I won’t have enough time to make “real” tutorials til after I get back from Braids 2012, but I just added text instructions for the Genji-Uchi braid to last year’s Kute-Uchi tutorial.  The two videos already in that post relate directly to this braid!  Here’s a photo of some Genji-uchi braids. They can be made with as few as 8 loops, and learned with only 4…the instructions for them are now in the Kute-Uchi post:

Genji-uchi braids, 16-36 loops. Cotton, wool, linen.

Item #2: Cindy Myers’ “Silkewerk” site’s fingerloop braids

I just (re-) found Cindy Myers’ Silkewerk site, which has a wonderful section on Medieval fingerloop braids.  She carefully compares the braid instructions of 3 different manuscripts,* with links to many photographs of her beautiful braid reproductions, along with very clearly-presented text instructions.

[Update]—Silkewerk’s   fingerloop braid section now gives you a choice between two very cool comparisons of the braids. In one they are grouped by braid type, and in the other they are compared across the 3 source manuscripts. (I like both of these!)  Either way, you can then click on any braid to go to the instructions for it. I’m not only in awe of the research, analysis and beautiful braid reproductions, but also the clean, organized way it’s presented…

This is just one portion of  Medieval silkwork, which is a really interesting site.  I’m sure many of you have known about it long before me!  Shows I haven’t been looking around this worldwide web enough lately. Though I must have visited Medieval Silkewerk before, because I remember reading Cindy Myers’ article on researching and reconstructing a medieval silk-wrapped circlet, but I don’t remember the great fingerloop braiding section. I’ve added a link to it under my loop braiding links in my sidebar, and the Silkewerk link to my Textile/ crafts  links.

*The third source manuscript in Cindy Myers’ comparison of these braid instructions is a really interesting one. For one thing because of several new braids it added to what was already known from other manuscripts, but also because, even though it was written in the 17th C, it apparently really ‘belongs’ to the much older group of loop braiding instructions that have been found from the 15th Century…The two time-periods had very different braiding terminology, and types of instructions. The various manuscripts of the 15th C had almost word-for-word identical instructions for many braids, not repeated in the various 17th C manuscripts (which had their own body of  braid instructions with close, similarly-worded descriptions).  And some types of braids  didn’t overlap much between the two eras. Yet this manuscript from the 17th C. was exactly like the 15th C. ones both in braiding terminology and specific braids. Kind of a mystery—maybe the writer, Elizabeth Serene, copied them from a treasured 200-year-old manuscript handed down in her family, or borrowed from someone else???  Noémi Speiser didn’t know about this “Serene” manuscript when she wrote Old English Pattern Books for Loop Braiding. Cindy Myers has some interesting comments and insights about the misspellings etc in Lady Serene’s manuscript.