The Next Bit

Here is the next piece of Ineke's star pattern, done in "Undersea Garden" and Lizbeth color 633. I forgot to mention I'm doing this in my favorite, size 80.

As you can see, this bit is just like the last bit except the points are longer.

Because these parts are not attached to anything in the center, they don't really achieve this shape on their own. Here's what it looked like after I tatted the first round.

The second round of chains gives it some stability, but still doesn't force it into shape. Here's what it looked like with the second round, after I tugged it into shape as much as I could.

Blocking, using Sherry's square template, was really the only way to make this piece and the one from the previous post do what they are supposed to. It only took a few pins, and look at the difference it made.

Incidentally, yes I did cut and tie between rounds here, only because I was using two colors on round 1. On round 2, I didn't want the lock joins to show, and I felt that slope and roll joins so close together would have made it look less smooth, so my only option was to change the shuttle thread.

And speaking of those joins in round 2, the space at the base of each ring was of course way too small to get the point of my shuttle in, so I had to use a 0.5 mm crochet hook. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? Yep, I pulled a Fox.

The hook sort of slid under the callus I have on that finger and was very difficult to extricate without doing further damage. Luckily, I did not bleed any more than this, so once I washed it off I was able to continue tatting.