I'm taking one of those massive open online courses from Coursera, in particular, the Design class and foolishly decided, as my class project, to work on my current obsession, making a beaded sinnet stand. As part of my class, I'm supposed to gather 5 peers who are experiencing the same problem and interview them (among other things, that will be revealed to me as the class progresses). So, I need your help for my class! More on that at the end of the post.

Now, I've made a prototype from a broken camera stand (the ball head mount broke and I asked my husband to remove the centre post because I knew I'd be modding it into a stand of some sort... 8), some heavy duty wire from the hardware store and an elastic band so I can change things. I made wire... frames for both 4 strands and 6 strands as you'll see below.

Backing up a little:

1. A sinnet is like a braid made from knots.
2. The crown sinnet is known to kumists as the strawberry end knot.
3. The crown sinnet is known to boondogglers by a variety of stitch names, including: circle or barrel, also square and box if done in a columnar fashion rather than spiraling.
4. Adding beads to a sinnet, requires the knot to form above the braiding point where the beads sit so that the beads are trapped, sit properly, and do not pop above the knot.
5. Sinnetting (I'm making up a new word!) on a stand is different than braiding because in braiding it's (usually) a simple and symmetric exchange of strands. With sinnetting the extra and usually off-centre manipulation to tie the knots with weighted strands means that the mirror needs to be as small as possible for more stability.

To guide the strands of my sinnet to form each knot well above the point of braiding, I added frame pieces made from wire (in my prototype, I can see them made from plastic, wood or metal pieces in a finished product) that had the added benefit of resolutely separating the unknotted strands. You can see the shape from the pictures:

So, I am supposed to interview 5 people with similar problems. Let us say, for the sake of argument (and to cast a wider net that might actually catch 5-ish people by tomorrow 9PM EST (Sorry!! I'm a procrastinator... 8( )) the problem is tying sinnets on a stand or braiding with beads on a stand or tying beaded sinnets (by whatever means).

The questions are:

1. What are you trying to make?
2. What similar things do you make?
3. What tools do you currently use?
4. What annoys you the most about the task with your current setup?
5. What works well with your current setup?
6. What are you looking for in a tool to assist in your task?
7. Anything else you'd like to say? 8)

Please try not to be brief!

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