Back in Exercise Two, I had you start a rosette, but stop when you'd made a trefoil. Now we are going to make a complete rosette, but work it onto a ring as we create it, and that will make the formation called a "daisy." (I refer to it as "the classic Daisy" to distinguish it from the single ring bearing many picots which goes by the same name.) This formation is found in innumerable forms, and is the simplest of the medallions that are built around a central ring.
Ours won't look much like a daisy, because we are going to have only six petals; a daisy with eight or twelve petals would resemble the living flower better — at least it would resemble a daisy more closely than rosettes resemble roses!
Working on the wrong side, make the central ring: make two double stitches, *picot, two doubles, repeat from * four times for a total of five picots and twelve doubles. To abbreviate:
R: 2-2-2-2-2-2
After drawing up the ring, tie the beginning of the thread to the end of the thread in a square knot, but don't pull the knot close to the ring. Instead, create the illusion that you have a sixth picot, with a knot at its tip.
Now, still working on the wrong side, begin a new ring very close to the knot. Work four doubles, a picot, six doubles, a picot, six doubles, a picot, four doubles, close ring. To abbreviate:
R: 4-6--6-4
The two side picots are for joining and should be small; the tip picot is there only to break up the monotony, and may be any size that pleases you.
Now make a one-thread join to the next picot of the central ring. Think back to the "caterpillars" you made with fine thread in the third exercise.
Make another ring and join it to the last picot of the previous ring:
R: 4+6--6-4
Continue on around and join the last ring to the first. You worked out the problem of the last join while you were making the simple wheel, so the daisy should not present any difficulty. Well, not much.
The central ring is smaller than the rings around it, so the rings in the circle will be crowded. You can make them lie flat (and enhance their resemblance to petals) by squeezing them into ovals. If pressed through a damp cloth, they will hold this shape quite well, and the pressure of your fingers may be enough to make them behave.
Lay seven pennies on the table arranged like the central ring and the rings around it. You will see that if the central ring were the same size as the rings around it, and if the joins were in exactly the right place, the rings could remain round. If the central ring were larger than the rings around it, you would have to use long picots to bridge the gaps between the rings, or use a larger number of rings.
Your experience at making tats will suggest to you that daisies made of identical arrangements of stitches can be made to vary greatly by fiddling with the picots.
The thread ends where it began, inside the daisy, so you have to tie off and end here. You could make a small hexagonal doily by making six more daisies and joining them to the first daisy and to each other as they are made. (Note that the structure of such a mat repeats the structure of the daisy.) With all the new forms beckoning you onward, however, I don't recommend that you make a daisy doily at this time. If you make individual medallions, you won't have to make them all alike. Vary the picots. Vary the sizes of the rings. Vary the placement of the joins. Vary the number of picots on the central ring and, therefore, the number of rings in the circle. Try placing the picots on the central ring closer together or farther apart.
Or you might prefer to move on to the next formation, two circles of rings around a central ring:
On to Exercise Six:
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