I was introduced to Kumihimo, the art of Japanese braiding, over a year ago by a friend from South Africa. The idea took some time to incubate but a few weeks ago I decided to order the necessary supplies and finally try it for myself.
Now I am totally hooked! I started with 1mm cotton/rayon cord (usually referred to as "rat tail" cord) in two tones of green plus coffee and gold to make the basic round 8-cord braid. In the photos above you can see that my first braid is slightly irregular. For my next braid I used green only, dark green (6 cords) and chartreuse (2 cords), and then made one with coffee (6 cords) accented with gold (2 cords).
After that I needed more colors of course so I increased my selection to the twenty shown below. I made a 2-tone blue braid, followed by a teal version. I have a few more color combinations to explore before I branch out into cords of different thickness and texture. The addition of beads will allow endless modification as well!
As soon as I receive a back-ordered shipment of supplies, I will be offering Saturday morning Kumihimo classes. Stay tuned for the notification here, as well as future posts on Kumihimo books and findings.
