#kumihimo

so I mentioned that I've mostly been doing spiral kumihimo, and this bracelet is the one exception. It's a completely different braiding pattern, and it makes a flat cord instead of a round one. It's supposed to have hearts, but they turned out to be kinda undetstated because they're made of two small stitches in embroidery floss, and the background color I chose (variegated green) didn't help because it kept blending into either the light or the dark purple heart

this video is where I learned it, and you can watch that if you want; I found it a bit long-winded and will be doing a quicker explanation of the braiding pattern here.

The braid is done with sixteen threads: two each of your two heart colors, and 12 of the background color. there's eight steps per round, with a bonus step of "shift all the threads over one notch" because rather than all traveling around the kumihimo wheel in one direction, they gradually spread out from their groups and need to be gathered back in again. (depending on how many spare notches you have, you don't have to do the bonus step every round. I do it every other round.)

then you repeat the round. The colors gradually shift positions, though there are two discreet halves. the hearts, the bits between the hearts, and the outer edges on the non-heart side of the cord are one rotating group, and the edges beside the hearts and the center of the non-heart side are the other rotating group. Every thread is used on both the left and right sides of the cord.

The pattern goes like so:

written out steps below the readmore for length

In case anyone wants to improvise bobbins / weights to hold threads for weaving, bobbin lace, kumihomo etc,

nails make for quite neat bobbins.

Pros:

cheap

widely available

in a great range of lengths and weights

very easy to store between projects

not squishable (unlike improvised paper bobbins, which are squishable, which means thread lies rather loose on it, so the last loop of thread cuts into loose loops below, so it gets tangled and slips off the bobbin; and also it's so much more prone to snagging)

I love how little space it takes.

I used to make bobbin lace with bobbins improvised from bamboo clothing clips, and they were taking SO. MUCH. SPACE both on lacemaking pillow and in storage after. (I might want to use much longer nails for bobbin lace to get better grip, but that's the beauty of nails: there's so many sizes and weights.)

Close-up:

One of them became a favorite bracelet of mine~