the spiral ring by Lenka

How to tat the spiral rings by Lenka Hašková, showed in previous post.

I've saved her neat and delicate tatting, she sent me in 2015:

I asked her permission to write a tutorial in my blog and she kindly agreed.

She also agreed to call it "the spiral ring", but I'm sorry, forgive me if I call it Lenka's ring! You can find her blog here: frivolenka.blogspot.com, please, take a minute to visit her and say a thank you!

(UPDATE: direct link to her post: http://frivolenka.blogspot.com/2018/10/spiralova-slzicka.html)

In order to tat Lenka's spiral ring, I learned that:

• Only one shuttle is needed.
• Lenka's "spiral ring" is a normal ring, with at least one picot, twisted and blocked in position through one of its picots.
• After closing the ring, the thread is passed to the back side and pulled upwards,  toward the picot. Then block the spiral in position with a lock join.
• The picot used to block the spiral in position, may vary in size. That determines the distance between spirals. If you want a lanyard of spiral rings very close to each other, the picot used to block the spiral must be very small.
• "To post or not to post" shuttle: not the hamletic doubt, but inserting or not the shuttle inside of the loop, from front to back, before closing the ring, that sets the direction of the spiral effect (clockwise or counterclockwise)
• Any ring can be twisted in this way, as long as there is a picot in it, in any position on the outer spiral; the twist is made only after the ring is closed.
• As a design element, it is like a single shuttle split ring, where the starting point and the ending point are not at the same point. 
• It has a front and a back side, because it is just like the nineteenth-century method of tatting a lanyard of rings with bare thread in the middle, in order to climb to the next ring in the line.
• Beads can be added inside the loop for the ring, too. A bead (or more) can be trapped at the base of the ring to emphasise the twist. 
• Just after that the ring has been closed and before the lock join, bead/beads can be added in the bare thread between the base of the ring and the join, to put an accent in the centre of the spiral ring.

Thread in my photos is DMC Cebelia n.10. Beads are 9/0. (And ds stands for double stich, as usual.)
In the next collage, I started a ring, putting a bead inside the loop, and tatted 6ds, then a picot, then 6ds more. You can see from the third pic in the collage, that I posted the shuttle inside the loop,before closing it:

So, there I got a normal ring, with a picot in the centre and a bead trapped at the base.

In next collage the spiral is appearing: I put the thread behind the ring, that's the back side from now on, then pull it (in the meantime you hold firmly the thread at the base of the ring) and slide a bead in the bare thread between the base of the ring and the picot, then lock join to the picot.

In the next collage you can see, on the left, the spiral ring completed, the front of the spiral is clockwise. On the right, there is also a second spiral, started over the first, just after the lock join, this time I tatted a ring of 8ds, then a picot, then 6 ds, then, before closing, again I inserted the shuttle inside the loop.

In the third spiral ring, I didn't post the shuttle, closed the ring, then put the thread behind and pulled it upwards toward the picot, so the spiral ring flipped over its vertical axis and it looks counterclockwise:

On the right of previous picture, you see that I didn't put beads in the last spiral ring, the twist is clear indeed.

The size of the picot used to block the spiral in position, determines the distance between spiral rings. I wanted my last spirals very close to each other, so I made a very small picot in my last two spiral rings...

That is a delightful and interesting method and I think it can be a nice effect to learn and use in patterns. I hope that you like it and wish to play with it. Many many thanks to Lenka!

In my next post, I will show you how I tatted the spiral rings with treble tatting stitches in place of traditional double stitches.

Ciao,
Ninetta