A few fingerlooped braids

I've done a bit of fingerloop braiding in the past few weeks.  Here are pics of them with a bit of blather about them.  I tried to pose the braids so that all sides could be seen for those braids where different sides had different appearances.  They're all about 12-13" long counting the knots and fringes.  For future reference -- lengths that are about 36" long (about 17" after folding in half and knotting) will give a braided area about 10-11" long, with enough extra at each end for knots and evenly-trimmed fringes.

One fun thing -- for the most part, when I dropped a loop (or more than one loop), I was able to recover fairly well without disrupting the braids' patterns.  Yay!!!

This is an 8-loop loop exchange braid, done in a spiral color pattern (all the green loops on one hand, all the purple loops on the other).  There's not much to say about this one except that yup, it's a loop exchange braid.  I like how it kind of looks like a twisted cord at first glance.  But it isn't.

This is a 7-loop D-shaped V-fell braid with loops taken unreversed, with 4 bicolor loops (purple/yellow) and 3 purple loops.  As you can see, the bottom is purple and a little chain or zigzag of yellow crawls along the top.

This is a 6-loop unorthodox A-fell braid (the same one as the Sion braid) with the loops taken reversed, with 3 loops of blue, then 1 loop red, 1 loop yellow, and 1 loop red.

Here's another 6-loop unorthodox A-fell braid with loops taken reversed, with four loops of blue, one loop of white, and one loop of green.

I initially tried it with a bicolor loop of green/yellow, and with the loops taken unreversed so they would mirror themselves around the center of the top (with the chevrons).  I didn't like it.  It looked looser than with reversed loops and needed careful tightening, and even then, the colors just weren't popping in a way that I liked.  However, for future reference, the bottom loop of the bicolor loop was the color closest to the center of the braid.

This one is a 7-loop orthodox square braid, V-fell, loops taken reversed (obviously).  It has 4 loops of white, then 1 loop black, 1 loop yellow, and 1 loop black.

And here's another 7-loop orthodox square braid, done as above.  With this one, there is one loop of red and 6 loops that are bicolor black/white, with the black as the top loop (in the initial starting position, 3 loops on each hand).

This one is kind of interesting because it almost looks the same as the white/black/yellow band, in that one side of the square has single-color chevrons and the other side has the trapezoids or harlequin pattern or half-chevrons or whatever you want to call it, with bicolor chevrons.  The way they differ can be seen by looking at the red loop in this braid vs the black loop in the other -- which side of the braid has a chevron vs a half-chevron.  I'm not sure it was worth the effort to set up bicolor loops for this particular color arrangement.

I tried another variation with the bicolor loops on one hand being black loop up and the ones on the other hand being white loop up, but that formed vertical stripes.  Duh.  I liked the half-chevron thing better.  It could be interesting for a future braid, though.

Anyway, much fun was had and the braids are mostly with their intended recipients.  These short braids are a very comfortable size to work with, not a lot of awkward stretching near the beginning while doing braid tightening.  They still take a while to do because big-box store #10 crochet cotton is thinner than worsted weight acrylic yarn.  But it takes less time than DMC Cebelia #30!  And braids done in these finer-than-worsted threads are attractive, in my opinion, with a good gauge/thickness/hand and with color patterns that are at a good scale to be visible but not showing unevenness or other silly stuff.

I used Ingrid Crickmore's site (loopbraider.com) for inspiration on color patterning possibilities, but these are all braids I know how to do without needing to reference all the wonderful fingerloop braid experts out there.  I've labeled this post with all of them anyway and might well have forgotten a few.  After all, that's how I learned how to do these braids, by reading all the sources and then practicing while trying to observe.

I'm not sure what I'll do next.  There's some tablet weaving on my agenda (commissions) over the next few weeks.  Dunno beyond that.

I taught my class last weekend (one-step disk braids, with the 9-strand move-the-extra braid as the example) and it went well enough.  I didn't have a lot of students so I can keep this in my repertoire for a while before I run out of victims.  Heck, by now, it's probably time to re-start teaching braids that were in heavy class rotation a few years ago, since there may well be a new set of people who weren't around then and who might be interested.

Andean-style braiding progress since the last post

There's not much progress, honestly, but I am doing things at spare moments.

I finished the zigzag braid.  I like it and feel like I'm slowly getting better at the physical movements and am understanding more of the theory behind it.

Then I started a new braid.  This braid has one side twisting clockwise and the other side twisting counterclockwise, to make a braid that is a straight square instead of a spiral.  This is a pretty common braid that can be made in several ways.

I wanted to try this braid to see if I could match the braiding pattern on a photo of a sling from the Silk Road area (in Asia) that I saw in an online museum archive.  I'm not quite there yet but I am getting to practice a couple of new things.

It's an intentional pattern design so I have to keep track of which strand goes where and when.  Also, the colors are aligned vertically rather than spiraling, which means alternating the twisting directions on the N/S versus the E/W sides.  And one side is all the same color, so I have to keep track of which thread is the lower vs the upper, the left set of threads vs the right, and so on.  One additional thing is that this is in a fairly thick cotton yarn; dunno if that adds anything to the complexity but it is different from doing it in a fairly thick acrylic yarn.

As with other braids I've tried, I started in the middle, braiding the square braid with 4 strands (3 white and 1 green).  Then I joined the ends together into a loop, and continued downwards with 8 strands.

My braid isn't perfect but it's getting better as I make various mistakes, realize what's going on, and then try to improve.

In addition to looking through Adele Cahlender's book on Andean Sling Braiding, and through Roderick Owen's books, I also used Jean Leader's explanations from this page on her website: https://www.fascinatingbraids.com/sling.html and in particular, her instructions on Sling Braids with Spirals and Stripes.

I'm not sure what's next.  I do want to make a few hemp slings and share them with my friends.

Everything else is on the to-do list, too.  But life is busy, and other things often take priority.  Although I do fun things when I have a chance, I don't always end up with something interesting to photograph or write about.

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.

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.

5-loop fingerloop braids and a 3-loop flat fingerlooped braid

Today's little experiments, in between other projects.

First, the 3-loop flat fingerloop braid, done by alternating reversed and non-reversed loop-taking.  It is cute, yes.

I had initially tried to do a 6-loop spiral braid to see if it would make the pattern of the Hedeby apron plait.  But it did not.  So I unraveled it and did the flat braid for the sake of completeness and also to see how it compared to the structure of the Hedeby apron plait.  It is not the same.

The Hedeby apron plait looks like it ought to finger-loop, maybe.  I am pretty sure it can easily be done on a disk, too.  Maybe it is the same as the 6-loop spiral, or it's a 6-strand kongo-gumi style of braid, done loosely or with specific loop-tightening to keep it flat rather than round/square.  Or maybe not, since the crossing threads aren't opposite each other.  Hmmm.  I'll probably jump to free-end braiding at some point, and then this plait will be on my list of things to do, along with seeing how it would work on a disk or marudai.  I don't know if it's good or bad or "just is" that I'm willing to speculate so cluelessly about stuff.  I don't yet have an intuitive understanding of thread path and braid structure and the equivalent braids done with different braiding techniques.

I've already done the split/divided braids, nothing novel there, so that's unlikely to be the special focus of a post.

When I had a bit more time, I did a few basic 5-loop braids.

The dusty rose band is done using the A-fell method, following the instructions from Jean Leader's class notes from the Braids and Bands class she did in 2021.  It can also be found here.  The yellow braid is done using the V-fell method from Ingrid Crickmore, here.  They look pretty much the same, at least in monochrome yarn.  That is reassuring.  Using the ring finger as the operator finger is a bit more fiddly for me than using the index finger.  Both of these are described as "square braids" and that indeed is what their shape pretty much is.

The green braid is from here and can also be found in the archived list of braids from silkewerk.com.  It is known from historic sources and seems to be the first one discussed in the fingerloop.org and silkewerk.com sites.  It is a broad lace of 5 bows (spelled somewhat more randomly in the original sources), which, as it turns out, is not at all the same thing as the square braid.  It is a flat-looking braid on one side and a round/curved braid on the other.  The only difference from the square braids is how many loops (and which loops) the operator finger goes through before picking up (and reversing) the running loop.

I'm not sure why I thought they might turn out the same, but it was probably something about how it was the first braid described in the above websites and how it's claimed to be easy and very common.  Poking around the loopbraider.com website, I see that it is described elsewhere on her site as a "broad lace" and a widely-found example of an unorthodox braid.  (which means that some but not all loops are gone through, in Speiser's usage).  It is indeed kind of D-shaped.  Crickmore says that "The most common loop braid worldwide is a 5-loop unorthodox braid. It is even easier to make than a 5-loop square braid, because you only have to insert the working finger through one loop, rather than two."  Yup.  Well, playing around with different over/under/through patterns was already on my list of things to do.

Dunno what the next round of fun will be.  More of this?  Something else?  Both/neither?

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.

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

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.

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

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.