Category Archives: Kumihimo

Moving Yarn

Equipment, Kumihimo, Looms, Weaving, , ,

For those readers now looking for some deep and meaningful story, alas it is not to be! This is the story of moving yards of yarn from one format to another.

It is October and time to start the 2026 Christmas towels. The structure this year will be my favorite huck lace diamond design, with a solid white warp and then using up my odds and ends of greens and reds – a striped weft. These will be woven on ‘Big Mac’ as I need the full 8 shafts for the pattern. I normally wind enough warp on the loom for 28 towels which give me enough for the family and friends gifts with, one or two left over. This year I am trying more warp so that I can weave the required number of Christmas towels and have some left for a dozen in other colors (perhaps spring, summer, or fall combo’s).

As I have a sectional beam on ‘Big Mac’ I first wind the required number of bobbins with enough yarn to fill the 11 sections needed for a starting width of 22″. This year I am using a 6/2 combed cotton for the warp instead of the normal 8/2 open ended. There’s a slight difference in the weight (as the number goes down the weight goes up, but it won’t be a significant difference). It could result in the ‘diamonds’ not being as symmetrical, but I can likely adjust tension and beat to compensate. Time will tell.

The yarn comes from the cone to the fishing line counter under finger tension to ensure the counter doesn’t slip. In this configuration it is counting down from 999, but as I am winding on 1000 feet it’s just a matter of winding until I hit 999 again. The yarn then travels 25 feet down to a peg and back to the bobbin I’m winding. This length is critical to allow the yarn to naturally go from side to side on the bobbin and thus wind evenly. It’s still sometimes a little uneven but not enough to be a problem.

This is the 36 bobbins full. That’s 6.82 miles of yarn moved from the cone. Next steps will be to wind the sectional beam – a future posting.

Other work during the weekend, which was going to wet right through with the remnants of hurricane Isaias passing to the west of us. We mostly had inside work planned because of that but Sunday afternoon all rain was gone so we did manage to get outside.

Before that though I worked on my small kumihimo bobbins (tama). I have to add some weight to each so that there will be a natural tension between them and the weight bag (Tsuri-omori) as I braid. This is all an experiment to see if I can produce these for the potential class in beaded kumihimo.

Initially I bore out the center hole to make space for as much lead as possible. I then hammer in lead air rifle pellets to fill the hole. Finally to tidy up the ends and add just a little more weight I glue a nickel on either end. I need a set of eight before I can try braiding.

Anne didn’t waste any time either. She wound and then braided her second beaded kumihimo necklace with very little input from me this time.

Her new one has the Ravens purple and gold braid along with white and gold beads.

And as mention we did get outside to gather some firewood from the forest. The dampness is not a problem as I just gather limbs off fallen dogwood or in a lot of cases standing dead dogwood that absorbs very little water for years.

A relatively quick burn before a nice soak before dinner.

And the final news from the Oak & Fern… I saw what is likely to have been our last hummingbird for the season. Our regular ‘flock’ of 10+ left a week or so back but yesterday there was a lone hummingbird at the feeder. Very likely from north of here and heading south like the rest. We keep feeders up for a few more weeks just in case.

Alternative (and very temporary) Studio

Kumihimo, Looms, Studio, Weaving

With the work on the studio stairs still underway all the looms are in ‘storage’ positions out of the way of the actual building. I have deadlines to meet on the next two projects so one solution was to move ‘Gypsy’, the HD 21 inch 4 shaft portable loom into the kitchen. The work I had to do was to re-sley the reed to see how my combined card weaving/floor loom would look on a 10 dent reed rather than the original 8 dent. The first test was at 8 dent and each group of 4 warp yarns has to go through the same dent in the reed. This spread it out a little too much so that the weft showed up in the finished sample. Typically you don’t see the weft in a card woven sample. The warp yarn easily moved around in the dent at 8 so I was confident that at 12 it would work and bring the warp yarn groups closer.

The re- sleying worked fine and then the tying on of both the card woven portion and then floor loom parts.

It has taken a while to get the tension and beat ‘right’ as while the card woven part in now better, the twill weave on the floor loom sections is now a completely different sett. It was 2 ends per dent in the first example (16 epi) and is now 1 end per dent (10 epi). It requires just ‘placing’ the weft rather than an actual beat.

I’ve ended up with the card weaving upside down, hence the second photo of the underneath of the woven portion!!

I’ll carry on weaving this now so I have plenty to be seen at the guild meeting in October where I am going to show everyone how it is done.

In a typical ‘the best laid plans of…’ fashion yesterday we set off into the forest to gather some firewood to heat the hot tub. We’d not gone more that a couple of hundred yards when the definite sound of heavy rain on trees could be heard approaching from the west. We turned around and barely made it back to the house before a heavy deluge started and along with some thunder, continued through until lunch time. Out backup indoor plan was to start teaching Anne how to do beaded kumihimo ahead of the May 2027 Birchwood Fiber Festival ( https://birchwoodfiberfestival.com/ ) where she will likely be assisting in a class teaching students this technique. We had to time how long various aspects of the process would take so that we could see if it was going to be at all possible in a 2-3 hour session.

First step was to wind yarn (20/2 unmercerised cotton) into groups of 6 and attach them onto the tamas (bobbins). With that done we then had to put the required beads onto each strand.

That all went smoothly and we attached the 8 tamas to the marudai ready for braiding. I used mine and Anne used the marudai I had made as a test. The idea was to be able to demonstrate the actual techniques without having to swap places on the one marudai. We braided 1/3 plain braid then 1/3 with beads and then 1/3 plain again. The basic plan for a class is we would have everything up to almost the end of the first 1/3. Everything would be set up and ready to go from then so the new student only needed to learn the basic braiding moves then braiding with beads then finish off the last portion. Seeing this was a first time for Anne we timed her as our ‘test case’ Sadly she is a very quick learner and once started was almost as fast as me and she didn’t make any mistakes (like I did, requiring an un-braid, re-braid to fix putting two instead of one bead on one turn!!). It still showed that our basic plan still seems sound.

We have noted any improvements to be made and I’ve ordered the clasps to make these into necklaces or if the plain braid is cut shorter; bracelets. Once we cut them off and finish them I’ll drop the pictures into a future post.

We can now return the ‘craft’ table to normal kitchen table work, and now the loom is up and running move that back to the studio. We’ll have a kitchen again.

Making A Marudai

Kumihimo, , ,

In previous blogs I have written of my move to kumihimo on a marudai and also the further refinement (for Anne) of producing beaded kumihimo as a possible class to teach at the next Birchwood Fiber Festival (https://birchwoodfiberfestival.com/).

One aspect of this was to see if I could actually build a marudai with just rudimentary woodworking tools (I don’t have a lathe). So to make things easy I went straight to Hobby Lobby and bought a couple of ‘clock faces’ – the raw start for someone wanting to produce hand painted or other decorative faces along with the appropriate clock parts and cases. I only needed a round, and an oblong to start with. While these are very minimally finished white pine, they were enough for a trial. Along with some poplar dowels from Lowes, where Anne works I got to work.

Certainly not the good looking wood grain of my NZ marudai, but much easier to work with and structurally the same. Smaller in size, but this was designed for just the purpose of testing out beaded kumihimo. The next job was to start shaping the mirror (the top circular part).

The mirror also has a concave shape surrounding the center hole, all part of the overall ability to balance the center weight, the outer tamas (bobbins and yarn) with the friction as it passes over the outside edge and is made into the braid and is pulled down the central hole.

With the shaping done the whole thing was sanded through various grades of sandpaper up to 220 then multiple coats of varnish to give it a more resistant to abrasion finish. This won’t be a problem in future versions which will use a harder wood. It was just that I didn’t want to go buying expensive wood shapes only to find it didn’t work!

The only thing after this was to test it with some braiding.

The test without beads and then this one all worked out fine so I have reasonable confidence that I can put together workable marudais. If we go ahead with the class – not me, but Anne and Carla who is another local fiber artist and has already produced beaded kumihimo for sale – there will be an option for students to buy a marudai and tama set if they want, at the end of the course. For the weighted tamas I bought a whole lot of small wooden yarn bobbins and have experimented with drilling the center hole larger and then hammering lead shot into the hole and sealing the ends. The combined weight of yarn and bobbins (8 typically) is balanced with the weight of the bag that is attached to the end of the braid and pulls it down through the hole (another blog entry for that – but so far seems like it too will work).