The WHY of the Flip

[PattyD]

Endlessly curious, I finally came to wonder WHY the flip. Please note, not how, but why. The way I got here was while making materials to prep for a tatting class I will be teaching in May.

The answer lies in things I have learned from fancy knotting. Knot tyers have a lot of interesting technical information including this little bit: any string has two parts, the ends and the middle. OK, got it. The ends are, unsurprisingly, called the ends. The middle is called the bight (which comes from Old English and is the past tense of bend - that explains names of knots like Sheep's Bend). The ends are the only parts that can actually tie knots (create and go through a loop). The bend cannot do the same as single string, but only as a doubled loop ( a bend).

The reason all this matters to tatting is that the thread wrapped on the left hand for either a ring or a chain only presents the bight to work with, which cannot tie a knot. The right hand with the shuttle end CAN tie a knot and does so around the bight in the left hand. Finally the flip transfers the loop from the END to the BIGHT and creates half of a DS.

Needle Tatting escapes the flip because it is essentially working with two ends.

To the single other person in the universe that actually wanted to know this, thanks for listening!

[Jon Yusoff]

Say that again, I am confused! :lol:

[PattyD]

Oh Dear! Ends can tie knots because they can go through a loop. Bights can't do that. The left hand in shuttle tatting has no ends available to tie knots. (DS are knots; reverse double half hitches, to be exact). The end in the right hand throws the knots (one half at a time) to the left hand. And the fundamental reason that there must be a flip in shuttle tatting is that there are no ends to work with on the left hand. The ends of the thread in the left hand are held stationary.

[soyloquesoy]

It makes total sense to me!!! :sunnysmile:

[Dawn]

That was very interesting! Thanks for posting! :)

[Ridgewoman]

Endlessly curious, I finally came to wonder WHY the flip. Please note, not how, but why. The way I got here was while making materials to prep for a tatting class I will be teaching in May.

The answer lies in things I have learned from fancy knotting. Knot tyers have a lot of interesting technical information including this little bit: any string has two parts, the ends and the middle. OK, got it. The ends are, unsurprisingly, called the ends. The middle is called the bight (which comes from Old English and is the past tense of bend - that explains names of knots like Sheep's Bend). The ends are the only parts that can actually tie knots (create and go through a loop). The bend cannot do the same as single string, but only as a doubled loop ( a bend).

The reason all this matters to tatting is that the thread wrapped on the left hand for either a ring or a chain only presents the bight to work with, which cannot tie a knot. The right hand with the shuttle end CAN tie a knot and does so around the bight in the left hand. Finally the flip transfers the loop from the END to the BIGHT and creates half of a DS.

Needle Tatting escapes the flip because it is essentially working with two ends.

To the single other person in the universe that actually wanted to know this, thanks for listening!

I found this REALLY interesting, logical and I could "see it" in my mind. Thanks Patty. Very cool. hugs, bj who is feeling better having shipped one pkg and has the other ready to go! woo hoot

[Lynn]

Patty, you scare me. How did you know this is the one thing in the universe that I was dying to know?

Honestly, it makes good sense. As a long time knot maker, first unintentionally with crochet thread and then intentionally with macrame cord, I have been aware of this distinction in cord bits for a long time. Just didn't have the nomenclature for it all.

[coretta]

ok so since I am just beginning to think about trying needle tatting, this actually answers my question. One I hadn't actually formulated yet... You are not alone as you might think Patty. Thanks!

[PattyD]

Wow! Already six times as many as I thought! It's nice not to be alone on my little limb.

[AnneB]

Thanks Patty! Now i know why :biggrin:

[Sonja]

Asking how and why is the start of knowing and understanding things.

[skfuller]

WOW that really does make sense! Maybe this will lead to some new techniques as we look at our tatting from this angle!!!

[tattrldy]

:goodpost:Thanks, Patty! I hadn't thought to ask the question but I 'm glad you answered it!

[Susan B T]

Patty again you put things in the most simple way of the why of something, Thanks for you knowledge.

[Manne]

Thank you! I like to know why I do tings. :)

[yarnplayer]

Back in the day when I was just starting to learn to tat, (over 30 years ago) I still remember vividly how in my naivete I managed to make a ring of unflipped stitches, managed to close it - then - in great excitement tried doing another ring that way...and discovered that the 2nd ring zoomed many inches away from the 1st! Oops! Back to studying the illustrations!

Thank you, PattyD for explaining about "bights" and "ends" - good info.

[trampledbygeese]

I like this explanation. Thank you for posting it.

The other day I was trying to explain why we had to flip the knot to a friend. I made a total mess of it and ensured that that poor person will be confused on the issue for the rest of forever. I'll have to remember what you said for the next time that someone asks.

[Judith Connors]

Try a bowline on a bight. Only one twist allowed.

[Judy]

Back in my rock climbing days we were expected to be able to tie a bowline on a bight around our waist using one hand only. Now I would have to have yards more rope to make it work:biggrin:. Never thought it would be useful terminology for tatting. :happy:

[xstchntat]

This is wonderful information and the way you tell it makes it easy to understand. Thanks

[Judith Connors]

Judy,
There are lots of knots used in macramé or by rock-climbers which appear in tatting as well - cow hitch, lark's head. The second half of the double stitch (made with a shuttle) is a bowline on a bight without the last bend.
Tatters have long debated the terms: 'double stitch' or 'double knot'. Neither is truly correct: it is a double hitch when it's all boiled down.
But tatting has developed its own rich terminology over the past 160 years, and this makes very interesting and enjoyable study, for those who have the time and inclination.
Judith.

[Maureen L]

I have never wondered WHY it happens, but I still, after more than 5 years of tatting, sometimes form the stitches in very slow motion, just so that I can watch the thread turning over in front of my eyes! - it's magical, every single time.
Mind you, most of my tatting is executed slowly, I'm not a fast tatter.

[DJtatt]

Actually, the double hitch is related to the simple reef knot. Try this with large, round rope or boot laces. Tie a reef knot (right over left and under, then left over right and under). Then take the two ends of either one of the laces and pull. The double hitch appears on the pulled boot lace. Grab the ends of the other boot lace (the one currently hitched to the straight one) and pull on both ends. The double hitch magically transfers to the other boot lace.

[PattyD]

I made that exact same demo to the tatting class I taught a couple of weeks ago. i did it to demonstrate the movement of the flip and the fact that the rearranged knot slides on the core thread.

[Jon Yusoff]

You can view the illustration of what PattyD and DJTatt wrote about in the Yarnplayer's blog,
http://yarnplayertats.blogspot.com/2010/03/rope-trick.html

[mistyknits]

This is GREAT! I love info like this. Thank you so very much for sharing it.

[Katt]

How interesting to know the "why" behind the "how"! Shouldn't we have learned this first? Curious.....where did you find this piece if info?

[PattyD]

I think I always knew it, but didn't know I did until I tried to think of a way to explain to new tatters WHY the flip has to flip. After I thought about it long enough, it came to me like a bolt from the blue.

[StephanieGrace]

I went into reading this thread knowing that it wasn't going to solve my "how of the flip" problem, and yet I think it might have. LOL. Now that I know the WHY, I think it might just make it easier for me to understand what I should be seeing in my attempts. With the extra wits from this well-written thread, I just might be able to finally out-wit the next piece of thread that touches this shuttle! LOL. Worth a try, right? If not, I'm going back to the old techniques: telling off the thread and threatening the shuttle. LOL.

THank you!

:heart:,
Stephanie Grace
http://stephaniegracetats.blogspot.com

[HJ Hess]

This thread is very helpful. It will expand on what I teach my students. Thank you.
.

[DJtatt]

Hegla, I've even used rock climbing rope for beginners so they can easily see and feel what is happening when they advance a bit and get to that size 40 ring with 15 picots that isn't closing properly. It's all in the flip, or with some of Jon's split ring designs, the flip AND the no flip.

[Daff]

Thank you! I had wondered WHY after struggling with HOW

[becky400]

I love how you think! Absolutely wonderful question and interesting answer. I did find a different derivation for bight in the Oxford English Dictionary that you might find interesting. I love knots and treasure my classic Encyclopedia of Knots and Fancy Ropework. (My initial exposure to knots was nautical - I learned macramé on a sailing ship.)

OED Etymology: bight, n. Cognate with Dutch bocht bend, curve, indentation in a coast line (1599), Middle Low German bucht bend, curve, indentation in a coast line ( > German Bucht indentation in a coast line, Old Danish, Danish bugt bend, curve, indentation in a coast line), Old Icelandic -bót (in knés-bót hollow of the knee) < a derivative formation < the same base as bow n.¹ (http://0-www.oed.com.catalog.multcolib.org/view/Entry/22182#eid15916767)

Curiosity forever!
Becky

[janet6567]

One more question in my endlessly curiously mind has been answered. Thank you Patty!:flowers:

[Karen Bickerton]

Very neat explanation and a lovely lot of knowledge all wrapped up in one thread! Thank you, Patty D for giving us further insight into our craft! This allows our explanations to go beyond "well, we transfer the knot because we have to. . . "

[Maureen L]

To this day, I sometimes tat in slow motion, just to SEE the magic happening - have never understood WHY it does, but Bends and Bights make sense!
It's probably all to do with Physics, isn't it?

[AnneB]

...
It's probably all to do with Physics, isn't it?
Most probably :yes:

(being a physicist I have no choise but confirm that statement) :happy:

[louine]

It's not the why that always fascinated me but the mind that actually first thought to transfer the knot from the shuttle thread to the "bight" .......

[PattyD]

I have notions about that. Sailors are well known for working knotwork and needlework during their off duty time. The sailors who actually sailed ships with sails were expert in working and handling rope. The knowledge and understanding of how to accomplish something with knots was practically in their bones. I have long suspected that some sailors figured out how to get knots in a ring. The first tatting was one thread, single shuttle and pretty much the only option was to make a string of rings with picots and then fill the circle of rings with needle lace. The motifs thus constructed were then tied together with separate bits of thread between the picots to be joined. There were tiny ends everywhere.

This is a picture of a parasol made this way on the frontispiece of the book Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.

14743

This is a small part of a picture from the book "Tatting with Visual Patterns" by Mary Konior. It shows very early tatting that is basis of everything tatting has become today. All the tatted work is rings and there are no joins created while working the tatting (that I can see).

Also, instead of forming a design as the work proceeds, long strings of rings are whipped together with a needle and thread over the bare thread to form elongated ovals.

In the lower left corner you can see two motifs that have needle worked fillings forming the center of the motif. These would have been worked after the string of large rings had been completed and the needle lace stitches are worked from the outside in, the normal method of working this type of filling.

The boggling thing about the whole construction is that the overwhelming number of joins are connected by tying a piece of the thread to connect 2 picots and then simply clipping the ends.

It looks like a motif made of 2 row of rings connect the first and and second row by overcasting through the picots from inner and outer rows where their picots meet or where the picot from the inner row meets the base of ring in the outer row. At least it is a continuous thread that is connecting two rows, but I am sure there is a knot and 2 ends somewhere.

[PattyD]

Re-opened thread

[GraceT]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that Patty has explained why the shuttle rather than the bight needs to be making the knots, rather than why the knots then need to be flipped onto the bight. After all, when making split rings, you do NOT flip the knots for the lower half, but you still do use the shuttle (or rather, a different shuttle), right? So it's something to do with the way the thread feeds through the ring. Yarnplayer seems to have run across it when she tried making a ring with unflipped stitches, then pulling on the other thread to close, then the ring ran far away. I ought to try that and see what happens...

[Ireneho]

bight? what's a bight?

[Judy]

English query next: The first derivation listed bight as a past tense of bend. Something strange there since it seems to me that the middle and the ends are NOUNS and can't have a past tense.

[PattyD]

There is one thing Yarnplayer didn't know, to work unflipped tatting on a ring, you have to wrap the thread around your hand the opposite way from flipped tatting. Then it works.

Right handed tatting works from left to right and wraps the working thread clockwise, away from the body.
Left handed tatting works from right to left and wraps the working thread counter clockwise, away from the body.

For a right hander to work unflipped tatting, the thread must be wound opposite of the fllipped direction which is toward the body or counter clockwise.

[GraceT]

Hi, Irene,
Don't worry, it's not a tatting term. Did you have a look at Patty's post at the beginning of this thread? She defines "bight" there.

[GraceT]

There is one thing Yarnplayer didn't know, to work unflipped tatting on a ring, you have to wrap the thread around your hand the opposite way from flipped tatting. Then it works.

Right handed tatting works from left to right and wraps the working thread clockwise, away from the body.
Left handed tatting works from right to left and wraps the working thread counter clockwise, away from the body.

For a right hander to work unflipped tatting, the thread must be wound opposite of the fllipped direction which is toward the body or counter clockwise.

Fascinating! So, it's really possible to do tatting with all unflipped stitches. So then, why flip? It must be ergonomically superior, or something.

[Ireneho]

Hi, Irene,
Don't worry, it's not a tatting term. Did you have a look at Patty's post at the beginning of this thread? She defines "bight" there.

Not when I posted that... Now I have.

[Ireneho]

Flipped is the upside down stitches? But they don't close! Or you have to show us how.

[GraceT]

Flipped is the upside down stitches? But they don't close! Or you have to show us how.

Well, I'm still a newbie. But I think 'flipped' is the normal stitches. You make them with the shuttle, and flip them over onto the other thread.

[Ireneho]

Me too! Which is why I'm confused. How to tat with the shuttle in the left hand? That is what she/he is saying right? How do you close the ring if it is unflipped? My mind cannot handle this possibility!

[PattyD]

It truly does work. There is a gentleman tatter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCdVbJZP_yI) who always works left handed unflipped tatting. Shuttle in the left hand. Blew me away the first time I saw it. What we consider "normal" tatting is the traditional method from the very beginning of tatting. And it is flipped. I made a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAAYRW-ho2U&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLCE9D45AB796DFD40)of flipped left handed tatting (shuttle in the left hand.) I think my head hurt for three days!!!! But it was a learning experience. Lefties needed a video, so I made one. Kcabrera also has at least one video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BE&feature=related&v=O5JxgC6ulHU)for left handed tatters.

[PattyD]

The overwhelming number of tatters tat right handed and flipped. This has come to be considered "normal". The numbers could tilt in any direction over time since lefties are being left alone by the educational system, at last. My whole thing with the "WHY" of tatting is that newbies always want to know why besides knowing how.
The more questions you answer, the more satisfied they are.

Over time, I have decided that the first thing I have to determine with brand new tatters is when they look most comfortable in how they hold the shuttle. If nothing is working well, then I had to consider all the different things to consider about comfort.

Which way feels best to hold the shuttle?
The pick up or down, front or back?
Winding the thread clockwise or counter clockwise?
Thread exiting in the back or in the front, at the top or at the bottom?

Tensioning with which finger (usually index or middle finger, but ....)

Wrapping the working thread around the pinkie or the ring finger or a different method of holding and tensioning the thread altogether (as in crochet or even knitting)

How to form the loop that the shuttle goes through to create the half hitch which is then reversed when it is flipped.

And one of the most interesting issues is how to form the two halves of a DS. Kcabrera uses a very interesting method I haven't seen very often. Self taught tatters can do all kinds of contortions, you should have seen mine before the Shuttle Brothers found me a more efficient way to do it! Rebecca Jones shows at least seven ways to flip the stitch.

What seems very cut and dried actually is not. I don't think any two tatters tat exactly the same way.

All of these issues are about being comfortable and not getting hurt by flying threads! I just wish that tatting instructions would not be so cut and dried. Reality is that tatting style is very personal.

And from all this comes my mantra "The knot does not care how it is made!"

Whatever works, works!

[GraceT]

...
What seems very cut and dried actually is not. I don't think any two tatters tat exactly the same way.

All of these issues are about being comfortable and not getting hurt by flying threads! I just wish that tatting instructions would not be so cut and dried. Reality is that tatting style is very personal.

And from all this comes my mantra "The knot does not care how it is made!"

Whatever works, works!

Thanks, Patty, that's reassuring! I know that the method I'm using is not the usual over-under one I saw in the Youtube videos. I made a variation on a different, minority method that I also saw on Youtube. I am not happy with the way I'm handling the ball thread for a chain - I have been wrapping it round my pinkie, but it either doesn't feed, or else it comes unwrapped. So now I feel liberated to experiment! :-)

[Ireneho]

I just watched that. Its like watching a slow motion pair of hands. But you still flipped the stitches. I think I might try it tomorrow, this left hand tatting. I like to learn things for the just in case moment, like that time many years back, i went rollerskating and fractured my right elbow, luckily I could write well enough with my left hand to string a sentence together... Though the writing was all back to front... hehe