I've been making braids since I was very small; I have a veritable trove of three-stranders made of yarn and that colored string old ladies like to make into crocheted doileys. I remember some clerk at a bead store that told me she would ``rather I didn't'' watch her braid 4 strands together for the ends of a necklace in an attempt to learn this arcane art; (why then was she in the public part of the store, working at the counter?) and recall with fondness the generosity of another textile artist at the Ypsi Heritage Festival, upon hearing this story, vowing to teach me; but Catherine Martin's book on Kumihimo opened a magical world I didn't know existed.

We're so incredibly fortunate nowadays. Even before that treasure trove known as the World Wide Web became common, computers were making publishing accessible by orders of magnitude; all the sudden, people could write, illustrate---even color-separate---for a fraction of the cost before the days of desktop publishing. And all these specialty craft books have multipled as a wonderful result.

Now there are whole books on braids, ribbons, tassels, Japanese embroidery, glass beadmaking. When I think of them all, it makes me feel wealthy beyond anything I could imagine as a child. And it helps, too, that as so many traditional and ethnic crafts are being lost as the people doing them no longer have the time nor interest that they are springing up, irrepressibly, in other cultures, such as ours. Someone once told me there were more ---and more skilled---armorers now than in the Middle Ages.

It is my hope other crafts will prosper, be revived, re-interpretated and enjoyed as well. ---These pages are my small contribution.

For more braids check out various necklaces in the Beadweaving & Stringing Pages; also Holiday Crafts now include stockings with kumi (some of them originally shown here!

modified: Wed Aug 24 03:22:23 2005; 18oct06