a matter of joints

... but nothing related to articulation, here.

After playing for one month with it, I haven't changed my mind about the tatted beaded rope: there isn't only one technique to obtain it and each method can be used to create many different patterns. In fact, it's a type of tatting, it uses tatting techniques, you can obtain many textures and effects just changing the stitches' count or the position of beads, the joint method, the way you tat (clockwise or counterclockwise). Also, the beading pattern needs a diagram, that must be provided besides the stitches' count.

I'm quite sure you didn't miss that I'm not sharing clear&complete patterns, I'm just collecting my personal notes and samples.

Among the many methods that you can choose to join, there's also the Dora Young join (it's showed in her book "All new knotless tatting designs", published in 1974 but recently reprinted - I've the last). Every time I open that book, I find it more interesting than before, that's true!

You can find online how to do it, reading these two pages by Jane Eborall: http://janeeborall.freeservers.com/TipsSplitChain.html (ok, that's for the split chain but the DYJ is quite that)
Or watching this video by Karen Cabrera: Lesson 69 https://youtu.be/aCZ1DRJEL5o

In the following pic, the rope is tatted with only one shuttle, loaded with beads, every each 3 beads I joined with the DYJ. I started with a ring, 3 picots separated by 4ds, then started sliding 3 beads and joining to the first picot. The spiralling effect is created by both the beads and the double stitches in the pattern. I have joined always on the left side of the group of beads. The amazing thing is that it is a one-shuttle's pattern but I tatted only one ring as a starting point, the rest is just a matter of joints. Only Dora Young could have made such thing possible, one shuttle and no rings...

Beads are aligned horizontally, any beading loom pattern can be used to create a texture, just load beads on the shuttle's thread, for example using the same beading diagram I used for the Demmer's rope (https://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2019/10/roberta-was-her-name.html)

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Another way to join is the lock join: another name for this is "shuttle join" and that is how you can find it mentioned in old books, like in Priscilla's. For example, it is used in the classic "snake chain" pattern (even if many tatters join the turns with the ball thread).

When Elisabetta De Napoli shared her tatted beaded rope in Facebook, she was so kind to share her pattern and let me share it here, too. That is what she wrote:
Work with shuttle and ball. All beads are loaded on the ball thread.
Start with a ring of 4 picots separated by 3ds; then continue with chains with the same stitches' count (that is 3ds),  then lock join to picot (same as if you were tatting onion rings with outer as a chain), then slide a bead. Repeat all around, for all 4 picots, then lock join at the base, slide a bead and repeat, joining at beaded picots of previous round.

The effect is different from the method showed in the video by K.Cabrera here: https://youtu.be/QUkPBSaIWTc. In fact, in that method the join was chosen among those that lets the core thread free to slide, like the slop'n'roll.

My samples from Elisabetta's pattern are a little different, because I used different beads, also I tatted 4ds between each bead (instead of 3ds):

((Update: this is the same technique used in this video by Karen Cabrera:

Lesson 183 - Sphere - https://youtu.be/34OzAk6Hecw ))

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Then, I thought to use the same lock join method, but with more beads in picots.

The next is with 6 beads on each picot (loose, in order to lock join in the middle in following row) :

(UPDATE: same method used for the little beaded bag in Priscilla#2 fig.91)

The next is a continuous chain, each round has a different number of beads in their picots, and I also tried a sort of beading pattern, just to see how it would have looked:

Stringing beads for that, it wasn't easy: each picot has beads that can play a role in different rounds of the beading pattern, I had to draw that, to help me to visualise how it goes:

In the next pattern, each blank space is a white bead, for the red dots I used the brown beads. Only the ball thread is loaded (SH2 in the diagram) and only the string for the first and second rows is showed on the right.

Ciao,
Ninetta