Just recently I completed my first tatted item from a visual pattern. (picture below) I thought I might share something that I thought was worth noting. Especially to those who are not real familiar with them. As it states in Mary Konior's book "Tatting with Visual Patterns", a visual pattern enables tatters to understand directions at a glance, rather than having to read, every written word. I really enjoyed being able to look at a diagram rather than written words. However, I failed to look at the diagram as closely as I should have. My point here is that you should study the diagram to get information such as "Will I need 2 shuttles?" or "Where do I reverse work and where do I NOT reverse work".

I started the pattern with a shuttle wound from the ball thread (continuous). As I got into the pattern I realized at one point that I should have used 2 shuttles. I came to a point where I was not supposed to reverse work so my threads were in the wrong position. Since I was using size 80 thread which comes in very small balls, I just used the little ball like it was a shuttle. Then I realized I could just use the shoe string tie trick and all was back to ok. So, it won't be a disaster if you don't see this type of thing in the pattern right away but I just wanted to point this out.