Dora was a wit

Have you ever thought that tatting could be knot-less? I love the title of Dora Young's book, "All new knotless tatting designs"! She had a great sense of humour!

The edging has been tatted with DMC white thread, size70. The first and second rounds are tatted with the "knot stitch" explained in Dora Young book, but with only one thread wound on core shuttle. The third round is rings and chains all 4ds between each picot (or join), only one split ring, to climb from second to third round.

(The butterfly is copper, handicraft from L'Aquila.)
Actually, I had a false start.

I started the one on the left, but I didn't like it, so I started again leaving more room between stitches.

Then, I followed a tip by Carollyn (tennbrown.blogspot.com) that writes she blocks her tatting overnight. She does tat wonderful things, we all tatters learn from each other. Lately she's been busy making again beautiful bunny shuttles, you'd love them!

That picture was taken after the second round:

The book arrived in a week, thanks to the great service offered by  Tatting and Design  in UK.

My copy arrived just in time to join the Online Tatting Class, last Monday, and to study the technique called "knot stitch" by Dora Young.

That it is not the same of the patented technique known as the split chain. Please read more
here: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art305271.asp
and here: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art305272.asp
and here:https://www.georgiaseitz.com/2018/patterns/janeedyknotstitch.pdf.

Also, Karen Cabrera shared a video (https://youtu.be/uruYBQ6Hi8w), where she shows the knot stitch (=ks) tatted in rows (that is she turns the work and go back for next row); while in the DY's books there are patterns with knot stitches tatted in rounds, for example in a doily (going always in the same direction, clockwise), and climbing up the next round with a lock stitch (not a full ks). During the class Karen shared her first sample using only 2 threads (instead of the 3 used in the book - great idea) and other tatters shared their samples, too.
Here they are: tattinghomework.wordpress.com

I also shared my attempts, but not the very first ones, those were all knotted!

This time I started attaching the stitches to a piece of fabric, like in the edging N.21 at page 31 of the book, but I followed a triangular pattern, made up just to practise tatting the ks. For helping me to hold the picot in position, I used a paper clip, that turned out to be the key for me, otherwise my picots kept on closing. I started with 2 threads, one in the SH1 and one in SH2, then in 3rd row I added a second thread to SH1 and tatted row 3 and row 4, then cut out the 2nd thread from the shuttle and continued with just one. Two threads on shuttle tend to twist and I had to drop the SH1 very often. I used a  DMC size 40 cotton thread on SH1 and a comparable size polyester sewing thread on SH2 (gutermann ca02776). Only my personal opinion, but I like it a lot with 2 threads only.

Ciao,
Ninetta