{"id":1567,"date":"2026-10-14T21:43:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T02:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/?p=1567"},"modified":"2026-10-14T21:43:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T02:43:51","slug":"aks-gathering-2026-braids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/aks-gathering-2026-braids\/","title":{"rendered":"AKS Gathering 2026 Braids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We went to another America Kumihimo Society <\/a>“Gathering<\/a>” conference, which was once again in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was kind of an extravagance, but we really had a good time. There’s something about taking a real-world class, in a room full of other experienced braiders, braiding away. It’s also very nice to see our braiding friends c again. Of course, we’re there to try new things and learn new techniques, and that’s what the classes are for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first class was not a practical workshop, but a theory seminar. Yuko Yoshida presented a talk titled “Infinite Potential” on her theories about modern kumihimo, and her advice for creating “Beautiful Kumihimo”. Yuko’s seminar was engaging and designed to be interactive. It was also live-streamed for those who could not attend the conference in person, and recorded so the AKS could provided it to the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sampler Braid from Makiko Tada’s “Two-Color Braiding” Class<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first braiding class I took at the Gathering was with Makiko Tada. She taught a class of techniques that (essentially) enable the braider to do “core braids” (that is, braids where you would typically use a core stand<\/a> to hold some of the strands up as a center core while you braid the other strands around them) without the core stand. Makiko has been working on these techniques for more than 10 years, and she first taught them to me when I visited her workshop for the Nippon Ikitai TV show<\/a> back in 2016. We started (at the ring end of my silk) with an edo yatsu<\/em> 8-element braid around an edo yatsu<\/em> 8-element core. Then, after a few rounds of that, we switched to a naiki<\/em> 16-element braid to bring out the color from the core. The rest of the class involved various ways to move two braids around each other while braiding. It was a brain- and finger- twisting class to be sure.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sampler Braid from Rosalie Neilson’s “Loop the Loop” Class<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The next day’s class was more edo yatsu<\/em> 8-element braiding transitioning with naiki<\/em> 16-element braiding. We were encouraged to play around with different numbers of stitches on each side to create these looping outcrops in the braid. I had tried to do something similar a couple of years ago, but failed to come up with a good method for working the braids in parallel. Rosalie’s instructions mad it fun and strightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Project Braid from Carolyn Haushalter’s “Lightning Strike” Class<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

My final class of the Gathering was a fun, instructive, and challenging class with Carolyn Haushalter. Carolyn has a real knack for putting together a class that ticks all the best boxes. It’s a project class to satisfy people who want to come out of the class with a wearable piece, a technique class with a center portion that uses a braiding technique I’ve never even seen before, and a change in counterweight balance that draws upon the years of research Carolyn has put in on that topic. Some day I may get around to putting the provided hardware on this to make it a necklace, but for now I just like looking at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went to another America Kumihimo Society “Gathering” conference, which was once again in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was kind of an extravagance, but we really had a good time. There’s something about taking a real-world class, in a room full of other experienced braiders, braiding away. It’s also very nice to see our braiding friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,6,94,47,25],"tags":[893,608,88,95,894],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-braiding","category-japanese","category-kumihimo","category-oversharing","category-personal","tag-aks-gathering","tag-american-kumihimo-society","tag-braids","tag-kumihimo","tag-minneapolis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ee0r.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}