Sixty Sensational Samples

$37.50
Sixty Sensational Samples: A Kumihimo Collection,
compiled by Shirley Berlin and Carol Goodwin
ISBN 0-9733734-0-7 2004

Available from:
USA: Carol Goodwin, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Canada: Shirley Berlin, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
U.K.: Shirley Berlin, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Based on 10 years of sample exchanges, this is both a pattern book and a social history. Each of the sixty braids has full instructions and is accompanied by a page written by the maker, one of 42 braiders from around the world. The notes are sometimes personal, sometimes technical, but always interesting, often with details not found in an everyday textbook. 
Useful appendices give suppliers' addresses and an annotated book list.

The Red Booklet: Kumihimo on a Card

$8.00

Nineteen different colour arrangements for kongo gumi, the "round" braid. All the patterns are made with the same hand movements (left up, right down) but the colour set-ups are different. Stripes, diamonds, lattices and added beads. Chat and instructions for an improvised marudai.

Will get a new photo up here is due course. I edited this in 2023 and now all the diagrams are in colour, I added another "left up, right down" pattern that gives articulated spirals. 

New tricks for the old dog. The first red booklet came out in 1997. Imagine that.

The Laramie Booklet 

$8.00

Not all the braids we make on discs come to us from Japan. This one comes from the European tradition of straw-plaiting. Think straw hats and corn dollies. Shirley and Carol Goodwin "re-invented" this braid in the car on a road trip from Seattle to Denver. Carol was looking for coffee and we were nearing Laramie in Wyoming, hence the name of the braid.

The braid is a cousin of the Fill-the-Gap braid, the one often made on an octagonal card. The Laramie is made around a core which creates a very pleasing ridged spiral.

The booklet has sections on the basic braid, the corkscrew spiral, hide and seek, how to make a beaded necklace and how to work with wire. Lots of colour photos. 26 pages.

The Flat Braid Booklet: Flat Braids (written with Freda Robinson)

$8.00

Ten flat braids to make on a round disc, with no re-adjustment moves. At least one of the braids is unique to Freda Robinson.

Skills required range from beginner to dedicated. 

32  pages

Spin Silk

$8.00

Learn to Spin Silk 
by Ruth MacGregor

How to spin silk on a top whorl spindle, like the ones Peter makes. 
Create beautiful yarns with minimal tools - just a spindle and silk.

Tablet Weaving

$6.50

Tablet Weaving, Basic Two-Colour Patterns
by Ruth MacGregor

Tablet weaving: one of the oldest ways to weave, and it doesn't require a loom! Instead, the weaver uses cards, or tablets. In the Iron Age, these tablets were made of wood, bone or leather. Modern weavers use tablets made of wood, cardboard, plastic, rawhide, shell, milk cartons -- materials of our everyday lives.

This is a book for new tablet weavers. In step-by-step photos, it shows you how tablet weaving works, how to set up and get weaving right away, and how to create an amazing array of patterns from a simple two-colour threading.

The book begins by stepping you through the warping process with explanations in both photos and words. This kind of warping is called "continuous warping". It's just one of many ways to set up a tablet-weaving warp, but it's remarkably fast: you can set up the sample warp illustrated throughout the book in less than fifteen minutes!