One lace ring closed before my fingers forgot how

Please keep the ugly bit.

You’ll know the one: white thread, several bumps pretending to be lace, a loop that won’t close. If you’ve become competent enough to make a bookmark, you may be tempted to cut this off and tidy the evidence. Put it in an envelope instead. I’d like you to remember how thoroughly a small plastic shuttle defeated us before supper.

Hobby #250 began at a library craft demonstration. Someone was making lace while carrying on a conversation, passing the shuttle through the thread without appearing to consult their hands. I watched a ring close. Then another. They offered me a turn.

There’s a particular embarrassment in accepting instruction for something you’ve already decided you understand.

Under, through, pull. I made a knot. They looked at it kindly and explained that the knot needed to transfer onto the other thread.

Mine had taken a position.

I came home with a borrowed shuttle and enough white cotton to establish whether the library had defective gravity. The bookmark was my idea. Nobody had promised a bookmark. That distinction became relevant quite early.

Here’s what I want you to remember about the double stitch: understanding its name was considerably easier than making it. Two halves form a lark’s head, or cow hitch, and together they count as one stitch. I read Grace’s explanation of the double stitch and recognized the knot immediately.

Recognition bought me absolutely no useful finger movements.

The shuttle thread has to remain able to slide through the stitches. That’s the check. Before celebrating a row of neat little bumps, tug the core thread gently and see whether anything moves. I celebrated several rows prematurely.

What tatters call the flip requires a change in tension. The thread around my non-dominant hand needs enough slack for the knot to transfer while the shuttle thread straightens. Unfortunately, when uncertain, I grip things harder. My response to an unsuccessful knot was to secure it against further developments.

Eventually I lowered my middle finger slightly. Something shifted. The stitch slid.

Then I tried to observe myself doing it and immediately stopped being able to do it.

You may remember the sashiko waves, especially the thread twisting while I concentrated on everything except the thread twisting. Tonight I kept thinking about that dangling needle unwinding itself. At least there I could put the work down and let a tool correct one small problem. Here my hand was part of the apparatus, and it wanted a break.

I took one. The cotton left little pressure marks across my fingers.

During the break I found the Royal School of Needlework’s account of historical knotting. Aristocratic knotters made lengths of knotted thread that were later couched onto fabric. Their decorative shuttles were fashion accessories; elegant hand movements contributed to the appeal. Some historians connect that practice to tatting.

I’m recording the distinction because you’ll otherwise remember only “people used to do this elegantly in company” and decide we’re personally responsible for the decline.

Back at the thread, I managed a ring. Holding the stitches and drawing the shuttle thread through shrank the loop until its ends met. It was slightly lopsided. I put it on dark paper and moved the lamp closer.

The picots surprised me. Those little projecting loops give lace its delicate fringe, but they also provide places to attach the next piece. Georgia Seitz describes the basic join: draw working thread through an existing picot, pass the shuttle through that loop, then snug the connection. I had been admiring decoration that was also waiting for something to connect to it.

My attempt left an extravagant gap. The chain bowed oddly beside it. Together they occupied very little paper and a substantial portion of the evening.

Future me, I hope the borrowed shuttle has gone back to the library. I hope you remembered to thank its owner without delivering a lecture about tension.

The bookmark drawing is tucked under the dark paper. I’m leaving it there.

For now, there’s a closed ring beside an open one, and I can’t yet tell you what my fingers did differently.