Beach Braid

    This is a braid I made while on holiday in Dorset this week. I love beach combing, whatever the weather but this week has been glorious. Four beaches in four days including the fossil rich Charmouth beach, it's been a very relaxing break.
    This broken shell has pink, brown and cream in it so that's what inspired my colour choice. It's made with eight threads in three colours so the cream was the thread I doubled up on. This gives a constant cream twist with a pink and brown alternating pattern within the twist. Sounds complicated but it really isn't, it's just the way you lay the threads up at the beginning.
    I always take my Kumihimo away with me in the caravan because it's clean, easy and it all fits in a five litre Really Useful box so there are no storage issues. The threads are mostly from bargain shops, charity shops or boot sales, with a few thrown in from old cross stitch projects so there's no great expense involved either. They're not likely to be washed so inexpensive threads are fine and using a beach find as the pendant makes it a real bargain piece of jewellery.
    I can highly recommend braiding as a therapeutic pastime, if you would like to know more please feel free to ask or use Google to see what's out there in blog land. I have a very good book by Helen Deighan called 'Beautiful Braiding Made Easy', and it is easy so go on and give it a try.