Sherri, you have gotten some really good advice on making those nice, square tallies. It takes practice, practice, practice!! I selected a continuous lace a couple of years ago partly because it had tallies, and I knew that eventually I'd get them right... and it's working, although I'm not working on that pillow as much as I ought to these days!
A couple of tips that I haven't seen posted ... When you make your tally, work the passive until your tally is nice and square... and then continue to work it until it looks more rectangular than square. After you've secured the passive corner first, undo one of the twists on pair in the "worker" corner, so that the weaver is on the inside, not the outside. This means that it will be used first to secure that corner, and then to work the ground stitch below the tally, and these two moves help secure that thread from being inadvertently tugged on too soon. Also, sometimes I very gently tie these two threads before securing that corner- sort of the first half of a knot - and draw up the tie by tensioning the passive, not the weaver. When you've done these things, those extra "rows" you worked to make it rectangular instead of square pull up nice and compact and pretty much force the tally to be square instead of tilted off to one side. And that little tie thing in the weaver corner just gives you a little more insurance against pulling that weaver and creating a point where you want two corners! And I think one last tip... After you have worked a C-T-T, C-T-T, and you start to tension, put the tension on your passives first before you move the weaver... and don't release the tension on the passives until after you have put your weaver down and "skooched" it up on the pillow a little to take all tension off that thread. In fact, the person who taught me to do tallys instructed that the weaver thread should be longer than the passives, just so that it's easy to keep the tension slack, and also if you should lose your place and forget which one is the weaver, all you have to do is look to see which has the longer leash! Clay - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
