A very good long-time friend of ours was inducted into the order of the Pelican at Pennsic, so I made these two braids for him.
The first is a 17-strand “Taka-on-Maru” braid I made to secure his samurai eboshi (which I also made) to his head. This silk braid is about 80 inches long and about three quarters of an inch wide. I worked this twill marudai braid with 4 black strands and 13 white strands to approximate an ermine spot pattern. An erminois band is traditional for the “cap of maintenance” traditionally given to a Pelican.
The second is a 9-strand “Shigeuchi” braid that I made as a sageo cord. This silk braid is almost 10 feet long, and almost a half inch wide. I worked this twill braid on a sankakudai. A sageo is normally used to bind the sheath of a sword into the waist-ties of the hakama. While any braid of sufficient length can be used as a sageo, this 9-strand braid in this 7+2 zig-zag pattern is the most common style of sageo seen.
