This braid was designed for a custom compaito bag (that as of 16jul I'm still working on—just today I finished the casing for this cord^[1] and I still need to make the beads and bottom button.

The embroidery floss is something I have a lot of lying around (courtesy garage sales and the like); the perl cotton was, I believe, one of those ombre skeins of 10m or so: I used all of it for this braid. The gradations were subtle, just enough to give a little liveliness; to jazz up the monocolored floss I added very fine metallic sewing thread to one or two of the strands.

Worked like a charm, if I do say so myself.

Oimatsu braid. Cotton, metallic thread; 16 strands. Completed 2013, 4mm x 84 inches

The original (blue) threads were almost exactly 10’ long; (the cranberry embroidery floss was 11’9". 100g tama, counterweight a little less than 1-3/4 lbs (probably around 750 gm–which works out to roughly 47% (45% recommended).

Beginning to dress (warp) the marudai. 10apr2013

According to my notes, I laid out the thread for this on 8apr but I didn't note when I finished: sometime around the end of May, I'm guessing. That's actually a lot for me to do, as I have braids on this site that have taken me years to do.

Point of braiding. Oimatsu is simply 2 sets of 8 strand keiruko no himo (simple tabby weave.)

One of the reasons I picked this pattern is that it's fast: only half the strands are being braided at any given time, while the other lots floats for three iterations. So the braid is some 70% of the original strands, rather than the 45–50% that is typical.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.