Renulek's Spring Napkin Round 9 Done

This is a simple round. At least you think so when you start it. But you find out quickly that it will be a challenge. No, it is not difficult. It is all rings and chains, nothing fancy. But the other day I was reading Jane McLellan's blog (here) and of course, she was right when she was saying the elements are not connected.That is the problem. When you reverse work, your thread tends to wrap around the loose elements in this round. One other thing to watch. As you reverse work from the clover, be sure the chain does not get twisted. I had to backtrack a few stitches two separate times to fix that.

 

So, yes the round is simple. But it's not.

Round 8 Done and Good News

    I now have round 8 of Renulek's Spring Napkin done. Working on it has been hit and miss because we have a big push at work to get out the new version of our software. Since I am a tester and I do support, I have had to work 12 hour days again just to keep up. I worked on round 8 when I could, for instance, at lunch. Of course, I take an hour and someone else will take 1/2 hour and I have to stop.

    I did cut and tie this round. The next couple rounds really do not lend themselves to continuous tatting. It is not that I could not find a path, though round 10 would really be a challenge. Mostly it  was time cut and tie vs. continuous tatting time. It just made more sense to do it the easier way this time. Now to start round 9.

In other news, the good news in the title is that, if you remember late fall of 2016 we had a hurricane and it left a large tree in my back yard with a really massive stump and trunk. I was finally able to hire a service to get it out of the yard and grind the stump down. Now all that is left is moving the rest of the stuff in the old shed to the new one and dismantling the old shed down to the floor. I think the floor is ok. If it is, I am just going to rebuild it. Then I will have 2 sheds. One will become my radio shack for my ham radio stuff. I can't wait!

On To Round 8

    I am still working on Renulek's Spring Napkin. I have finished round 7 and segued to round 8.

To do this, I used a split chain on the last ring, then a split ring. This took me to the other two leaves of a clover. One is right and one is left. In her pattern, she does tie and cut, then starts with one of the "outer" leaves, makes the big ring attached to round 7, then the other "outer" leaf. From there it is a chain.
    Looking at where I was, I already have the Ring attached to round 7, so how do I make the two "outer" leaves without it looking lopsided? Then it hit me. I have two shuttles. I made one of them with each shuttle. This came together at the center and I continued on with the chain.

    I think I made the balance just right. It looks even and the chain comes out of it nicely. Now I continue with the pattern as written.