Continued Exploration of the Braid on the Knitted Sion Bag 269

I tracked down more of the old online information about the cords on this bag.  There was something in L-MBRIC 7 from Joy Boutrup about them, though only through a link.  I was too real-life busy to download all of the L-MBRIC newsletters back when they were posted, so I have been using the pdf scans that have graciously been shared.  It's not always clear what is a link vs just random text so I probably missed out on some of the info in the newsletters.  However, the link is still alive in archive.org, yay, so I was finally able to read it.

Here are the archive links:  https://web.archive.org/web/20190914150706/http://lmbric.net/ is, I believe, one of the last complete (as much as possible) web-crawls of the website.

Here is the article as linked through L-MBRIC No. 7: http://lmbric.net/n7/sion/LM_NEWS2.HTM

Note to myself: I should go through all of the archive.org links and re-save them, checking out anything that is linked.  Some of them are in color, which the pdfs don't always preserve.  Plus, I want to make sure I have copies of things that were non-obvious links in the newsletters.  Sure, even these aren't 100% complete, but they will be good to use in conjunction with the scanned pdfs.   Oh, and it's cool that there are several articles about Sulawesi braids in the newsletters, along with a quote along the lines of all the old/traditional tablet weavers knowing all the local fingerloop braids, too.

Back to the article on Braids on Relic Purses in Sion, Switzerland, by Joy Boutrup.  Boutrup worked in conjunction with Noemi Speiser to examine these purses.  In person. Which means that I trust their expertise, and they had access to evidence which is not easy to determine from the insufficiently-detailed photos online (https://www.kornbluthphoto.com/SionPurse269.html, as is in a previous post).

They say that the main fat purse braid on bag 269 is an unorthodox braid.  Six strand, yep, that's what I could tell.  But unorthodox rather than orthodox.

Interesting....

That means that I'm not interpreting the photo correctly that supposedly shows the joining of strap and body on purse.  Unorthodox braids do not split into two separate braids when loops are taken unreversed rather than reversed.  So...  the drawstring braid (or braids) are probably separate from the purse strap.  And duh, the drawstring color order is different from the color order on the strap.  So, yup, different braids.

Also, I cannot see the backside of the purse or any of the straps.  I have to take it on faith that Boutrup and Speiser did, since unorthodox braids would be distinctive and they are both experts whose knowledge and experience I deeply respect.   I will say that the braid being unorthodox does explain the slight flattening of the strap braid in the photo, with the Vs of each color being a little too easily seen in the same photo instead of being on opposite sides of the braid.

(Hmm, the article doesn't say that Boutrup and Speiser were able to examine the backside of the purses or the cords.  But still, I trust their expertise to be able to distinguish between orthodox and unorthodox braids.)

Time for more playing around!  I cut 6 more loops, again paying no attention whatsoever to the order of the colors, and tried different things.

Doing a loop exchange (a loop on one finger exchanges with a loop on another) with 6 loops, without one braid going through another, is kind of annoying, so I gave up on that pretty quickly.  I had mentioned it in my last post, so wanted to try it this time.  It's easy enough with 4 loops, as demonstrated by the class I recently taught, but it would require more coordination of extra fingers than I wanted to deal with to set it up for 6 loops.  Someday I'll return to this idea.

I also did these experiments using A-fell (i.e. index finger as operator finger) since that's the more common technique in the European fingerloop braiding manuals.  Braids done as A-fell vs V-fell, especially unorthodox braids, seem to look different even for what seems to be the same structure.  So I wanted to remove that as a variable.

Hopefully the pics are clear enough.  It should be the front and back of the experimental braid.

I tried a few things.  I wasn't particularly careful about tension or anything like that and I tended to drop loops occasionally.

I went through only one loop on each hand.  (I could have done 2 loops on one hand and 1 on the other, of course).  I tried both going through the loop next to the operator finger, and going through the loop closest to the loop that was about to be taken.  I also tried reversed vs unreversed loops, though I didn't try reversing from above the loop, since below the loop was easier to grab.

Going through the loop closest to the loop about to be picked up is interesting but looks rather different from either a square braid or an unorthodox braid going through the loop next to the traveling finger.

You can see how the colors spiral up, with a short bit going in the other direction.  It looks that way on both sides.  So this is kind of a cool braid on its own even though it is not the braid used on the actual purse.  To try to be more clear, finger A travels through the last loop on the same hand before picking up the loop on finger C or D of the other hand.

Going through the loop closest to the traveling finger gives the traditional look of an unorthodox braid, and the braiding itself is very smooth and quick, very little need to count or pay attention. It has the characteristic flat/rounded top with two Vs and a flat interwoven backside.  It looks pretty similar whether I take the loops reversed or unreversed, maybe a bit looser/flatter with unreversed loops but that could just be my technique at that point in the braid.

The simple unorthodox braid looks pretty similar to the square braid along the top, except that it is a bit wider and more domed than the square.  I did a bit of the orthodox braid in the middle of my sampler, for purposes of comparison with the other things I tried.

So, what was the braid used for the drawstring?  The same?  Something different?  It looks like the same braid but it appears to be a bit skinnier than the strap.  But who knows?  And some of that could be done by adjusting the braiding tension.  All the braids have 6 braiding elements, each of which consists of 2 strands, and the dyelot of the colors matches across the braids and also the purse.

I can't make enough sense from the online pics to understand what I'm seeing about how the purse strap was attached, how the draw strings were connected, etc.  I believe there are two drawstrings (since the Vs go in the same direction for both when they can be seen), one for each side of the purse, and that they are tied together at each end.  I believe that the strap is separate and it must somehow be sewn onto each end rather than going through the drawstring holes.  Also, where are the starting and ending parts of the strap braid?  One end is shown in a photo but I honestly have no idea what's going on there.

It is entirely reasonable for the braiders to have done an unorthodox 6-loop fingerloop braid with the braiders only going through the loop next to the traveling finger on the way to the loop that is about to be picked up.  That is fast and smooth and sufficiently symmetric for each hand.  So, given that Boutrup and Speiser say that this 6-loop braid is unorthodox, that is what I would currently go with.

I should try this style of unorthodox braiding with other even-number braids.  (I've mostly done it with odd-number braids, which is more traditional.)  And I should also do more fingerloop braiding in general since I do enjoy it and want to keep increasing my skills and my knowledge.  Though maybe I wanna warp up another tablet weaving project.  Or knit myself a Monmouth cap.  Or drag out a spinning wheel and some roving.  Or see what length heddles I prefer for my inkle loom and warp up a quickie band.  Etc.

Is this the end of my exploration of this braid on this purse?  Probably not...

Yet more 4-element braid experiments

This might be my final post on this particular braid.  Or not -- you never know!

The above is a fingerlooped braid.  It spirals Z for part of the way, then S, then back to Z.

For the method where you shift the index finger to the middle finger, then pick up the other-hand ring finger and put the middle finger loop onto the other-hand ring finger...

If Color A starts out on the index fingers and Color B starts out on the ring fingers, it will spiral Z.  If Color A starts out on the left hand and Color B starts out on the right hand, it will spiral S.

You can shift from S to Z or vice versa by waiting until the colors are arranged the way you like, then repeating a move.   So...  you do the first exchange (either right or left hand), which brings the yarns into the other configuration.  Then repeat that first exchange instead of doing the second exchange.  Keep going from there, as before, until you want to shift the other way.

I haven't tried it yet, but my guess is that it's the opposite for the version of this braid where one moves the ring finger loop to the middle finger, then swaps the other-hand index finger loop onto the ring finger with the middle finger loop going to the other-hand index finger.  That's because with the first method, the index finger loop goes under the ring finger loop, while it goes over the ring finger loop in the second method.  With both (if I'm thinking about it correctly), the switch/twist between index and ring fingers goes clockwise when the right index finger swaps with the left ring finger, and counterclockwise when the left index finger swaps with the right ring finger.

I tried doing the loop exchange in one move but I wasn't dexterous enough to be able to switch loops without one going through the other and without dropping something.  So the two-step method works best for me so far.  (Transfer loop to middle finger, then swap the two loops pretty much at the same time.)

So.  How was the Skjodehamn hood braid done?

The argument for fingerlooping -- it's a short braid, made from two strands of yarn per braiding element, and fingerlooping is pretty fast.

The argument against fingerlooping -- it is not clear if any of the other braids are fingerlooped.  They might be, but they might not be.  In general (with a lot of exceptions), I'd expect to see some 5-loop fingerloop braids somewhere in this outfit, since in general (with a lot of exceptions), odd-number fingerloop braids and especially 5-loop braids, are so common in areas that do fingerlooping.  On the other hand, most of the braids are made from two strands per element, which is an argument for strong consideration of fingerlooping.  One more argument against fingerlooping -- this braid is not mentioned in any of the medieval braiding manuals, as far as I know.  Though I don't know if it would have been considered too simple to record.

Whipcording -- there is no evidence for the existence of this method at this time.  It's possible that long lengths were wound onto sticks rather than heavy bobbins, but that grades into the freehand braiding methods.  Whipcording (hanging the braid from a hook, then passing the bobbins back and forth, preferably with two people) is pretty fast, especially for making long lengths of cord.  The argument against this method being used, in whatever form, is that these are short ties, hardly worth the effort of setting up anything with bobbins.

Disk/stand -- again, no evidence for the existence of this method at this time, and the arguments are similar to the ones about whipcording.  It's definitely possible -- maybe a small table or tablet (for tablet weaving) with a hole in the middle could have been used, with a counterweight for the growing braid and sticks or small bobbins holding the cords.  But again, it would be better for longer cords.  It's an idea for portability, though.  I'll have to think about it.  A plain tablet (or square piece of something with a hole in the middle) would be easier than moving threads in and out of slots.  It could be pretty fast and would require only one person.

Freehand/in-the-hand -- This is a low-tech way to do this braid, pretty easy to rediscover anytime you need to do so.  There are several ways to think about how you do it.  It's a little slower than fingerlooping, but requires very little set-up or thinking about it.  It too is very good for shorter braids, and entirely possible for longer braids if one has a way of dealing with the long ends (such as wrapping them around a stick or small bobbin).

Other methods?  I don't know!  I'm still a wee small braider, with so much left to learn and understand.

Of the ones above, freehand and fingerloop are the most plausible.  In my opinion.  Given my current level of ignorance, which is pretty high.  My guess is that the person who sewed the hood (and/or the person who wanted the ties) might well have grabbed a bit of yarn and banged out the cord right then and there.  It is possible, of course, that there was already a much longer length of this cord hanging around (done on a disk or through whipcording or freehand) and they just whacked off a couple of short pieces of it to make the ties.

I don't have a good enough pic of the cords, nor do I have sufficient knowledge about braiding or about the culture that made these specific braids, to rule out the various possibilities.

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

I knew I had done a fingerlooping version of the 4-element braid before, and I tracked it down, yay!

It's the Makusua Maize Blossom braid of the Guajiro Indians (from northeast corner of Columbia, in South America), and it's in L-MBRIC 10, shown in the Illustrated Instruction Series (no. 10, of course, from 2007).  This one is similar to the Potosi method except that loops are swapped from hand to hand first, then shifted back to the original finger.

So, loops are on B and D fingers (calling them Lb, Ld, Rb, and Rd).  Ra takes ld.  Ld takes rb.  La takes rd.  Rd takes lb.  Shift loops a to b on both hands.  Tighten the structure every other step.  

They give the three basic color patterns that can be done with two colors.  For Z spirals -- Color A on both b fingers, color B on both d fingers.  For S spirals -- Color A on one hand, color B on the other hand.  For vertical (as with the above) -- the diagonals are the same (i.e. the b finger of one hand and the d finger of the other).

So maybe I'm not quite done with this topic.  I might try both this method and the Potosi method to see which one flows more smoothly and easily.  I've done the Makusua braid before but don't remember much about it beyond the fact that I've done it.

I don't know why I get hung up on these picky little details.  They're probably very basic to most people.  But it helps me to do and explore things, thinking about why and what.  It does help my overall understanding of the underlying principles, I guess, even if I have to do it the slow and hands-on way.

Masako Kinoshita describes the Makusua braid as "new as an L-M recipe", interesting.

See my posts from February 28, 2024 and February 29, 2024 for my first exposure to the Makusua braid.

(edited later to add -- the Makusua and Potosi methods are both quick and efficient, as is my own variation.)

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

Maybe I'll move on to the six-strand Skjoldehamn braids soon.  These too were done with two strands of yarn per element.  They can be done freehand or, I believe, through fingerlooping.  There's no point to doing them with whipcording, I don't think.

I think my class is likely to be this 4-element braid from the Skjoldehamn hood as done with fingerlooping.  I'll probably show or at least talk about other ways to make the braid (freehand, disk, maybe a description of whipcording), and also encourage people to experiment with using more colors, doing other color patterns and/or monochrome cords, etc.

Or I'll do the 6-element braid, and if so, probably freehand since that way is easy to demonstrate, and it generalizes to a lot of other braids in this style.

It's interesting that most or all the braids on the outfit use even numbers.  I wonder if that means something?  Ditto for the use of two strands per braiding element for most or all of the braids.

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?

Leap Day Fingerloop Braids

A few more fingerloop photos...  Dunno if this is it for me for today or if I'll add to this post later (or put up another one tomorrow).

First is the sampler I did from 5 different colors of yarn (no bi-colors, though), that I mentioned yesterday.  It's a bit hard to see, but I'll try to describe what I did.

Upper left -- this is the section where I treated each loop as its own unit, never pulling a loop through other loops.  It's not really the same as a 5-strand pigtail, I don't think.  It's flat, very similar-looking on both sides.  The freehand 5-strand pigtail braid I do tends to look more square.  So that's something for me to think about the next time I do freehand 5-strand pigtail braids.  This one looks a lot like the braid I did with 3 loops when I did the same thing (i.e. the operator finger goes through 0 loops), except of course it's 5 loops instead of 3.

Then I did an inch or two of an A-fell square braid, with my index finger going through both loops on the same hand before picking up the loop on the ring finger of the other hand (through the bottom, to reverse it).

Then it was a small stretch of the D-shaped braid, A-fell, where my index finger goes through the middle finger loop and skips over the ring finger loop before picking up the ring finger loop on the other hand (reversing it).  The part that shows in this photo is the flat side.  The other side is flattish but not flat.  It doesn't look quite like the square braid, but it has 2 Vs instead of the basketweave-like interlacing.  I think this is what the old Medieval European sources call "a broad lace of v bows".  Jean Leader calls it a "square 5 loop braid with some loops missed".  Ingrid Crickmore calls it a "D-shaped braid".

On the bottom towards the left (after some less successful experiments) is a section of the square braid done as a flat braid, where one hand takes the loops reversed and the other takes them unreversed.  I like this one a lot.  Next time I do it, though, I'll try to tighten up the braid a bit better since it's lovely but a bit on the loose side.

I haven't tried the flat-braid method (i.e. one side reversed and one side not) with the D-shaped braiding technique.  Maybe next time.  And if so, I should see if A-fell looks different from V-fell.

This next one is the same as the 4-loop one I showed yesterday (Makusua Maize Blossoms, done by the Guajiro Indians of Columbia, from L-M BRIC 10), except with two colors.  I tried the two color patterns that were suggested -- Vertical Strips and Helical Stripes.  Although it's not easy to see, I also tried taking loops reversed vs non-reversed.  Reversed vs non-reversed made almost no difference, similar to how it makes almost no difference when one does a 4-loop spiral braid where the loops exchange through each other.

This photo is of the other 4-loop fingerlooped braid presented in L-M BRIC 10 from the Guajiro Indians of Columbia.  It is called Wayanatouya, which apparently means "a small piece of flat board", though the text then tells us that "we don't know the meaning of this name".

Masako Kinoshita writes, "This is a combination of two 4-element 2-ridge flat braids."  She also writes, "This is a rare kind of braid that has two identical faces of 3 ridges with a S/Z/S-pattern. "

The top photo is monocolor, of course.  The second one is done with two loops of each color, one in the "diagonal stripes" variation and the other in the "fish bones" variation.

This feels a lot like doing cat's cradle or another string figure!  There are some moves where you're using your fingers to transfer loops from one finger to another on the same hand, much easier if it's assisted by fingers from the other hand.

The braid has a spiral to it, also.  It's possible I was doing it wrong or that there are several ways to do it, some of which give a spiral and some which don't.  Or that it's more pronounced in the worsted-weight acrylic I was using.  Clearly more experiments will be necessary should I feel so inclined.

And so ends Fingerloop February 2024...  It'll be interesting to see what I am inspired to do in March.

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.

Thoughts about fingerlooping a 4-loop spiral braid

 Still thinking about fingerloop variations...

In Jean Leader's class notes, she talks about the difference between A-fell and V-fell.  She says that A-fell uses the index finger as the operator loop.  The index finger goes through loops on the same hand, then fetches the closest loop from the other hand.  She says this is the method described in the European Medieval pattern books and is also found in the Middle East and Africa.  With V-fell, known in Asia and the Pacific, the littlest finger (ring or pinky depending on how many loops there are, usually) is the operator finger.  It goes through loops on the other hand and brings back the loop that is farthest away (often the index finger or sometimes the thumb, I believe).

When I was playing around yesterday, I found that I could mix them a bit.  Whether the operator finger was the index finger or a smaller finger, I could go through loops on either hand and pick the loop I wanted, as long as I cycled through all the threads in a predictable way.  That may be true only for these 3-loop braids, but I will see what I think as I play around more.  Also, I'm not sure what method or methods are found in the western hemisphere or sub-Saharan Africa, and if those methods were developed independently or picked up and disseminated through contact with other people doing fingerlooping.  Oh, wait, Masako Kinoshita says in LM-BRIC News Illustrated Instruction Series #1 that the A-fell method is used in Central and South America.  Though I think she mentioned some other methods used in the western hemisphere in one of her later newsletters.

I suppose Slentre is an example of a mixed method -- using the index finger as the operator, going through the loops on the other hand, and then picking up one of the farther-away loops to bring back.  This is found in some north Atlantic communities.  Methods using the whole hand rather than fingers is yet another variation.

Some of these methods are described with terms like palm-up or palm-down, but that doesn't seem to correspond to whatever I'm doing.  My hands wiggle and rotate into position to make it easy to manipulate the loops and don't seem to consistently keep any particular orientation.  Or maybe I'm doing something that I don't yet recognize as falling into one of these categories.  I do understand what is being referred to by others as A-fell, V-fell, and mixed-method based on the above.  I think.

Anyway.

While I am thinking about the three-loop braids I played with earlier this month, I am considering what Ingrid Crickmore calls the 4-loop spiral braid.  There are video and pdf instructions on the page for those who want to play along.

These are also called loop-exchange braids, I believe.  There are pairs of loops that trade places with each other but not with other loops.  This reminds me a bit of the kongo gumi braid that is so well known in kumihimo circles.  It may also make some of the other 8-strand braids one finds in Japanese kumihimo, Peruvian sling braids, and elsewhere, I believe.  I may eventually do some experiments with 8 separate strand of yarn to confirm which braids are equivalent to each other, since I confuse myself when I try to work it out in my head.

This 4-loop spiral braid, whether done as a 4-loop braid or an 8-strand braid, is a braid that is known from history/archaeology from a lot of places.

There are a few variations I can think of with these 4-loop loop exchange braids.

1.  Exchange the loops, with the right loop always going through the left loop, without twisting/crossing the loops as you move them.  I think this is the method that Crickmore shows.

2.  Alternate which loop goes through which.  In other words, the index finger always does the grabbing and pulls through the middle finger (or vice versa).

3.  Cross/twist the loop as you pull it through.  (same twist direction each time vs twist each loop in the opposite direction?)

4.  Some combination of the above, along with any other variation I haven't thought of yet.

The variations do look a bit different in my first explorations (using a monochrome piece of yarn tied into a loop and folded twice to get four loops).  I'll have to use more colors to see what's really happening.

On Crickmore's site, she quotes Noemi Speiser from LM-BRIC 6, as having found this "described in a bound collection of 15th-16th C. German manuscripts. Speiser describes it rather than giving it a name: 'Two loops mounted on each hand are made to cooperate crosswise through one another. RH upper with LH lower, then RH lower with LH upper.'"  

OK, here's more about that braid.  The text from Noemi Speiser is indeed in LM-BRIC News No. 6 (it starts with "with palms facing" and then the instructions above, as she translated from whatever version of German it was originally written in).  There is more info written and shown in the accompanying LM-BRIC News Illustrated Instruction Series No 6.  My comments are in brackets.

It looks like this 4-loop spiral braid twists the loops that are pulled through, and also alternates which loop goes through which (in other words, I think, the loop that is being twisted goes inside of the loop that merely moves to the other hand.  I think that means the index-finger loop is on the outside and the lower/littler-finger loop on the inside.)

Anyway, here are the instructions from the illustrated instruction series.

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The Karlsruhe Documen"  [should that be document or documents?  My guess is that this is a typo.]

Braiding instruction: Mount a loop on each of the small fingers and the index fingers of both hands. [I don't think it matters which fingers one uses.]

With palms facing. Give RH upper loop to LH lower finger going over the loop, and on the way back scoop up the LH lower loop. (RH upper and LH lower has been exchanged.) Then do the opposite with LH upper and RH lower.

Two color variations:

1) Cork screw: on the left two fingers DD, on the right two fingers LL.

2) Vertical column: on the left two fingers DL, on the right two fingers LD. Dark and light is exchanged

[diagrams of the moves and a few black-and-white photos are shown.  I may add a screenshot of them later but not at the moment.]

By exchanging diagonally opposite two loops by one going through the inside of the other many times in the same direction, you produce a pair of oppositely twisted yarn. By exchanging two pairs of loops crossing each other, the two pairs of twisted yarns are interlaced and form a braid with a square (or round) cross section. This braid has the same structure of one of the most basic 8-strand braids (NARABI KAKUYATSU) of the "Genji" family in KUMIHIMO.

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I'll have to look around to see what other interesting 4-loop braids I can find, not just the spirals.  Most of the info really gets going for 5 loops and above, and indeed, the square 5 is one of the most common braids found (and taught).  But for now I want to explore some of the things one can do with 4 loops.

It looks like there are a few 4-loop fingerloop braids in the Loop Manipulation chapter of Noemi Speiser's Manual of Braiding (14*34e, 14*35a, b, c, 14*36, 14*37, 14*38, and maybe more).  Alas, that I do not (yet) own many other books/booklets specifically on fingerlooping.

At some point I might also add free-end (or bobbin/disk/marudai) braids and what-not to my explorations since I believe there are more options for 3 to 8 strand braids than only the ones that are fingerlooped.  I'm sure I can find a few in the Ashley Book of Knots, and probably also some of my other books and also websites that talk about braids.  This would mostly be to look at fun variations one can do with X strands, not necessarily to compare them to fingerloop braids.

I have no idea if any of this will still make sense or be at all interesting by tomorrow, but I wanted to write down my current thinking.  I'm probably just an ignorant noob, but that's OK -- ignorance is one of the early steps on the path to enlightenment.  Hopefully I'll follow up on some of these ideas and share the pics (and my thoughts) on this blog.