I decided to keep reading and take another lesson from Elgiva Nicholls. This time, the lesson was Daisy Chains. Now Daisy Chains look fairly simple, but this little pattern did present a few challenges for me. First, I decided to eyeball the size of the picots... pretty uneven. I used a picot gauge on the last daisy, and I was much happier with it. So, I think I'll stick to using picot gauges. I knew there was a reason I started using them!
Do you see the mistake between the first and second daisy? Apparently I'm still having trouble following directions. I joined the second daisy to the wrong picot. Oops!
I decided to take my Daisy Chain lesson a little further. The bottom row is the Daisy Chain from the first picture. The top row shows my continued lesson. I used my picot gauge for all of these daisies, but I also decided to use the width of my shuttle as a measure for the thread length of the "chains" between daisies... much more even. I used a smaller picot gauge for the first four daisies. They seemed too mushed together (notice my used of advanced tatting vocabulary). I then switched to the larger picot gauge pictured. I think the daisies look much better, but I think I could have gone with an even larger picot.
Do you see how the daisies look a bit wonky (another technical term) at the beginning of the row? I started out dropping the shuttle through the ring before closing. I've been told that this makes it easier to open the ring, if necessary, and that the ring lies flatter. I must be doing something wrong, because my rings look terrible! The last three daisies were made without dropping the shuttle through the ring. I guess I'll stick with the method that works for me. Do you have success with dropping the shuttle through the ring?
I also experimented with my joins. On the pink Daisy Chain I used all up joins, the method I originally learned. On the cream colored Daisy Chain I used all down joins. I had read somewhere that a down join gave a smoother look to the ring. After experimenting with the two joins again, I've decided that the down join is for me. Which join do you prefer?
