Spiralling

I like to try out new tatting techniques, so I was happy to try out Ninetta Caruso's treble tatting when I saw it.here. I didn't make much progress, just a tangled mess, which is no fault of Ninetta's, just my poor grasp. When I read muskaan's description  of an alternative way of creating the stitch, I gave it a go and got along much better. It just seems more straight forward to me. So I could go on to tat Ninetta's spiral ring. Aha. I think.

Spring Flowers

Our flower garden is tiny, but very colourful at the moment, with marigolds and violas, pansies and dianthus. Even a sweetpea. At last the weather is warming up and Spring is definitely sprung.

Knitting Thimble

A friend sent me a knitting thimble, used for multicolour knitting, so I've been trying it out. The two colours are threaded through the spirals so that they're kept separate. It only works for continental style knitting:

Of course it would take practice to work up speed using the method. The problem for me is that I think my normal method works better, not so much for the front of the work as for the back. I usually hold one colour in each hand:

With this method, it's very easy to weave the second colour behind the work: knit one stitch with the left hand yarn held away from the work and the next with the yarn held against the needle, so that the working thread catches it. In this way, long floats can be avoided:

The floats in this sample were only 3 stitches long, so not too bad, but I wouldn't want to have floats longer than that. The differences in the front relate more to practice than technique:

I've been knitting with the two handed method for a long time, but still remember my excitement when I read about it in Fairlady, a South African women's magazine. It can also be used to weave in ends:

Perhaps the thimble would be good for knitting with three colours? Two colours on the thimble and the third in the other hand? I haven't done much knitting with three colours in a row, I must admit.

Working Downwards

I'm working downwards on the back of my gilet, the patterns matching the patterns on the front. There are a lot of stitches, 215 at the moment, which is why the pattern recommends using a circular needle, even though it is worked back and forth. 

Structuring The Back

The back of my gilet starts just below the armholes. You cast on 67 stitches and then increase on each side on the early rows to create a curve. Stitches are then cast off to shape the armholes and then worked straight to the shoulders. End of part one. 108 stitches are picked up along the bottom curved edge and then the same pattern as the fronts knitted. Here's a reminder of what the fronts look like:

Now to get on with part two of the back.

Braided

I'm definitely not going to model this for you - a bee stung me on my forehead a couple of days ago and my face is still horribly swollen. Which is why tatting and attaching this leaf braid to my dress has taken longer than I intended. Scroll down to the previous post for the braid pattern.

Leaf Braid With Flowers

I'm tatting a leaf braid with flowers to go around the neck of my polka dot dress, so I took some photos to show the process.

Leaf Braid With Flowers ©Jane McLellan 2018

Using a split self-closing mock ring, which I learnt from muskaan's post https://tipsaroundthehome.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-correct-guess.html where she explores Randy Houtz's technique.

Materials

3 shuttles, 2 wound CTM with green thread, size 20 and shuttle 3 with white thread. Note, I used size 70 for this, but size 20 can be used, as shown below.

Abbreviations

ds double stitch, CTM continuous thread method, jk josephine knot, SCMR self closing mock ring

Foundation

Using any method for starting with a chain, work 3 ds using the shuttles wound with green thread. Then wrap the white thread around a green thread and work a josephine knot, of 12 second half stitches, hiding the end inside the jk.

First split SCMR

Using shuttle with white thread as working shuttle, wrap thread around pinky and work 2 ds, picot, 6 ds chain with green thread:

Then remove the loop of white thread from pinky and put it on forefinger. Using the other green thread, work 4 ds in direct tatting, as per the second half of a split ring:

Now pass the white thread shuttle through the loop and pull to close the ring:

Work another jk with white thread.

Second split SCMR

Work in the same way, but work 4 ds on first half and 2 ds picot 6 ds on second half.

Work these 2 split rings alternately, with jk in between.

Note, instead of working a jk for 'flowers' you can make a ring with picots:

The original leaf braid, without flowers, is shown here. The stitch count for this one is the same, just adding the third shuttle and split SCMR technique. I've made a PDF, there's a link on the right hand side of the page.