What have I been doing since my last post? Well, not a lot of stuff, I guess. I've been busy with non-narrow-ware tasks.
I have a new tablet weaving commission, something that should be simple yet effective for its purpose. That'll be for next month.
But first, I am doing some teaching this weekend, yay! A friend was going to teach, had to back out, and I offered to take over and teach the already-planned classes.
One is on lucets. I can do basic lucet cord. I'm no expert but I don't need to be for this class. I'll teach both the no-turn and the turn method.
I did a little research about lucets since I know there's some argument for how old the technique is. Most of the argument is about which archaeological artifacts might have been lucets. Eh, lucet cord can be made using all kinds of things, even one's fingers. However, I cannot yet find any definitive evidence of cords made with this technique. Cords made on a lucet superficially resemble cords made from a few other techniques, but even so, it has some unique characteristics that hopefully someone would have picked up on. Cords and other narrow wares are woefully understudied, alas. Maybe I'll find something, or maybe the evidence doesn't exist yet.
The other class will be on disk braiding, and in particular, an 8-strand braid, which I've decided means the Z-spiral kongoh gumi braid that is well known, popular, and works well on a disk. If there's time and interest, I might show people how to reverse the spiral direction and make zigzags. Or have them set up a couple of different color/texture patterns. The friend likes to use weights for disk braids, so I'll discuss that, too, even though I tend not to use them myself. (I do use them on a marudai.) I'll mention how this braid can be expanded in multiples of four strands and that all kinds of cool color/texture patterns become possible with more braiding elements.
Kongoh gumi isn't a very old braid, either, as far as I can tell. It's not a fingerlooped braid. It can be made freehand. But in the Japanese kumihimo tradition, I believe it arose with the development of braiding stands.
Once I have free time again, twill braids and sprang are high on my to-do list, along with some fingerlooped braiding, netting, and the other usual things I tend to obsess over.
