10/2 dyed tencel, 6 strands per bobbin; 24 bobbins, square braid using the standard Saidaiji-gumi bobbin movements.

Yesterday’s revision of Une-gumi quickly came unstuck when my red yarn started to give way under the pressure of being worked on a takadai loom.  As a weaving yarn, it was a tad weak and I’m scouting around for some substitute yarns.

I quickly hopped back in the saddle though with some leftover 20/2 tencel (in Persian Red, Green and White) still on bobbins from a previous project. Knowing how slowly I braid Saidaiji-gumi, I was thankful the lengths weren’t too long! It feels strange braiding with a yarn that is now endangered if not extinct, as a so-called environmental wonder, it’s no longer being sold anywhere as a dyed yarn, as beautiful as it is.

Because of is (unexpected) pattern, I’ve dubbed this 24-bobbin braid “Harlequin”. So far, I’ve braided eight full repeats of the lozenge in about five hours or so (a bit less than six inches).

The eight bobbin movements are standard Saidaiji-gumi, as per Makiko Tada’s Book 2 of Takadai Braids, braid 71 on pp.152-154: basically you create a square braid with an “inner tube” (I think).

The visual problem associated with Saidaiji-gumi is that braider only sees the side of the braid (right photo) whereas the “proper” identifiable pattern occurs on the sides (left photo). I’m in the habit now of checking my work visually every eight movements but frankly it’s nearly impossible to reverse the braiding if I’ve made a mistake.

My takadai set up was Left arms: Green,Green,Red,Red,Green,Green (top to bottom) and Right arms: Red, White, Red, White, Red, White (also top to bottom). So where are the 56 bobbins you need to braid the standard, authentic Saidaiji-gumi? Well, here’s the interesting bit: I’ve managed to show a mathematical progression in this braid such that the smallest number of bobbins you can create the bar-and-lozenge pattern is 24. The next size up is 40 bobbins; the next size up is 56 (the standard Saidaijigumi) and the ones after that are 72 bobbins (‘half” the standard Chuzon-ji-gumi, which reaches the outer limit of most takadai braiding stands in the West) and 144 bobbins, the full version of Chuzon-ji-gumi  (and so on to infinity). Culturally what’s important is that, as historic temple braids, Saidaiji-gumi was done on 56 bobbins (or its equivalent if done in the hand or on marudai) near Kyoto while Chuzon-ji-gumi, found hundreds of kilometres to the north of Saidaiji up in Northern Honshu, was made with 144 bobbins, using the same hand-movements-

See my earlier post on Saidaiji-gumi for schematics showing the progression from 24 to 144 bobbins. Now I’m sure Kinoshita showed this in her book in Japanese, Archaic Braids, but it’s been personally fascinating to see this relationship for myself. While I’ve braided short lengths using 56 bobbins and 72 bobbins (Han-Chuson-ji-gumi or “Half” Chuzonjigumi, as opposed to the “Full” version using 144 bobbins), I’ve not braided before the smaller 26 and 40 bobbin braids. So it’s nice to have some actual braids showing the mathematical relationship.

In a similar (but different) way, braiding colleagues elsewhere have recreated Saidaiji-gumi on marudai and outsized O-marudai, so they are real breakthroughs too.

I’m reviewing what I know (and don’t know) about Japanese sword braids, because alongside braids for making Japanese decorative knots, for making obijime waist sashes to wear with kimono, there are at least two more kinds of kumihimo, being made today, which are functional and associated with Japanese swords: the thin tsuka-ito used for wrapping the hilt of the sword and sageo used for attaching the sword to the waist.

To begin, tsuka in Japanese means “sword handle” and ito means “thread”. There are various types of ito associated with Japanese samurai armour and accessories, so tsuka-ito contains the idea of “handle wrapping”.

Today my length of dark red tsuka-ito arrived from China and I thought I’d compare its width with a bunch of sundry other Japanese braids I’ve made, test or learning braids with no anticipated functional purpose.

From the top, then:

1. photo of a sageo attached to a Japanese sword in the Osaka City Museum. They have a special section on permanent display devoted to sword blades as well as examples of sageo such as this, as well as a range of tsuka-ito braids of many many colours in drawers (I imagine they must have someone come in and demonstrate to the public how the tsuka-ito is tied to the sword hilt.) Like others of its type, you can see its not too thin and nice and plump. I don’t know for sure how wide sageo are when used by iaido sword play practitioners, but you can see that my braids approximating this type are around 1.5cm to 2cm wide. The thing about the sageo on this braid is that it’s tied in a standard decorative, non-functional knot – for display purposes only when not in use. These days, there are videoclips on Youtube and elsewhere showing how this elaborate display knot is tied.

So if I’ve posted a photo of a sageo here, what has that to do with tsuka-ito? The white-outlined kikkoh braid is obviously a sageo, but have another look and take in the thinner dark green braid underneath. I’ve no idea what this green braid is doing here but it looks awfully like a “stray” piece of tsuka-ito, since tsuka-ito is supposed to be on the sword hilt, not on the outside of the sword as here.

2. The second is the dark red Chinese tsuka-ito, 1cm wide, made from rayon thread and commonly available for Japanese sword enthusiasts. It’s sold by the metre or, in this case, in 10m lots. It’s a double-layer Takadai braid so if I was attempting to copy it, I’d be going for 56 bobbins using a standard, single-colour Nimai-Kourai-gumi pattern, which would give me six ridges (whereas 60 would give me seven). Most Japanese sword experts would stick to Japanese tsuka-ito and perhaps go for traditional silk. The everyday variety is Chinese, of rayon. It’s possible these days to see it available in cotton (in 6mm and 8mm), leather, high quality doeskin and suede. It is normally sold as 10mm wide, i.e. when “relaxed” which becomes 8mm wide when pulled tight on the sword handle.

3. This is the two-colour une-gumi sample I’ve braided this week on Takadai. I prepared the bobbins with only six strands of 20/2 weaving yarn so the whole thing felt like I was braiding a miniature braid. When I finished, I had a flashback to the Kyoto kumihimo studio/workshop/retail outlet, Adachi Kumihimo-kan, where I saw what looked like miniature braids, as I imagine apprentices would braid – what seemed like 50% the size of ordinary obijime, arranged vertically on cardboard supports.

4. What follows are braids I’ve done in years past. I guess I had a need to make ‘substantial’ braids with some heft and handle. This fourth is the kikkoh from Rod Owen’s book on Takadai and it’s 15mm wide.

5. My test Saidaiji-gumi has nothing to do with Japanese sword braids. On the contrary, the original was 3mm wide, a square braid, and was used for wrapping up Buddhist sutras. Mine is nearly 9mm wide. Its religious function is a far cry from braids deployed in armour for the battlefield.

6. Next is a 2cm-wide braid, another plain kikkoh, red hexagons on a yellow ground, done this time on Ayatakedai.

7.  The last one is another Ayatakedai braid (this time done in 20/2 tencel), 22mm wide.

Here’s how the tsuka-ito is tied with its distinctive cross-over point. The photo below left shows how it’s tied on pieces of wood; the second below right shows it wound on the hilt of the sword with the stingray skin (same in Japanese) underneath showing through. The textured rayskin was excellent for keeping a strong hold on the sword when in the battlefield. The skin is normally an off-white colour; if it’s any dyed colour (e.g. red, black), it’s as a  result of lacquer being applied after the skin is fitted to the sword and before the tsuka-ito braid is wound on.

Actually braiding by hand a length of tsuka-ito is more an academic exercise than anything else these days. A 12-inch sword handle would require 16 feet of tsuka-ito and commercially machine-made braid in silk is available for as little as $US3.75 a foot. That said, it is possible to buy, for 24 pounds sterling per metre, silk tsuka-ito braided in Sasanami (in one or two colours), so a kumihimo braider could create some bespoke tsuka-ito in Sasanami-gumi (see Makiko Tada, Book III-Takadai I, design 14 on p.37 with 49 bobbins) but it would have to be just 10mm wide.

Will I have a go at braiding some tsuka-ito in an “exotic” pattern such as sasanami? Sure, but probably only in the context of moving towards examples of thinner “miniature” Takadai braids than I have in the past, rather than metres and metres of tsuka-ito. Far better to have a go at making 2-metre-long sageo braids instead. More on sageo in an upcoming post!

References

http://www.bugei.com

http://www.japanese-swords.com

http://www.ryujinswords.com

These have been stitched for a specific occasion, involving an end-of-year event with a White theme.

Left: 23cm circumf, #8 gold yellow perle cotton for the division lines on a white mari; stitching is in white and black, #8 perle cotton. The women at the table have to come dressed in white and silver; the men in all-black (you had to be there, lol).

Right: 23cm circumf, a white mari and silve rmetallic thread for division lines; #8 perle cotton, white, a very pale grey-green and a very pale (steel) grey.

The last of this year’s Christmas temari which have included some geometric variations on those stitched in previous years. I did this one previously as an S8 (four petals) so wondered what it would look like with five, as an S10. It’s gone from being the stark four-petalled Imaginary Chinese flower to a more Japanese-looking five-petalled plum or cherry blossom flower.

I can happily return now to some more challenging Asanoha and HHG temari!

Now that my exhibition of flower temari scheduled for late Jan/early Feb has sadly been cancelled, I’m free to stitch to my heart’s content. I have had several Hito Hude Gake temari on the go, including the large 33cm dark red one show here in perle cotton #5. It involves wrapping 16 division lines around each of the six pole positions, with some extra markings. This first was a bit hit-and-miss in place as I was getting used to the design by Sandy Sodke on http://www.temarikai.com and had unanticipated difficulties with the dark red wrapping thread, a slippery rayon. The obi/equator area is a very particular design at odds with the concept that the HHG design is ‘even’ across all of the ball. It turns out the focus is really on the North and South poles which look like the mirror images of each other, but not quite.

I decided to do another straight away to consolidate what I’d learned from the first. I decided to go for something smaller too. I certainly made sure almost all of the division lines were tacked where they met. It helped to understand where the stitching met and didn’t meet on the division lines: these stitches are grouped in consecutive lots of  ’twos’. I worked the smaller one in perle cotton #8.

My roses are doing well at the moment in the spectacularly hot weather.

I called by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, this weekend to check on what Thai art is on display. I also checked the Japanese exhibits and there has been some re-location of works: there is a spectacular green kimono in ro, gauze weave with gold paulownia flowers. On show currently are netsuke and inro too, plus sword blades and sword hilts and accoutrements.

I made some quick notes on a flat braid in a dark chocolate brown and cream. The colours are not dissimilar to illustrations of similar flat takadai braids in the book devoted to the takadai braiding loom published last century by the Domyo School, a braiding studio in Tokyo. No reference was made to the kumihimo braid in the exhibition labels, so I can only conjecture about the age and origin and maker of the sageo sword hilt braids.

The notes won’t mean much to a non-braider or someone not familiar with takadai double-layer pickup braids, but basically it’s cream on one side and brown on the other; every 6 inches or so the colours reverse appearing in a long lozenge, perhaps around 4-5″ long, in the centre of which is a white paulownia flower, the traditional stylized design ubiquitous in Japan of three descending flowers from a bunch of leaves.

My next step is to convert the surface design into a graphed pattern I can use to braid it. I’ll post it here when I’m done.  If it’s a “routine” double-layer pickup braid, it will be braided with 66 bobbins, but I need to work out whether it’s braided with fewer bobbins. This is all seredipitous because I was wondering what sort of braid to tackle next, given the sageo braid currently on my takadai is about to finish. I’ve allowed myself 12 braids to be braided in 2013 and already the first one was not finished by 1 February! I am encouraged by the fact that even at 15mm wide – quite a narrow braid by my standards – , it’s working out well.

There were other sageo attached to other swords in this exhibition, but I’ll concern myself with them later.

Free temari ball workshop, led by Rod Byatt (BA DipTeach).

Where: Community Room, Marrickville Council Library, cnr Marrickville and Petersham Roads.

When: Tuesday 19 March, 12 midday to 2pm.

Bookings essential, max.12 participants. Contact Marrickville Library, ph. 9335 2173

An introduction to temari and time to produce a ball made up of interlocked wrapped bands: eight participants, all happy little Vegemites.  My sincere thanks to Marrickville Library for their public outreach activities promoting cultural diversity and multiculturalism!

Following last week’s successful ‘wrapped bands’ temari ball workshop, I’ve stitched two for a likely follow-up workshop: 24cm mari with division lines in perle cotton 8 (an Old Gold) and red/white/black/green stitching threads. I’m not sure the colours will go down very well, though the emphasis will be on learning the herringbone mum stitching. I’m keeping costs as low as possible since I’m funding the free workshop 100% myself, so no metallic threads or DMC thread.

25cm temari; division lines in perle cotton 8 (Old Gold) with yellow, purple, red and light green stitching threads.

The source for my latest temari is Cosmo 7 (Atarashii Temari/New Temari) by Ozaki; colour photo on page 28 ball 4. The original is done in just pink and white throughout: pink and white stripes on white background, but I tried to mix things up a bit colour-wise. The hardest bit is getting the finel layer, the red stripes, right.

28cm circumference; white mari background; C10 divisions and extra marking lines in white perle cotton 20; rose (single- and double-threaded) and light green stitching threads in perle cotton 8.

I’m quite pleased with myself because I’ve been looking at this pattern for a few years now and today I’ve finally worked it out.

It’s from Cosmo 4 (Atarashii Temari/New Temari) by Ozaki; pattern on pp.62-63. The original is on a black mari and uses very shiny silk-like threads in green and lavender.

It’s obvious that achieving sufficient tonal contrast between the background and stitching thread is important, as it is in all asanoha (hemp-leaf) stitching, but the main point here is to work out the pattern and the stitching sequence for the hemp-leaf stitching.

Now that I’ve done one of the faces, I can finish it off before deciding to stitch it again in more interesting colours.

In the absence of local teachers and colleagues, patience and persistence obviously get results!

In her second book on takadai braids, Makiko Tada details four different flat braids of the ryuko (dragon/tiger) design, all done with 50 bobbins on the takadai braiding stand. I worked my first one about seven years ago, but am doing them now as ‘miniatures’ with just 4 and 6 strands (20/2 weaving yarn) per bobbin, producing a much narrow braid than I’ve done in the past.

I got the idea of “miniature” braids from ‘apprentice’ braids on public display in the museum section of the Adachi braiding workshop in Kyoto. In addition, I got specimens of sageo from eBay and saw examples in my local art gallery, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, with their fine Japanese swords on display, with sageo attached. I’ve seen similar at the Osaka City Museum and I’ve got my own insignificant Korean repro sword, with a double-layer takadai sageo braid (a pickup braid with less than the usual 66 or 60 bobbins).

My warps are four metres so I thought I’d get around 60″ or so of braid (I scored 2.72 metres). There are four ryuko braids: Ryuko-gumi, Ryuko-shima-gumi (“striped”), Uroko-ryuko-gumi (“dragon scales”) and Hirosuji-ryuko-gumi (“wide striped”). All of these are done with equal numbers of bobbins in two colours. Working at the rate of several centimetres a day, this first one took the best part of six weeks.

The function of these braids was sageo or sash for Japanese sword, attached to the metal loop on the saya or scabbard of the sword and attached to another braid or running entirely around the waist proper, under or over the heko-obi or men’s obi waist sash. We know this design was used for sageo in the Edo Period because it’s mentioned in the kumihimo classic, Shika Suuyou, a braiding manual of 1826. So the aperture of the saya is the governing factor for the width and depth of the braid. I’ve not designed these for any Japanese sword in particular.

First up is the Ryuko-shima-gumi (shima meaning “stripe”). There are just eight hand-movements through one complete cycle; it’s nice to know that there is consistency in the “big” jumps between bobbins which are always over six. I did this in Praslon (synthetic) 2/20 weaving yarn, so it as a very matt appearance compared to shiny silk. I’m okay with this pattern and its braiding to upgrade to rayon or silk sometime.

I successfully submitted this as part of the Complex Weavers kumihimo Study Group’s six-monthly braid exchange.

Reference

Makiko Tada, Comprehensive Treatise of Braids IV: Taka-dai braids 2. Tokyo: Texte, 1998. Pattern 48.

Here is a bunch of my most recent temari balls. Each fell short of expectations in one way or another, but I’m of the belief that it’s the responsibility of any artist to focus on quantity rather than on quality. Quality is for other people to assess. Of course, I will do the best I possibly can with each ball, but basically I’ve just got to just ‘get on with the job’, progress being almost imperceptible.

These last few weeks I’ve had a go at Joan’s Ninja Star, with the spectrum colours on black. Initially, I’d tried to work this out myself, without the pattern, but gave up. I am grateful for Joan’s explanation about how the bands are created. The initial problem of laying down the initial bands  was explained and I got there in the end – just! The problems along the way were without number, so I’m a bit awry at the moment about repeating the process. I am also grateful for the different ways my colleagues over at Temari Challenge (Yahoo! Groups) approached the design; their different colorways were truly inspiring and kept me going.

I’m terribly grateful too to Barb Suess for her excellent explanations in her latest book about Ribbed Herringbone and Descending Herringbone, both of which I tried in following her Clematis and Jasmine designs. I adore their simplicity but the colours need to be just right, as do the number of rows and whether or not to keep them exactly parallel or not.

The gaudy red-and-white on black is a design I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but was thrown by the stitching sequence in the Japanese pattern. I’ve yet to work out exactly how to keep track of where I’m up to with the threads being worked continuously around the ball. I marked the starting point with a pin, but that was insufficient. After a few more attempts at this design, I will probably arrive at an appropriate method. I missed out on a band of dark gold which would have mediated the dominant red-pink; the bold triangles have always been somewhat off-putting.

I’m looking at simple kiku herringbone designs. The red/black/white duo come from Ozaki and the delicate pink over greens comes from Barb Suess. The latter needs some refinement because I ran out of space for the greens which I would have loved to include. Again, not 100% happy with the strength of the hues, my current off-white thread for background mari being too close to the thread colours.

Another, both successful and not. The original was a continuous red and white stitching thread throughout.

Lastly, an all-green ball, worked as a gift for a long-time friend whose favourite colour this is. The challenge was not to introduce any other colour and I’m not sure whether a subtle brown was an appropriate background. I swore off grey as a mari colour ages ago and I find brown a difficult colour to work with at the best of times. The same goes for green. I was sensitive to the difference between warm greens and cool greens. I daresay she will like this one though. Having stitched dozens of C10s in the past three years, I’m still waiting for very exact hexagons and pentagons to come along. I suspect I have to stitch hundreds rather than dozens to get there! I disguised the most obvious errors by using stitching thread colours which blended in to the background.

Ever onward!

Free temari ball workshop, led by Rod Byatt (BA DipTeach).

Where: Community Room, Marrickville Council Library, cnr Marrickville and Petersham Roads.

When: Monday 6 May, 10an to 1pm.

Bookings essential, max.10 participants. Contact Marrickville Library, ph. 9335 2173.

If class is full, tell Marrickville Library you want to go on to the Waiting List for a repeat of this workshop.

A second lesson in temari and time to produce a ball using the herringbone stitch in a kiku/chrysanthemum pattern.

I’m completing the final step of this C10 ball, originating from the book Kii temari by Ozaki and the subject of a stitchalong among members of the Temari Challenge Yahoo! Group.

It’s 31cm in circumference and the core is four socks which have developed holes. I’m not into darning cheap acrylic socks from China, though I was reminded recently of this lost art recently when I came upon a darning ‘mushroom’. I have some hand-knitted socks for Winter which I hope never wear out – those ones, when the time comes, I’ll have to consider darning!

I’ve used a favorite color combination of mine – russet red with grey, black and white – which reminds me of my days with Western calligraphy, using black ink, with white and grey gouache paint on Venetian Red Canson paper. Having completed Steps 1 and 2 (large pentagon stars, 7 rows,  followed by a further 5 rows  interlocking around the stars), I’m now adding the final 7 rows of russett in each of the twelve C10 pentagons.

The division lines need to come out because they are too thick and are interfering with the final stitches at the seams. I used perle cotton 20 in beige instead of a very fine sewing thread or metallic thread. I can see areas for improvement next time I do this design, including ‘stretching the points’ more to create nice petalled “flowers”. Next time too, I’ll use a variegated thread instead of laboriously stitching rows of alternating white and grey.

This is the “nice” side of temari-stitching for me at the moment. The “not-so-nice” side is preparing lots of balls ready to sew for the next workshop I’m leading.

As the publicity indicates, I’m running a third workshop for Sydneysiders on Monday 20 May at Marrickville Library, 10am-1pm. All materials provided and it’s free.

25cm circumf, perle cotton 5

This is a series of balls based on a particular design structure, used as exemplars in teaching my students how to (1) interpret overlapping elements in a temari ball’s stitching and (2) consider complementary opposites on the color wheel.

A long time ago, I worked up some examples in the Green-Red colour complementaries (background). Recently, I added one in Blue-Orange and one in Red/Purple-Blue/Green (foreground).

I’ve spent the last six months running Free Workshops in temari ball stitching in my local area. It’s been enormous fun, but the times they are ‘a changing. Because giving away one’s intellectual property (aka socialism) isn’t really the go under the new economic order starting next week, after the Federal Elections, altruism and assistance and giving away stuff for free just won’t cut it from now on and I need to move with the times. Being Nice to People is no longer socially acceptable and I need to move from being a Nice Bloke to a Hard Man.

These temari balls will become nostalgic reminders of better times.

2013 has seen me experiment with teaching temari ball stitching and, after working in isolation for five years, finally meeting other temari stitchers face-to-face.

Each year, in that period of searing midsummer heat between Christmas and New Year, I take stock of things. This year, I’m wondering in particular about the cycle of abuse and sycophancy inherent in social media where most creative people are publicizing their creative efforts these days. It disappoints me that individual people, through Facebook and Twitter,  are turning themselves into commercial brands and that personal behavior is more and more closely mimicking that of large corporations.

While issues about the nature of social intercourse, human communication and the globalization of creative industries swarm around me (swallowing up traditional craft in the process, not to mention determining the trajectory of the visual arts), I’m quietly reassessing the challenges involved in getting my head around the Complex 10 multifaced or multi-faceted temari.

Here are three I’ve done in the past and three I’m currently working on.

I’m completely at home with the relatively simple C10 typified by the yellow one lower right; I’ve made enough of these to stitch this in my sleep. Which is at the core of temari stitching: you keep beavering away until something complex becomes “natural”. The blue one upper right was done during an online temari workshop given by Barb Suess a long tme ago. Finished off just this week was the dark blue one upper left (35cm circumference): the surface design came about through an organic, hit-and-miss process of adding different elements at random. I’ve since named this “Lantana” because its color scheme resembles that of a local endemic weed. I’ll post about it separately.

Problem #1: getting confused

The first main problem in laying down the division lines of a multifaced C10 is getting lost both within each pentagon and between one and pentagon and the next. Confusion arises from the sheer web of thin threads going every which way! I’ve learned to retain keeper pins at the points of each hexagon. It also helps to try and lay down the division lines around the entire ball in as short a time as possible because it’s very easy to inadvertently adopt an unwanted variation in the geometry. If the division lines have to be stitched over a long period of time (obviously the case with larger and larger balls), careful notetaking and documenting the process become more and more essential. I’ve taken to sequential step-by-step digital photographs so I can remember what I was doing days and weeks in the past.

Problem #2: tacking

The second problem in laying down division lines is the need to tack-as-you-go.  Exactly where to tack creates difficulties because there are differences between “perfect” and “imperfect” hexagons and pentagons: that is, they can look “exact” or “tight” or they can look “loose”, following more the curved arc of the ball itself.

Problem #3: traditional and non-traditional multiface geometry

The Japanese, over hundreds and thousands of years of experimenting, have hit on a strict geometrical progression which maximises the geometric potential, thus underpinning the beauty of the finished result. The various temari textbooks and instructional material often indicate where the lines go, but not how the cumulative, sequential stitching process. Floundering with the process, I’ve hit on non-traditional variations, outside the cultural norm of 32, 42, 92, 122, etc. faces; the problem with that is the effort required to come up with an appropriate surface design stitching.

In terms of actual progress being made with what is otherwise a hit-and-miss process, see the red ball lower left with its bronze 2/20 tencel division lines, done a long time ago. I disliked the combination of dark red and bronze and so lost interest. My problem is not the geometry (the division lines are substantially correct, even though they haven’t been tacked into position) but the color scheme. My provisional surface design was done in blue and red 2/20 tencel weaving thread.

My next effort was the black ball in the center. I thought I was stitching a 92-face ball, but it is in fact a 122-face ball. Some things don’t become obvious till you go to the additional trouble of stitching a surface pattern (here three rows of interlocking stitches, done in a light around a middle dark color, done here in pearl cotton 8).  I won’t progress with this particular ball but will retain it as a reference model of a 122-face. One particular problem is how to effectively link each of the 12 pentagons given this particular interlocked pattern. You’ll notice each pentagon can only be linked to the next by either an outline of the entire pentagon (militating against a gentle overall design) or by a more subtle series of diamond shapes (creating a contrast between pentagons/hexagons and diamonds).

My last outcome for the moment is the small black temari, lower center.  I found a very difficult design for a large 40cm ball in a Japanese temari book - Thimble Ring and Flower Temari (9784837703082) page 10 ball 3 – , but because it was too ambitious I decided to simplify the basic surface design as much as possible and working on a much smaller scale. By getting the pentagon surface design correct on the smallest numbers of faces possible on a C10, I now feel confident to upgrade to more faces/facets to include both the pentagon and hexagon versions of the surface design. You’ll notice the colors (here blue, red and purple) and the initial white thread are renzoku, or continuous stitching around a central point. I’m no great fan of white next to a color (I prefer three rows of stitching to two) because the white fades the color: red becomes pink; I’m no great fan of the deep gullies of blank black between each of the designs. While a black background can reinforce bright colors, it can often become too “strong” in its overall impact and lack subtlety, especially where the thread is matt and not shiny.

I’ll continue with my hit-and-miss approach: hit-and-miss in terms of tacking division lines the ‘right’ way, in terms of adopting an acceptable color scheme and in terms of size and type of thread. It’s a complicated balance to get right!

Here’s a C10 multifaced I’ve just finished. I started it a long time ago and abandoned it because I didn’t think the color scheme “worked”.

I decided to finish it because often partial stitching can be very deceptive compared to the finished product. I’m not completely happy with it, but I’m seeing it as useful as a stepping stone to a better one, rather than beautiful in its own right.

I added colors and design elements as I stitched, with no finished design in mind. I made this up as I went along. In hindsight, it reminded me of lantana, a local endemic weed.

I’ll try to run through the stitching process in as much detail as I can. Any feedback you provide will guide me on what to record when stitching similar balls in future. For the moment, I’m recording just sufficient detail to allow me to repeat the design.

The mari

I started with a 35cm ball. C10 divisions require the ball to be as round as possible. There are no secrets to roundness, apart from regularly rubbing the ball on a hard surface, such as on a table with a tablecloth, as you add layers of thread.

Laying down the structure of division lines

There are different ways of laying down the 12 pentagons and my favourite is creating a S4, finding the appropriate Magic Number and setting down pins in the middle of the S4 lines. I’ve not added photos of the process here, but can if anyone asks. The thickness of the division thread is always an issue. When learning a complicated new technique, I often use junk thread because I can rip it out when I make a mistake. Here I’ve used grey 2/20 weaving thread instead of metallic thread; an excellent alternative is pearl cotton 20 since ordinary sewing or overlocker thread can be too thin to be useful. As my confidence increases, I will use thread which is more expensive and/or more difficult to handle. Some of the tougher metallic threads are difficult to wrangle into place, while some fray too easily.

Creating multifaced reference balls

One thing I haven’t done yet is make a set of reference balls showing 32, 42, 92 and 122 faces. This is preferable to just having the diagrams on paper in front of you because you can make all sorts of judgements with the three-dimensional ball before your eyes: what size thread to use for division lines and how big each of the tiny geometric segments is for surface stitching in particular. They don’t have to be particular big balls – I notice one Japanese book has 122 faces done on a 26cm ball, but another book has 122 faces on a 40cm ball which I reckon would be more useful as a “real-life” model to refer to.

Stitching division lines ones – Stage 1

Photo 1. I find it’s important to outline very clearly the pentagon you’re working on. I have done this here today with white pins. They stay in until I’m reading to move to the next pentagon.

Photo 2. With the pentagon isolated, I create an inner pentagon between the white pins (stitching straight lines around half-way between the pins).

Photo 3. I then add curved or arcing lines between the white pins.

Stitching division lines – Stage 2

Photo 1. Now comes the tricky bit – curved or arcing lines inside the ones you’ve already done. In each of the photos, notice that I’ve stitched from a green pin (start) to a red pin (finish), being careful to do a light progressive tack at every second division line I come to. Don’t worry about the ones you’ve missed because you’ll tack them when the ‘final’ division lines crosses them later. So here, I’ve gone from the “11.30″ o’clock position (green pin) and curved down to the “5.30″ o’clock position finishing at the red pin.

Photo 2. Having ended up at the “5.30″ o’clock position, I slip the needle across to “4″ o’clock position, coming up at the green pin to start my second curved/arcing line. I stitch around to the “10″ o’clock position, as shown.

Photo 3. In similar fashion to the previous, I bury the needle and come up at the spot after the adjacent white pin, here at the “9″ o’clock position, shown with a green pin. You proceed around/across to the “3″ o’clock position shown with a red pin. By now the visual geometry will become more obvious, so tacking (with any required nudging-and-fudging) will become more confident as you go. Tack lightly so you can shift threads into position.

Photo 4 and 5. Continue now you’ve got the hang of things.

Finish off by nudging-and-fudging the innermost central pentagon into shape. The eye naturally goes to it so it should look like a five-sided pentagon and not a ten-side circle-shape.

You will no doubt find your own preferred way of laying down division lines. My preferred method may change over time too. Whatever works for you! In the meantime, I hope my photos have been useful because there is only so much you can glean from diagrams in books. I realized later on that what I’ve stitched was a 42-face C10.

I was able to check this against my favorite book for showing the various C10 multifaces, the Japanese book Flower Temari Beginner’s Course (Hana temari nyumon) 483770395x. This book works as a good intro (you have to work out a stitching method yourself!) because it shows the progression from “simple” to “complex”, with illustrations and diagrams for 12, 32, 42 and 92 faces (see diagrams pp.68-69). With that under your belt, you can progress to 72, 122, 212, 272, 282 and 362 faces, as illustrated on pages 20-21.

One thing I didn’t do this time before starting on the surface stitching was go all over the ball and tack at every point the division lines cross.

Surface design stitching

Here’s a series of photos showing how I added each color, starting with white and moving to red, yellow. I “linked” the 12 pentagons using purple and pink, then finished with a double-threaded green.

The thing to note about this particular temari ball is the “roughness” of the stitching, caused by the fact I was using pearl cotton 5. For a “finer” appearance, pearl cotton 8 would have been better.

What I find amazing is how “different” the pattern looks with each color added. A “dark” red becomes suddenly light and more orange with the addition of yellow, for example. It’s becoming obvious why stitchers of C10 multifaced balls look to subtly graded colors to add mystery to the overall look.

I can’t say I’m happy with the end result, but a finished ball is always preferable to a half-finished one. Does it need any more work? Ideally, I’d go back and tack all the remaining points where the division lines cross with some dark green thread, as close to the dark blue mari background as possible. Either that or go back and tack all the division line cross-overs to make them look neater.

Here’s a yubinuki in the making. From left: an embroidery needle, a blank yubinuki ready to be stitched in white and dark brown silk thread. The first row of stitching in both brown and white has been done. Below it is a functional (as opposed to a purely ornamental) yubinuki in brown plastic. Next is the white and black thread, Japanese silk, thickness #9. Far right is a 40m skein of said Japanese silk #9. The ruler below is in centimeters: we’re talking very fine embroidery stitching!

What is yubinuki?

Yubinuki refers to a traditional paper-and-silk thimble ring used by Japanese stitchers, often around 5cm in circumference. In Japanese, there is just one word, but in English it becomes two: thimble and ring. Like a thimble in the Western sense, it’s worn like a ring on the middle finger to help push a needle through stiff fabric or multiple layers of fabric. It’s used in traditional sashiko stitching (which involves ‘quilting’ two or three layers of cloth in one stitch) and is useful for stitchers of temari balls. Western sashiko stitchers wear a sturdy plastic thimble ring in dull brown plastic or leather; from time to time, Western temari stitchers are prone to using inelegant pliars to pull the needle, rather than pushing it. Traditionally, Buddhist Japanese would have shied away from using leather – a product from an animal – so silk fibre and paper would have been preferred.

Yubinuki – the practical and the ornamental

There is an interesting trend in Japanese textiles and handcrafts for sturdy practical originals to develop, over time, into a non-functional ornaments. Items lose their original functionality and become non-functional decorative pieces. One classic example is kogin and sashiko stitching: this form of stitching has moved from functional, wearable clothing specific to the rural Tohoku region of Northern Japan, to two-dimensional framed ‘paintings’ on walls in urban homes.

This also applies to yubinuki.  Non-functional ornamental yubinuki are fashioned these days out of traditional washi paper and silk fiber, over-stitched in fine silk; they curve outward and are no longer flat. They are most definitely not made as working thimbles, because any amount of pressure on the silk would degrade it very quickly. These ornamental thimbles are designed to be admired for their embroidery skill; they operate on the level of nostalgia, evoking the ‘lost’ skills and artisans of past generations. While yubinuki are still made by hand, as in times gone by, they are less likely to be made specifically for an individual stitcher’s finger size: the specificity of size for a particular person is lost and becomes a ‘generic’ standard size.

There is also a simpler-looking functional yubinuki where a lot of the paper is exposed and silk thread is at a minimum, forming a sparse-looking ‘lace’ over the paper base. The ring is flat and this flatness combines with the paper, between the silk stitched threads, working as a strong and secure source of pressure against the end of the needle because the paper covers a base of silk fibres.

I notice at least one enterprising contemporary yubinuki maker is creating thimbles to be worn as finger rings, made with a plastic core instead of paper so it can be washed and dried with ease.

Yubinuki these days have progressed from being working thimbles to become focal beads in jewellery, napkin rings, wrist bracelets and stands for temari balls and miniature pincushions. In Japan, series of them are arrayed like jewels in traditional paulownia wood boxes.

Two challenges in one

There are two aspects to making yubinuki: the paper base and the silk stitching. As with other Japanese textile traditions, it’s all about trial-and-error and endless practice, a slow, time-consuming process of adjusting hand-eye coordination to ever complex levels of fineness. I notice the Japanese yubinuki stitcher and author, Yukiko Ohnishi, will have as many as fifteen blank paper bases on hand at any one time. There is logic in perfecting the making of the reinforced paper before tackling the separate skill of silk embroidery stitching.

The silk stitching challenge

Yubinuki stitchers often come to the craft, especially in the West, from temari stitching. One specific type of temari is an obi temari, where the temari is made up almost entirely of a large stitched band around the ball’s equator, equivalent to the obi of female and male Japanese dress.

One way of moving gradually to ever smaller and finer stitching is to start with an obi on a large temari ball then slowly reduce the size of the ball and the band, moving from, say, pearl cotton 5 to pearl cotton 8 to something like pearl cotton 20. Proficiency with close stitching of pearl cotton 20 will allow the stitcher to progress to fine Japanese colored silk, eventually. Gutermann thread is slightly thicker than the fine Japanese silk.

Here are two attempts at a wide obi around a small temari ball (18 and 18.5cm circumference):

The obi design isn’t terribly sophisticated but you can see where the challenge lies: getting the edges just so! But hopefully you can see the similarities with other Japanese textile traditions: the same limited color palette as kumihimo and temari, the premium put on optical illusion and sinuous pattern typical of long, thin weaving and braiding.

These two are “steps down” from larger temari ball – 27cm circumference done in thick pearl cotton 5:

Inherent in the stitching is a foundational structure. The obi equator on the temari ball is divided into equal sections, e.g. most common 8,10 or 12 (called “segments” by yubinuki stichers or “divisions”, a term borrowed from temari) and the stitching winds between those marked-off sections called koma, a term familiar to kumihimo braiders as “bobbins”. Narrower or fewer sections are relatively easier than wider/more numerous ones.

Information sources for Westerners – hardcopy

There are no books in English devoted entirely to yubinuki, but I can recommend two in Japanese. Beware of a Japanese children’s book with “yubinuki” in the title.

The first (left) is a paperback of mainly advanced temari ball patterns but with an excellent section on making yubinuki from scratch – how to make the reinforced paper base and then how to stitch. It’s by Yoko Takahara, Yubinuki to hana-temari-cho (Tokyo: Macaw, 2008), ISBN9784837703082. An English translation of the title is “Thimble Ring and Flower Temari”.

The second (right) is a hardback book devoted to yubinuki only: Yukiko Oonishi, Kinuito de kagaru kaga no yubinuki (Tokyo: NHK, 2006), ISBN 9784140311400. There are lots of luxurious photos and step-by-step instructions on how to stitch them. The information on the paper base is somewhat limited. You’ll note the reference to Kaga yubinuki. “Kaga” is a common prefix on textile traditions and other handcrafts referring to products and traditions originating from the town of Kanazawa in central Japan. Yukiko Oonishi is at http://experience-kanazawa.com/culture/yubinuki.html

Information sources for Westerners – digital

There are two I can recommend: one is the yubinuki special interest group on Yahoo! Groups, where the common language is English. The other is a weblog in English by master yubinuki stitcher, ‘Chloe Patricia’ at http://mamercerie.blogspot.com.au/ She is also an administrator of a Flickr photo gallery devoted to thimbles and yubinuki.

Here’s a photo of tiny temari balls, complete with a centimeter ruler so you can get an idea of their size.

The ones at left are from Japan; the mari is made of rice hulls and the stitching thread is very fine silk, approx. 12cm circumference.

The ones at right were made by me several years ago. The formal term is temari obi yubinuki, or ‘temari made with an equator band in the style of a Japanese thimble ring’. Like most stitchers attempting this style of temari, I was disappointed at the time by the uneven edges. There are all sorts of different obi designs possible, but these ones are  are taken directly from the yubinuki thimble ring tradition: the purple/orange and red/green are ‘bicolor scales’ (the Japanese use the word uroko, evoking dragon scales which is a common design element in yubinuki and kumihimo). The mari  are approx 18-18.5cm circumference and have been stitched with thick pearl cotton 5. The three are all based on D8 or have 8 equal divisions or segments around the ball.

For anyone with the Takahara and Oonishi yubinuki books to hand, the beginner ‘bicolor scales’ pattern is at page 22 ring 13 and page 81 (Takahara) and page 29 and 60-61 (Oonishi). The chequerboard pattern in orange and white is a slightly more difficult pattern – see page 37 and 81 (Oonishi).

I’ve made teenie temari on occasion, admittedly in a hurry and not with very fine thread. Probably the smallest ‘proper’ tiny temari  I’ve made (that is, with any degree of finesse) is a white flower with purple obi, second from the left, at 15.5cm circumference, done entirely in pearl cotton 8.

Creeping up stealthily on stitching yubinuki thimble rings, I want to develop my competency with fine thread by practising on temari obi yubinuki first. So my next step is this: work up a dozen or so small temari at 14cm circumference with pearl cotton 8, progressing eventually to pearl cotton 20, 40 and 60 if I can find colors which aren’t light pastels, given I’m entering the (Western) domain of crochet.

To this end, the black temari in the centre is a S8 or Simple 8, chosen specifically because the basic yubinuki thimble ring patterns are based on 8 divisions/segments. Why black? Yubinuki stitcher ‘Chloe Patricia’ notes that while red is often a very common color for thimble rings, she prefers black, presumably because the highlighting effect it has on the stitched thread colors.

Previous experience with temari obi yubinuki has taught me several critically important things. These issues are tucked away in Ginny Thompson’s thorough discussion of temari obi yubinuki at http://www.temarikai.com, but are worth singling out here:

* limiting the width of the obi as much as possible – the stitching looks more convincing on a flatter rather than strongly curving base; the temptation for any temari stitcher is to go for a third the way up from the equator to the poles (the common aesthetic ‘rule’), but that will make for too wide a band;

* add (and secure by tacking) division lines marking the desired width of the band – these can in fact be removed when the ball is finished – but above all make sure they are as parallel as possible at all times (since they affect the finished look of the edges);

* stitch above (not around) the outer additional division line marking the width of the band;

* the division lines and equator (here in a gold pearl cotton 20) need to be very securely tacked so they don’t move;

* a pin in the north pole position has to be in position the whole time I’m stitching the ball – knowing which direction is “up” is critical;

* the start position (koma 1 or “1″ in the printed instructions) and the direction for stitching around the ball has to be unambiguous – so a green pin will be going above koma 1 and a red pin further away (the one denoting “start” and the other “finish” will become permanent reminders of the correct stitching direction: needless to say, these pins will stay in position until I’ve done with stitching the ball.