Taking inspiration from the lovely Kate Holly-Clark, including her beautiful trees; and from various other sources, I searched for and found some online instructions on how to create a four-strand braid. Most of them were really verbose and devoid of any visual aids; but I found this great hair braiding site that had the simplest instructions: twist and cross. Awesome. So I made this: 
…which came out shockingly well for a first try. Oh, and look, copper! Then I decided to try it with double strands: 
…which I suppose I should have taken a photo of the sides so you can see the weave. But the exciting part is that if I hadn’t done any of that fooferah around the outsides, this piece is entirely reversible (as is the first). So then, I thought, why not wrap the weave across the front of something? It came out OK but I distorted it a bit at the top: 
And finally, I took two pieces of beach rock that a local artist collected and created cabs out of, and made a single pendant. This one is so totally mine: 
Ooooooooh! Yummy. I love Kate’s trees, too.
Gayle, I just came over from the board, and I’m in awe. I’m not a jewelery-wearer normally, but these pieces make me itch to have them against my skin.
I see that you’re looking into braiding techniques; I know nothing about wire (or even hair, really) but I do like to look at braided rawhide (for reins and whatnot) and I wonder if some of those techniques might be adaptable for you? They’re much more rigid in form, but that’s just for what they’re making, and they do deal with braiding four (and many more) strands at a time of a much stiffer material than hair. I haven’t got any books myself, but one of the acknowledged masters of that field is Luis Ortega, if you want to look him up.