Lucet
Lucets are ancient tools used to make cord, dating back even to the Viking era. Making of the cords continues to be a novelty craft today.
I can flesh this out more later, but there two great books, Lucet Braiding: Variations on a Renaissance Cord by Elaine Fuller, and the more elusive Advanced Luceting, the Ziggy-Stitch Technique by H.Z. Rytka. Both these books show you the amazing things you can do with simple cord-work. I'm also experimenting with weaving trim on my inkle loom using lucet cord as the weft.
For basic instructions, there are several available on-line, like these at the SCA Kingdom of Atlantia page, or these at the All Fiber Arts website. For the awesome Ziggy technique, get the book! But seriously, join the yahoo group for lucets, there are some amazing pictures there of his applications.
The two styles of lucet that I have worked with are the kind with a "handle" with two holes, and a single-holed "lyre" shape. I find the kind with the handle handier to wrap finished cord around, but with continued use, I suspect I could use either style interchangeably. The two-holed with handle that came with my Ziggy kit also came with one of his "lucet locks" which I have obtained with my other handled lucets as well, they just weren't used as Ziggy describes.
Pictures of lucet styles and a few cords and experiments can be seen here.