Monday, February 27, 2012

There is nothing like a nice change of scenery to refresh the creative juices. Now I am just wishing that I had brought more than just kumihimo materials with me. For those of you who don't know, kumihimo is a japanese braiding technique where you use a special disk with knotches in it (or a unique wooden table if you are really old school) and draw the strings over each other in various patterns to form a braided rope with a special design on it. I have recently become very addicted to this technique. Probably because it is something I can do quickly and work up a bracelet in about a 20min time space. A necklace takes much longer, but can be equally as satisfying. At any rate, I had tried kumihimo once before a long time ago, but had never really done much with it besides make a simple rope. Then I saw my friends Michelle and Jeanine working with it using all kinds of different "fibers". I was intrigued by the eyelash yarn that jeanine had used for one of her pieces especially! I had been told that you can only kumihimo with C-Lon cord. Well for my collection, that made my color pallette very limited and therefore not to exciting. Once the concept of using anything that you could fit into the knotches came into play it was like I had a fire rekindled and I've been making them none stop for the past several days. Above I have pictured a few of my bracelets. I especially love that orange one! It is ideal for spring. If anyone would like a kumihimo bracelet of their very own, visit karitikreations.com and use the contact information to get ahold of me! Until then enjoy the journey!

2 comments:

  1. Haven't tried kumihimo yet but I love what you have done!

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  2. Thank you! You should give it a try, the disk is fairly inexpensive and the first pattern is really easy to do! :)

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