid with various methods (I changed every few inches).

If one never goes through any loops, then one gets something that looks like a 5-strand pigtail braid.  I did the D-shaped braid that is supposedly the most common one in the world (one goes through one loop before picking up the loop next to it).  I tried a few contortions to try some under-over-through variations, without too much success.  And I did the flat 5-loop square braid (go through 2 loops, pick up a reversed loop with one hand and unreversed with the other).  I quite like the flat braid.  Hmm, I didn't try the flat braid with only going through 1 loop.  Maybe that will be another experiment.

I should play around with planned color patterns at some point. I also want to look at the other 4-loop patterns in Noemi Speiser's Manual of Braiding.

I really need to start labeling my little experiments so I can remember which is which.  The pile is growing.

The class I taught went well.  I'll probably do another sometime in March -- the one I've already done on the 7-strand fill-the-gap disc braid.