pattern for the quad_23 magic square

Pattern is in Flickr:

I've tatted again the version with 4 repetitions, this time in two colours, threads are DMC size 80 ecrù and a shade of light blue but the ball was without the label, sorry.

I've also tatted again the basic square, just because I needed a pic to be put in the pattern, but I don't have a real use for it yet.

Instead, a friend suggested to sew the other one on the pocket of a shirt, I already found one with little light blue dots, difficult to take a picture as those are very soft dots but here it is

I tatted the "inverted square", too. I suspect I wasn't on task, in fact you see in the picture there are two rings not joined and I simply made knots with a spare bit of thread to take the picture.

and here it is the path, MODULE-2- was repeated four times:

I hope that the pattern in Flickr is clear enough. Thank you very much for visiting.

But it wasn't clear enough the pattern for the "star n.2 with tuft picots", for someone commented to ask how to do the OTT join in round E and also how to do the normal join to round C. I've filmed myself with the smartphone and now there's a new video in my channel. Please, tell me what do you think. Here is the link:



Last about this week: I managed to buy the catalogue I was looking for, it is about an exhibition held in Genova in 2006, "Gioielli di filo", beautiful laces, eye-candy 😍 ! But there isn't tatting, sigh.

Ciao,
Ninetta

Related posts

prototypes
Robin's magic tutorial 

patterns for the stars with tuft picots 

lazy patterns' saga - quad_24

It's continuing the saga of my lazy way to share patterns!

Here it is the stitches' count for the square that's named "quad_24". Still in reserch of something to be used for a wedding rings' pillow, I've tatted again that square. I had forgot how it's easy to make mistakes with everything connected to the "mystery doily"! The first square I've tatted is a mess, no pictures, actually it wasn't tatting but a waltzer: two steps forward, one step back, retrotatting. I've not finished one after two hours!

A better photo than this one, it is in the set " granny squares" in flickr.

All short chains between rings are 3 ds. All little rings are 3-3-3-3, big rings are 9-5-9.
All long "S" chains are:
- coming from internal cluster of ring: 6ds, join to previous "S" chain, 6ds, normal picot, 6ds, lock join to last picot of previous ring, , reverse work, 3ds, normal picot, 7ds.
- coming from outside to internal cluster of rings: 7ds, join to previous "S" chain,3 ds, leave space for a picot, first half of ds, 1ds, reverse work, adjust last ds and do 5ds more, join to last picot of previous ring, 6ds, normal picot, 6ds.

Ciao,
Ninetta

Semiserious list - for my personal use only -

 

Just in case I'd tat another mystery doily, this is a list of my dos and don'ts.

WHAT TO DO
1) follow the pattern
2) follow the same pattern choosen in point 1)
3) take your time and plenty of patience. As Jane said, that should have been called "the Patience Doily".
4) print a polar grid, it should have at least 8 sections.
5) better to keep picots' size the same along rings. I noted imperfections in my doily due to a wrong choice in the first 2 rounds. That's not true for chains, at least for me.
6) go visiting aunts. Even if they haven't a solution, they have always nice words for you.
7) RELAX! They're only ring and chains, after all.

WHAT TO DON'T
1) follow the pattern. Experimenting is the greatest part of the fun.
2) be negative. It's very easy to make mistakes with this pattern. But, again, learn from inspirational and supportive aunts: try to go further.
3) put the doily inside a box for a while. That's worthless, even if the box is pyramidal.
4) start 2 mystery doilies in the same month. The great mystery is that the second will turn out VERY different from the first one (refer to point 1).



Ciao,
Ninetta

italian mixed salad

That's what I did with the pattern. It was a lot of fun, but next time I promise to follow Patty Dowden's instructions from start to end (…).

My gauge: 10 ds with thread dmc size 40 measure 1 cm.

GENERALS: all rings are 3-3-3-3.
All short chains between rings are 3 ds.
All long "S" chains are:
- coming from outside to internal cluster of rings: 7ds, join to previous "S" chain, 6ds, normal picot, 7ds, lock join to ds of last ring, reverse work, 6ds, small picot, 6ds.
- coming from internal cluster of ring: 6ds, join to previous "S" chain, 6ds, leave space for a picot, first half of ds, 1ds, reverse work, adjust last ds and do 6ds more, join to last picot of previous ring, 6ds, normal picot, 7ds.

ROUND 1) I've followed Vickie Reynolds' indications for clusters' repetitions. Total external repetitions: 8.

ROUND 2) the same. Total external repetitions: 16.

ROUND 3) the same. Total external repetitions: 32.

ROUND 4) I've followed Patty Dowden's indications for clusters' repetitions. No changes in my stitches' count. Total external repetitions: 48.

ROUND 5) I've started some variations. Outside clusters are all formed by 5 rings. Inside clusters are: 6 rings, 6 rings, 5 rings, then repeat the sequence; central ring of a cluster of 5 is joined with a swirl join, taking 2 picots of previous round: second last ring and second ring of 2 clusters below. Total external repetitions: 48.

ROUND 6) Outside clusters are all formed by 6 rings. Inside clusters are: 6 rings, 6 rings, 6 rings 5 rings, 5 rings (this pair is joined as clusters in the 3rd round); then repeat the sequence.
Total external repetitions: 60.

Round 7???

Ciao,
Ninetta.

apart

Tatting the 6th round, I bumped into an heart.

Ciao,
Ninetta

naughty mystery

It cups, then ruffles, then wants to cup again...

Then I ... ergh... CUT...

But only two or three repetitions and started adding "big holes" (2 clusters in place of one) every 3 "little holes".

Ciao,
Ninetta

doily of interest

Doilies that the government considers irrelevant, we don't!

And now to the last round!

Ciao,
Ninetta

an aunt is a treasure

We went to visit relatives of my hubby this week. I've adorable aunts, not less than my hubby has. I felt like a child when she said "Hey, I'll be back in a moment, there's something that you should have...". Do you believe? That collar is nearly 100 years old, it was a present from her aunt. From an aunt to another, this little treasure came to me! It used to be put on black or blue dresses, that was appropriate for aged women, but with a little frivolous flashy accent! There are 14 repetitions of a square, then a connection finishing round, a very simple pattern. what seems like a SCMR, really it's not, it is a ring made with sh1, in fact I suppose this was tatted with one shuttle and the ball. The side to be attached to the neck is finished with a single crochet row. If you like it, I could post the pattern. Anyway, if someone recognize the pattern, please tell me.

Then I showed her my mystery doily, saying that I didn't follow the pattern and it isn't perfect, ruffling a lot because I continued to experiment variations. You should remember that I followed Reynolds' pattern with a different stitch count, proportionally one third bigger. But I liked those big holes, so for the fourth round I followed the indications by Pat Dowden. The doily was ruffling a little in third round, but it was nothing, compared to the fourth!!! Buhhh!!!

She - the wise aunt - simply said that everybody can copy, the authentic artisan makes experiments all the time. That made my day, I turned from sad to more confident, and decided to think as it was one of my doily: I laid it on the table and changed again the rings' repetitions on each cluster. It's working, I hope to show you the fifth round completed as soon as I can.

Many many thanks to Lee Theresa, a Korean tatter who has been so nice to introduce my blog here: http://2sunb.blog.me/220072168763

Ciao
Ninetta

puzzled

I'm puzzled. I won't post again till the end of the next round. Will the ruffle disappear? Will I give up?
One never knows ...

Ciao,
Ninetta

**************
I  forgot to say that the meeting of lacemakers last week was great! I gave away about 10 little butterflies that means about 10 wanted to try tatting, some were children. I was waiting to have a group shot taken by a friend, but there's some photos in the facebook page of the association named "Ago filo e fuselli" (Aprilia).

uncertainty

There's another useful link for this doily: it's a file prepared by Patty Dowden that could be found at this page http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art748.asp
It's very well diagrammed, I find it very easy to follow. Thanks! Wonderful!

But! The chains have a different stitch count!

Plus: I found a beautiful site by an australian tatter, another master tatter I think, who tatted the doily a dozen years ago: tattingingprogress.blogspot.it
(Sorry for the .it but I'm not sure that it's ok everywhere! Ah! Uncertainty...) Then go to her page "doilies". She writes that used 5-5 for chains...

Then I'm no more so confident on picots' size, neither. Look at the red circled part: I would have done shorter picots to give more stability. I'm not yet convinced that picots could work all of the same size. I'm not sure , but...

There's also a little ruffle in this fourth round! 

Oops, no no, it is the third!

Ciao, 

Ninetta

ok, up to now...

I forgot to tell you the number of ds that I'm tatting in chains. All chains are the same in the 2-2-2-2 ring version of the doily, so one could reasonably think it is the same here. In this case rings are 1/3 bigger and so it should be for chains.

Chains are formed by two parts, the inner  part is 6-6 ds, with a vsp.  Then the pattern asks to reverse work and the outer part of the chain is 7-6-7, with joins and normal lenght picots. Also, picots coming from rings and supposed to be joined to a chain, should be normal picots. That worked for me, maybe it could be useful to you too.

I still don't understand well which is the right size for picots in each rings' cluster. But I'm only at the second round!

Thread is DMC cordonnet special, ecrù, size 40.

Ciao,
Ninetta

close shave

It's a pity to restart again, isn't it? I'm not so brave and I've also noted that I should have changed the size of picots among rings of the same cluster. About choosing between enchantment or witchcraft, in this moment I lean toward witchcraft!

Then, here I've one picot more than what I needed.

Cut the fourth picot

 Remove ds 

hide ends with the help of a needle ...

or with help of a crochet hook.

shave "whiskers"

acceptable?

Unfortunately, I've not yet finished to recover all flaws. That one is the very starting ring of the second round. Maybe it's better to pretend nothing happened and re-tat it again as the last ring.

Yes, I was aware of how it's easy to get wrong with this pattern, last year I followed the master tatter Fox with bated breath! (http://tat-ology.blogspot.it/2013/11/its-wrap.html)

Ciao,
Ninetta

slowly - with mistakes!

Thank you so much for all words of encouragement!

Ciao,
Ninetta

familiar, of course!

The upper white version is following the instruction by   Vickie Reynolds (http://www.georgiaseitz.com/mystery/reynolds2.html). The version below is a trial with rings 3-3-3-3. It's a great challenge, a matter of picots, as far as I can understand. The previous post showed my use of vsp, normal picots and long ones, I'm guessing right till now, let's see what is going to change in next rounds!

Ciao,
Ninetta

UPDATE (Sept 2020): link https://web.archive.org/web/20140606195318/http://www.georgiaseitz.com/mystery/reynolds2.html

enchantment or witchcraft?

I can answer by a week, I think....

Ciao,
Ninetta.