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More Braiding Madness

Back when I wasn't working, I hatched the idea of teaching kumihimo classes to earn some money. There was some interest, and a few places invited me to submit class proposals. This pointed out to me that I didn't have any paperwork, and that if I wanted to take this idea seriously I should really put some together. I was going to need some curricula, background materials, and definitely some handouts.

It didn't take me too long to put the handouts together, but something was missing from them. They really needed some pictures of exemplary braids to go along with each set of instructions. I had plenty of braids, but only a few designed to be good examples for photocopied handouts.

Luckily, I had plenty of black and white silk yarn, and a scanner. My last batch of braids was all about making good pictures for the handouts.

I'm not a big fan of this tsukushi braid, but it's in Jacqui Carey's book and has a braiding pattern that is very different from most other braids, so I can see why she included it.

None of my previous work with yatsu sen was designed to show the vertical streams with such high contrast, so even though I have plenty of this braid I had to do one more.

The maru yotsu braid only has four strands, so I used doubel the amount of yarn to beef it up for the pictures. It's as wide as the 16-strand braid below!

Again, despite much work with the braid, edo yatsu, none of them were made for photographic simplicity. I also had to match the diagrams, so again with the vertical stripes.

The 16-strand kongou isn't more difficult than the 8-strand that most people teach, but it's capable of my greater detail, so I wanted to include it. It also gave me a chance to use all 16 of my home made tama at once.

I haven't decided yet if I want to distribute thes handouts in PDF form or reserve them for people who take my classes. So far they still need material and setting up the marudai and finishing off a braid, so they're not ready anyway.

Then, I need to write up myself, and some proposals for classes. The best idea is actually for a weekly 2-hour class, doing one braid a week for six or eight weeks. That will enable people to leave each week with a useful braid. A single three or four hour class will enable people to experience several different braiding styles, but only create a few inches of each in a sampler.

2009.06.18 at 12:00am EDT

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