On Knowing When to Quit

For the next bit of greenery, I was going to use Mary Konior's "Lupins" pattern. I didn't get very far.

I had a really hard time closing the rings with the roll tatting. I decided when I got this far that I didn't have the patience for it. I've done roll stitch before, in Karey Solomon's maple leaf; but that uses much shorter lengths of it so it's easier to control, and more importantly, it's on chains, so closing isn't an issue. I don't actually see any reason why roll stitch should make the ring harder to close, but it does.

I should also note that Squijum is in much the same condition right now as he was in that maple leaf post, having had two more teeth pulled on Thursday. I wish he would let me brush them so maybe we wouldn't have to keep doing this.

Now you know I never let any tatting technique beat me for good, so I will come back to the Lupins someday. Right now, though, I have a project to finish, so I switched to a different pattern-- namely Chain Reaction, also from Tatting with Visual Patterns.

Starting this one posed an interesting challenge. Since I already had the shuttle wound from the Lupins attempt, I didn't want to waste that thread. Chain Reaction obviously requires a ball; but the shuttle was, of course, already cut from the ball at this point. Starting with non-continuous threads with a ring followed by a chain is no problem; we all do it all the time when tatting in two colors. However, starting with an open-ended chain with non-continuous threads always leads to the risk of the core thread getting pulled out.

I solved this problem in a different way with each of these two pieces. For the first one, on the right, I pulled a few inches off the ball and used it to finger tat the first chain. When I reached the second chain, where there's a shoelace trick to hold the core thread in place, I joined on the actual shuttle thread. This is a technique that would work well any time you have a pattern that starts with a chain and you have some reason for not beginning with a continuous thread.

For the second piece, on the left, I did something much easier. I realized that since I had originally wound the shuttle for a piece that was all rings, and I was now doing something that was all chains, I actually had enough on the shuttle that it could easily act as a ball for the short length I was planning to do. So I pulled a small amount off the shuttle and wound it onto another shuttle. This second one became my working shuttle, as it didn't need much thread on it; and the first shuttle, which still had most of the thread, became my ball. On this piece, I also joined the second chain to the beginning of the first one, even though that's not the pattern, just because I felt it looked tidier than having a little tendril hanging out. (Yes, I know foliage in nature does have tendrils hanging out and is not always tidy. That's not the point. Don't ask questions.) I also ended in the middle of a repeat; I kind of wish I had finished it, but it's too late now.

It's interesting to note that in the pattern, Mrs. Konior says it "will ease to a curve". In fact, it just naturally curves, as you can see. She must have blocked it quite a bit to get that nice straight edging she shows in the book. But for my purposes, curvy is better, so no blocking for me.

The thread is Lizbeth color 675 Fern Green Medium, size 40.