Let's not split chains!

The shuttles are back! Winter was a time of crochet, but along came February and the little voice in my head said "time to make trinkets!"

If I'm confusing you, on the 1st of March we Romanians give trinkets (brooches, pendants or bracelets) to the important women in our life. And I have been giving mine tatted trinkets for several years now, with varying degrees of success. Meaning I sometimes missed my deadline...

Trinkets: some new, some old...

So this year I started early and I'm still not done, even if it is almost the end of March. I have trinkets enough for next year too! I'm also remaking a necklace I had given to my godmother and I also have an order for tatted coasters.

The coaster pattern is nice and pretty straightforward, but it is in rounds and my thread (actually a fingering yarn called Begonia) is 6-something-ply and will split if I even start reaching for the crochet hook. It can sense what I am trying to do and has decided to protest against being tatted with.

Who does the thread think it is?! I am its master, I tat it and untat itin any way I see fit! Heh! But, joke aside, this thread and I have been through a lot. It is in fact the thread with which I learned how to needle tat, long ago.

There is one thing I'm not too comfortable doing with it and that is sewing in ends. With how much it splits and untwists, just threading it would be a nightmare. So I covered the ends in tight, finger-aching tatting.

And what to do at the end of a row, you ask? There is a saying here in Romania, that the lazy man has even more work to do. So, rather than hiding the ends, I go about learning how to make split chains and relearning (yes, shame on me, I know) how to make split rings with 2 shuttles.

I had never made split chains before and chose this video where Frivole didn't have spoken instructions and the annotations got lost when Youtube decided that annotations were no longer cool. But she was saying the method (created by Marie Smith) was the best and easiest way for her to make split chains.

It took me a while to pay proper attention and see where the shuttle was supposed to go the second time, but I learned and now I can climb out of a row like the best of them!

I made two split chains in the coaster below, because I was planning for a third row, but decided to stop at 2, because it was becoming too flowery. And I am making these coasters for one of our guy friends, who specifically asked for any colour other than the pink I had used for my own coaster. 

Poor coaster went through a lot, but still came out looking ok.

Now, after split chains, who knows what I will learn next!