rotten core

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… or rotten pulp ?!

I've been spending the last couple of weeks bringing my four Design Round Robin doilies up to date. They had been neglected for the last couple of months, but now I am finally at par. I will share them in more detail gradually.

This post is merely about one rotten evening.

I was tatting the 3^rd round on my Dancing Peacocks doily. Half way through I realised I’d been attaching it on the wrong side ! Much as I love fs/bs tatting, herein lies the disadvantage.

Not only can you see the colour blips in previous rounds (in pic below), but also how the stitches in the last round look more like rolled tatting with misplaced picots (purple in above pic) – a visual reminder that there is a distinct front and back side to tatted lace in directional and colour tatting.

About to snip off both threads, I remembered Jane McLellan's excellent pictorial directing us to snip rings and not chains.  I had stopped doing this ever since Carollyn's whip stitch method entered my tatting life, taking away all fear of hiding ends.

Fortunately, this round is mostly chains with stitches coming from the purple; tailor-made for the above technique. So off went the scissors on the mustard core thread and in no time I had rescued all the purple. Instead of cutting across the rings, I snipped through the core at the base of the ring.

For some of the stubborn points, especially near the lock joins, I inserted a fine crochet hook to make enough space for the scissor tip.

The unravelled thread is still wavy and vulnerable as seen above (these are 3 strands of Anchor embroidery thread). So I added another step -

I started winding this unraveled end on a new bobbin, giving it time to rest and recover. With the unused part of purple thread now at the free end, I started the round again with this ‘fresh’ thread. 

Turns out, I didn’t even reach the unravelled part in the corrected round - in a future post.

I lost my tatting and time, but did learn Aurora's method of capturing the inner ring in onion rings. Kathleen, who designed this round, used it and I followed accordingly. Aurora had shared it in the online class but I hadn't tried it out.

So not all was lost - new method learned, and pulp saved !!!  

Ahem..... the rotten core and pulp have twisted my arm to include their comment :

"Stop blaming the threads -- the fault lies in this tatter's scattered attention !"

happy tatting always ...
let's make sure our fruit and lace stay healthy :-)))