29 January 2008

Thoughts about notating the SR and SS!

This message came from Barbara Hevener and has given me food for thought.

I got involved in trying to help someone else with this project (TIAS) at the Palmetto Tatters Guild meeting last Saturday. That person (an experienced tatter) had gotten confused about what shuttle should be in her right hand after completing "SR20: 4 / 4 - 2 - 6 Cl SS".
Because of the shuttle-switching that occurs whenever one makes a SR, it occurred to me that it IS somewhat confusing whenever "SS" immediately follows a split ring.

This morning, I looked up several purported definitions of "SS" (including the old first edition of Judith Connors' "Illustrated Dictionary of Tatting"--I don't have the second edition yet), and found that nobody ever really seems to say how "SS" should be interpreted in conjunction with a SR. I'm betting that tatters (and perhaps even pattern writers) might interpret it in different ways. For example, if I started making the SR with Sh1, do I "SS to Sh1" (because Sh2 made the final stitches of the SR)--or do I "SS to Sh2" (because I just pulled the SR closed with Sh1)? So it might be helpful if pattern writers were to specify "SS to Sh __" in such a situation. Another alternative would be to provide a more complete explanation for "SS" within the pattern instructions.

This is a good point and I would appreciate other people's comments. In the past I used to stipulate which shuttle the worker should be using at each stage but have recently dropped this in favour of SS. Having read Barbara's points and being a tatter who assumed that everybody who finished a SR would pull it up with the original working (core) thread this didn't occur to me to be a problem until now!!!

Please email me with your comments and I will add them to this post - if you wish.

2 comments:

Yorkie Sue's Tatting said...

Mmm Jane - conceptional problem here me thinks...

To close the Split Ring one uses Sh#1. So if it says SS then I would change to Sh#2 for the next element.

This is why IMHO it is best to always put "clr" (close ring) at the end of notating, especially for Split Rings. Then So when I put SS it tells the maker to now switch to Sh#2.

Does this make sense?
Hope So,
Sue in Sunny London, England

Marty said...

I didn't have any problem with the way the pattern was written, because there were such good diagrams I could SEE which shuttle to use (unless I made a goofier hippo than I thought -- LOL). Everyone has made some interesting points, and there are certainly some things to think about, though.

Marty

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