I started the notes for this braid on 21feb12 as follows: (well before the sample featured a couple of days ago—more support that I made the sample specifically to address this project.)

fiber reference.

• valdani, made in romania, 100m #12 perl cotton
• lizbeth size 20 6-cord cordonnet 100%egyptian cotton made in china color 122 25 gm, 210 yards
• 8 str ea color; pearl cotton, 10.5 feet
• med blue/purple/turq/dk magenta 3 repeats of 4color, roughly 10 in each
• cordonnet 13 feet (three repeats: purple/turq/cobalt) (roughly 17 in repeats)
• see phone for ref img
• decided to make sample braid before starting above.

aqua/purple kongoh210 cm long, 60-70cm lighter thread leftover, 10-15cm heaviest; braid completed on disk (ooops....) photographed in Japan/20140523RX

Here the braid has been wound from the other end.

This was to be my masterpiece, with two sets of ombre (shifting colors) in different weighted threads matched against each other to produce some fun pattern popping (ikat) effects. —Only problem was, by the time I found the hank, it had been months, I was frantically prepping to leave for Japan, and so, since I needed something for the disk to take on the trip and this was lying around, I put this on.

ref for hank—the white paper background is to help with color reference.

I'm out of the valdani, but the color (lollipop) is evidently still being manufactured. So if I really wanted to attempt the original concept, I could track down another ball of this stuff, and try again. And the current braid isn't bad. But if ever there was a cautionary tale for keeping good notes, this braid is it—I have good enough notes that I was able to figure out what I had originally intended, and what I would have to do to actually carry that plan out.

They weren't good enough for me to actually keep track of my original idea, which now that I figured out what it was, seems to have been pretty cool.

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