Kikko braid on the Takadai

"Kikko" is traditional takadai pattern that you can find in Rodrick Owen's book. The one shown here is made out of brown cotton and white bamboo yarn.

I highly recommend Rodrick's book: Making Kumihimo: Japanese Interlaced Braids - Hardcover (Sept. 1, 2004).

The pattern in Rodrick's book is a for a 2 levels braid. I started like that but it was tedious for me and very slow so I converted the design to a 1 level braid. The result is exactly the same, front and back, it is just a matter of linking some of the threads in key steps. Once I had the design ready it was much faster. I was able to make it work on one level because my takadai has 9-pegs komas so I had enough room for all the tamas.

The 2 colors in the pattern above represent the position of the bobbins on Rodrick's 2-levels pattern: blue bobbins were on the upper level, red bobbins on the lower.

Preparation

  1. First place them on 2 levels as in Rodrick's book. (He has different color setups). On the upper level, leave every other peg empty.
  2. Then put a little bit of blue masking tape on the bobbins at the upper level
  3. Move the lower level bobbins up one by one to match the order on my drawing. The bobbins stay in the same relative order.

Braiding

The move numbers are at the bottom of the drawing. You have 3 moves on the right side, followed by 3 symetrical moves on the left side. The green square marks the bobbin that will travel, and the black line is the path. If you find out I made an error in the pattern or description, or drew it wrong, first I'm deeply sorry, second please let me know so that I can fix it for the next person who will try.