Hi Guys!

     First and formost I appologize for not posting a picture, but bear with me.
     I think I came up with a slick way to braid a finger loop on the retention cord. Most of the time you start in the middle of the strands, braid 10-12 cm and then double the ends over combigning both ends into a single braid so your finger loop is 1/2 the size of your retention cord. It`s fast, and simple and it works. So why reinvent the wheel? `Cause it`s fun. (And I`m sick enough that braiding patterns come to me in my sleep, demanding to be given shape.)
      But I came up with a way to get the loop the same diameter as the cord. I`m braiding kumihimo style on a marudai.When you start the braid , some people tie a small string around the spot where all the strands cross. This gives them a place to add weight to keep tension on the strands, and the cord is just pulled out later when the braid is finished. It occured to me that you could wrap the strands around something larger than a string, and create space.
        What I did was place a small pencil under the plate of the marudai (kagami) so that it was above the strands before I started braiding. This way the end of the braid formed a loop around the pencil like the eye of a needle. When I had 10-12 cm braided, I removed the pencil and threaded 1/2 of the strands through the eye I`d created. This put the eye deadcenter where all the strands cross. Then I continued braiding normally.
       The result was a seamlees joint in the braid and a loop that`s the same thickness as the cord.
       I hope this wasn`t TOO hard to understand. It may be old hat to a more experianced braider, but it was a cool bit of insperation to me.
       When I finish the sling later this week I`ll try to get some pictures up.

I really need a picture to understand this 

-Unsapien

If you start (say) a four strand braid with 2 strands, folded in the middle, you end up with a little "eye" at the beginning of the braid. Once you've braided enough for a finger loop, passing some/half of the strands through that little loop ties the fingerloop closed, and you can continue to braid, forming the retnetion cord.

Good refinement C-f. Nice clean way of making a loop, without knots or cut strands to work in, and it allows you to use all of your strands in the loop instead of half of them, like in many patterns. This should work particularily well with fewer stranded designs - 3 or 4 strands braids.

Matthias

Quote:

Wow, I never thouht of doing it that way. Thanks for the tip. I`ll try it with the next one.
Dave "Chosen-frozen" Young