Thinking About Tension

    I have been thinking about tension lately. I work too much, too many people want...Oh, wait! Not that kind of tension.Thread tension. That's right. Thread tension.
    A friend was asking me why it is so hard to close rings. She said she thinks her hands sweat and make the thread swell. I got to looking at what she had and I have decided her tension is too tight. Her rings are hard to pull closed. The thread is squeezed onto the core thread. It starts twisting when closing. I think her tension needs work.
    I wanted to do a motif from Jon Yusoff''s book, Tatting With Rings. It has been on my shelf for a couple of years, but I had not done anything from it. I made the piece in the picture, paying very close attention to how I tatted it and the tension I was using. The first thing I noticed was that I was working too tightly also. Ease up on the thread pulling. I started laying the threads beside each other in what I refer to as a natural tension. The thread is not pulled as tight as it can go, it just fits where it should, naturally relaxed but in place.

The result? This piece has absolutely no blocking or shaping. It lays flat and has good shape. Even the Josephine rings were easy to do. I had no trouble closing any ring and the thread had almost no twisting problems. It's all in the tension.