[SCA-AE] making cords

[Katja]

One of my spiffy proteges taught me how to do kumihimo three years ago, and I've been using that method to make barony and kingdom medallion cords since I'm spectacularly incompetent at both lucet and fingerloop braiding. 
 
I understand the tool for making kumihimo cords in period would have been a marudai (a stand with a wooden disk) with wooden or bone bobbins, and I've watched folks make amazingly complex cords on that, 
 
I wanted something very portable that allow me to make cords during meetings, something that I, as a black belt in Klutz Fu, would be less likely to fubar up.
 
So, I've been using a soft foam children's lanyard disk that a friend bought me from Michael's or Joanne's (for $2.99) and eight EZ Bob plastic bobbins (http://www.braidershand.com/disk.html)  to make endless amounts of simple round cords very, very quickly.  
The foam disk has these marvelous notches for the threads, so I truly can drop it, throw it in my bag, get distracted by a conversation, find my cat playing with the threads, etc. and come back to the disk hours or days later... and pick right back up where I left off.
 
I usually use embroidery floss or cotton crochet thread in kingdom or barony colors, but I've experimented with silk and metallic floss lately and they create some really lovely cords.

Katja
>

It's not exactly what you were looking for, but my friend and household-mate
Ishiyama Gen'tarou Yori'ie of Clan Yama Kaminari has quite a bit of
expertise at making Japanese braided cords (kumihimo).  He's documented many
of his projects on his website here:
    http://www.ee0r.com/kumihimo/
Scroll down past the bit about making the loom to see more about the cords
he's made.