Braiding from the past

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when we did Viking and Mediaeval period historical re-enactment, I learned how to do various types of braiding, mostly from a really helpful website. Time passed, I had babies and gave up re-enactment, and forgot about the useful website.

Then one day recently I needed a bit of braid for an owl hanging-loop and couldn't remember how to do the one I wanted. So I went looking and found a more modern incarnation of Phiala's String Page, and the bit I remembered best, the braiding instructions!

The braid I wanted was finger-loop braiding which I got quite quick at back then. Not quite the case now. It took a while to get back into shuffling the loops down my fingers and I felt as if I had about 20 fingers, but it's amazing how things do come back to you. Muscle memory I suppose. The one in the picture is a bit uneven but that comes with practice as I recall. Actually it should have been done with five loops but I measured the wool wrongly so I just did four loops. You can do more loops though - quite a few more with additional hands!