the contemporary rope by Rhoda

The book "Tatting" by Rhoda Auld might just be the best book I've bought. It's from 1974 but very modern, contemporary, like promised in the subtitle: "the contemporary art of knotting with a shuttle".

Among a galore of techniques, there's "the bobble" that Rhoda Auld invented.

The technique is a clever way to stack rings to create a tube. They are only normal rings, but her original method, that uses two shuttles, makes the technique very interesting. I can see many possibilities to use it in new designs 💡💡💡. At page 40 of the book there's a beautiful butterfly (I absolutely love butterflies 😍) with the body formed by the bobble of rings. (The butterfly is really a piece of art, tatted with different threads: "nylon stitching twine, heavy silk, pearl cotton and copper wire".)

I thought that also the Auld's bobble technique can be used to tat the "tatting beaded rope". And actually, it works!

The technique is well explained in the book, so I hadn't difficulties in reproducing it. Two shuttles are required.

I started with a ring with a short picot in the middle, yellow shuttle. Then I passed the second shuttle's thread (red) through the picot and started the second ring in that point (pics 1 and 2). In the middle of the second ring, I passed the first shuttle's thread between double stitches, no gap (that is no picot), and continued. I closed the red ring, then pulled the yellow thread to put the first ring near to the second. Then I turned the work upside down, switched shuttles and repeated. It turned out a nice coloured rope.

The beaded rope, well, that wasn't easy. The difficult part was recreating the spiral effect with beads, that needed to be shifted in each ring. Moreover, the rings are stacked so that one is upside down from the previous, that is "if we think of rings as fish" (thanks Muskaan!) the tails of two consecutive rings are at opposite ends.
After many trials, eventually I understood two things:

1. beads in each ring have to be an even number, so that the Auld's join between rings falls on the middle and rings are well stacked.
2. it can be used a simple loom beading pattern. I loaded on one shuttle all beads needed for odd rows and on the second shuttle all beads for even rows, but the beads on the second shuttle must be loaded in this way: divide the number of beads of the row in two parts, then load first the second part and then the first part.

For the sample in the first picture, I followed this pattern:

Beads are red, black and white. Blanks are white beads.
Greyed rows are meant to be loaded on shuttle SH1. In the pic I showed only how to load the first six rows, starting from the up. The green bar in even rows is where I started loading beads on SH2, that is for example the second row: 2 red beads, 2 white, then 1 black and 3 white.
Each ring in the first picture has 8 beads. Thread is polyester by Edda Guastalla's "Fili & gioielli chiacchierino" (S.Master 30, AR4 rosso-giallo). Here you are my sample for the beaded rope:

R0, R1, R2, etc.. are normal rings.
- = picot
Θ = Rhoda Auld's method to join stacked rings, as showed in previous collage, pics 2 and 3.
B = bead.
The beginning ring is away from the tatter.

After all beads are loaded on the shuttles, start in this way:

R0 with SH2: 12-12 (small picot)
R1 with SH1: 1 B 2 B 2 B 2 B 1 Θ 1 B 2 B 2 B 2 B 1;  close ring. Turn work upside down.
R2 with SH2 (leave a short bare thread space): same as R1.
R3 with SH1 (leave a short bare thread space): same as R1.
Continue for the desired length, alternating rings with SH1 and SH2.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I bought the book last year, but I'm still in the phase of staring at pictures 🤩.
Just looking at the cover you get an idea of the avant-garde tatter who wrote it.

My copy smells naphthalene, it's a second hand lucky find on ebay, hard cover, great conditions, quite cheap, but I must confess that it took me a couple of months before I opened it, for the terrible odour.
But then, wow!!! I always put thumb and index fingers on my nose and leaf through it 😊. There are many techniques, ideas and designs that, during the last decade, since I started looking for the word "tatting" online, I've found in various sites. Still, there's more to try!

I need time to read it, twice for me is not enough, sigh.

Link to the book review by M. Leigh Martin:
http://www.somethingunderthebed.com/CURTAIN/REVIEWStat/AULD1.html

In the next post: more on bobble (or bauble!) tatting.
Ciao,
Ninetta