Silly Squiggle Hollow Necklace

This week’s project was a great deal of fun to make and I can’t help smiling when I look at the finished necklace! I was all set to make an entirely different necklace when I ran across this idea in Stitch Workshop: Peyote Stitch: basic techniques, advanced results by the Editors of Bead&Button Magazine while browsing in the Craft section of a bookstore. Instructions are given on page 34 for working “tubular peyote stitch around curvy drinking straws to create a lightweight necklace with pizazz”. I immediately thought of using the drinking straws as the core for a hollow braid, and I couldn’t resist trying it out. I have braided around straight solid cores and braided cores before, but it never occurred to me to use something curved. The necklace is, indeed, lightweight, and the squiggly shape is completely stable. How amusing!

Before I could start, of course, I had to make a quick trip to the local “Everything’s $1″ store to look for the silly party straws. There were two types available: a red and white holiday set and a multicolor set. Each necklace requires two of the straws, so one package would have given me more than enough straws, but I decided to purchase two of the multicolor packages so I’d have two straws of each color just in case the braid didn’t cover the plastic completely. After rearranging the curves on a table several times, I cut away the parts I did not need to use until I was satisfied with the shape. At first I taped the join at the center bottom, but I discovered as I braided that it was better to leave the two halves separate. They are quite secure within the braid, and the break allows the necklace to be more flexible. I also learned that the tightest part of the curve needs to be large enough to accommodate the thickness of the mirror on your maru dai.

I wound four of the sixteen tama with a metallic silver thread, and the remaining 12 were wound with Imposter rayon from Braidershand in color #30 Ocean Jade. I chose the colors thinking I’d use a fused glass pendant with those colors, but when the braid was finished I decided that the larger silver snowflake would be more attractive. I measured the curves on the straws and found that I would need at least a full 36 inches (91cm) of completed braid for the necklace, so I used six full sections of the Imposted instead of folding them in half as I usually do. Using a 455g counterweight, the 105-inch (267cm) warp yielded 36 inches (91cm) of finished braid with approximately 27 inches (69cm) of waste remaining. The diagram shows the initial color arrangement I used. Instructions for the kara uchi gumi structure on the maru dai with 16 tama are found on page 87 of Makiko Tada’s Comprehensive Treatise on Braids Volume I: Maru Dai Braids, page 60 of Jacqui Carey’s Creative Kumihimo , page 141 of Rodrick Owen’s Braids: 250 Patterns from Japan, Peru & Beyond, and page 67 of Catherine Martin’s Kumihimo: Japanese Silk Braiding Techniques.

Beginning braiders often complain about the kara uchi gumi, or hollow structure, because they find it easy to get lost during the braiding process. (I myself found this structure very difficult to complete without many errors at first.) The structure is an ideal lesson in why watching the kensaki, or point of braiding, is so critical when you are braiding. The kensaki shows you immediately what step is needed next, and when you train yourself to watch what is going on there, you will know where you are in the process and what comes next. The sequence always starts at the North/South axis. One of the elements in the North and South pairs is free, and the other in each pair is crossed by an element from the previous move. The structure is a tubular plain weave – that is, over one, under one. The free thread must be crossed by another to continue the 1-1 weave, so if the free thread is on the right, then the next sequence will be clockwise (above left). If the free thread in each pair is on the left, then the next sequence will be counter-clockwise (below left). Be sure to take your time and concentrate on the process. (I find that instrumental music on the noise-cancelling headphones helps a great deal with that.) Take the time to realign the eight pairs of tama frequently so that you can clearly see the “flower” at the kensaki. I found that the structure was easier to control if I kept the tama lower than I normally would – at about 12 inches (30cm) below the bottom of the mirror. This was especially helpful when I was braiding around the core.

I began by braiding about 9 inches (23cm) without a core, although I did use one of the straight pieces that I’d cut off of the drinking straw to keep the center space consistent so that it would be easy to insert the squiggle core later, and also so that it would not collapse and be distorted by the counterweight. When the straight piece began to appear short, I would gently pull it up and continue braiding. The metallic silver thread gave the braid more body than it would have had with only the rayon thread. When I had completed the 9 inches, I inserted the first half of the core. I kept it on the North/South axis. The core must be moved out of the way so that the stitch can be placed underneath it as you go around the curves. The kensaki tilts as the core curves, and I found that occasionally the stitches were elongated, but it did not seem to ruin the overall appearance of the braid. Once I had braided around both of the straw segments, I finished by braiding another 9 inches (23cm) without the core.

Next time I may try another approach – braiding the entire length of the kara uchi gumi structure using a core slightly larger than the straw, then threading the cord through the braid after it is removed from the maru dai. Making the cut ends of the drinking straw very smooth will be essential for that strategy to work, but I think it might be worth trying. The book suggested that one of the advantages of using the drinking straws is that you can thread a length of C-Lon through the straw itself and bring it out to attach a focal bead or pendant.

I finished the necklace by binding the ends and gluing them into a finding/clasp set designed by Jill Mackay for the Bead Landing line at Michael’s. I made sure to thread the bale of the pendant onto the braid before gluing the second side of the finding/clasp set. As I said in the beginning of this article, I had a lot of fun creating this necklace, and I am very pleased with the result!

The “flower” at the kensaki, or point of braiding, for the hollow braid.