Learn how to tat!

Page #6 - The Ring

If you don't know if you were doing the flip correctly, you will find out now! While it was easier to see the flip while doing a chain, you will feel the flip while tatting a ring.

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Here is my chain of 5-5.
Now let's add a ring. Note here that I have turned the tatting upside-down - the picot is now pointing towards the floor. This is called reversing the work or "RW" in pattern notation. Often (but not always) you will RW when going from a ring to a chain and vice-versa.
Start by wrapping the working shuttle thread around your hand, as if for a chain. Note this time that it is the light thread being wrapped around the hand.
Do not wrap the pinky, but rather pull the light thread completely around the hand and catch the end in "the pinch". I have made a ring around my hand. I can make the ring bigger or smaller by pull the shuttle or my left pinky, while holding tightly to the pinch.
Just as before: hold the shuttle thread up and out of the way with the middle finger.
Insert the shuttle THROUGH the ring.
Back it up - over the TOP of the ring, and THROUGH the loop formed by the thread on the middle finger.
Take up the slack, and flip the knot by loosening the tension of the ring with your left hand while pulling the shuttle thread tight with your right hand.
Snug that half stitch right up to where the chain ends.
Do the second half of the stitch: Pass the shuttle OVER the ring thread...
And back it up THROUGH the ring, and THROUGH the loop that will be haning below the shuttle.
Here is the stitch, pre-flip, the shuttle thread is wrapped around the ring thread...
And here the knot has been transferred, and the ring thread is wrapped around the shuttle thread.
Snug the second half right up next to the first. At this point, if you pinch the light knot you just made that anchors the ring, and pull on the shuttle a bit, the ring will slide closed a bit (don't close the ring yet though!) Did it slide? Now pull the ring back open again so it is a comfortable size. If the knot did not slide on the ring, you have not properly transferred the knot! The ring will never close this way. Pick out the stitch and start again.