To convert the inverted rosette into a simple wheel, add six more rings in this manner:
After you work each ring of the inverted rosette, reverse work. That is, you turn the work over and begin working on the right side instead of the wrong side. You will work "plain, purl" where you have been working "purl, plain."
Leave a space of thread just half long enough to reach to the next ring -- measure against the inverted rosette you've already made -- and work a sixteen-stitch ring with any arrangement of picots that pleases you. I suggest picots about the length of four doubles, arranged in a cluster of five at the tip. To accomplish that, work six doubles, five picots separated by one double, and six more doubles. Two sixes make twelve and the four needed to separate the five picots bring the total to sixteen. Reverse work, leave a space of thread equal to the first, and work the next ring of the inverted rosette.
All that you have done is to ornament each of the bare threads with a ring, but now you have a medallion. You can starch it and plaster it onto a window, you can hang it on a mobile, you can appliqué it to your shirt, you can make a few dozen more and connect them to make a fabric. For this last use, you would need to make the middle picot of the cluster twice as long as the others, or use some other arrangement of picots, to prevent the picots from overlapping.
You could spend the rest of your life ringing changes on this simple medallion. The spidery zig-zag of naked threads can be the major part of the medallion, or it can be reduced to near-invisibility. The rings of the outer circle can be joined together, and usually are. If the zigzag of thin threads is a feature of the medallion, more delicacy can be added by spanning the spaces between small rings with long, long picots. You can make the outer rings large enough to touch and join them with invisibly-small picots. You can make rings that bristle with picots and rings with none at all. You can make the central picot smaller and thereby squeeze the rings into diamond shapes. You can make the central picot larger and put more rings into each circle. You can make the inner rings more petal-shaped by working 6-4-4-6 instead of 4-4-4-4. You can make the inner circle of very small rings and not join them at the sides. You can substitute clovers for some or all of the rings. You can make as few as three rings in a circle, or as many as your patience will tolerate.
That last makes the simple wheel very easy to experiment with: since the total number of rings is not set, you can pick any combination of inner and outer rings and then see how many repeats it takes to close the circle. We'll present one simple variation on this theme after a digression about finishing tatted lace.
On to Exercise 4e: Tying off Tatting
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