Re-reading what you already know.

Yesterday, it's just after midnight so yeah yesterday, I was working on braiding a few square braids on a Marudai as part of a larger project showing the structural differences between Kumihimo and Kute-Uchi. Well, I needed to look through some of my kumihimo books for some other square braid patterns which lead me to looking at the track plan of the cords. This lead me to looking at my kute-uchi bible, Study of Archaic Braiding Techniques in Japan by Masako Kinoshita and one thing lead to another and I'm looking at one of the braiding patterns in the front of the book that has no accompanying text. At this point I had to look for the English translation companion (not a true translation, just the diagrams and photos that didn't already have English notes) and discovered I had severely misplaced it. Thanks to a friend, I had a few photocopies of some of the acronyms so I found some of the information I was looking for. It was this chain of discovery reading that lead me to find the actual braiding pattern for the braids in the front of the book. Ironically they were located in the middle of the book in a section about braid structures. During this same aha moment that I had a second aha moment, the linking moves between braiders is essentially the same move; that there was only one move and all others were just that move twice or the reversal of it. It's funny, I've had this book for almost three years now and had been studying Masako's website for longer and I could never figure out what linking move/s there were and how to know which one to use. And now I know and I know where to find the actual braiding patterns for the three different braids displayed in the front. Oh, I should have mentioned before, Masako's book is in Japanese; I really need to learn Japanese.