In Exercise Four, after we had made the preliminary exercise which Exercise Seven developed into a scroll medallion, we made a primitive wheel by adding a ring to the middle of each bare thread. The logical next step after replacing the bare threads with chains is to replace the middle picot of each chain with a ring.
This sounds simple, but if we try to repeat the scroll medallion and
>>..illos here of various ways to put rings inside the chains
stop in the middle of the first chain to add a ring, we find that the shuttle thread is on the inside of the chain, and the ring, therefore, must also appear on the inside of the chain. This suggests many new designs, but the design we set out to create requires a ring on the outside of the chain.
Examining the ball thread, we note that it is on the outside of the chain. If the ball thread were on a shuttle, we could work a ring with that thread, then resume working the chain with the other shuttle. The ring produced would be an exact equivalent of the picot it replaced. But the ball thread is not on a second shuttle, and my lesson plan has not yet reached two-shuttle work.
The solution is to make the shuttle and ball threads trade places. Push the chain back into its final form just as you would if you were about to make a ring, then work a plain. Do not tighten the plain in the normal way, but pull on both threads at once, so that it forms the first half of a square knot. (Since this is the first step in tying a shoelace, this is sometimes called a "shoelace trick".)
Because tying the half-knot turned the work over, you are now working on the wrong side, so the ring you are about to make should start with a purl, and the normal alternation of plain and purl has been maintained. Make any ring that pleases you -- for the model, I chose a small, knot-like ring to emphasize its status as a substitute for a picot.
When the ring is completed, pick up the ball thread and work a purl, pulling it into half a square knot as you did with the plain. This puts the threads back where they started, and also closes the gap in the chain at the base of the ring.
Make the simple scroll medallion of Exercise Seven, repeating this maneuver in the middle of each chain.
On to Exercise Nine:
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