Single Shuttle Split Ring Madness

After seeing it on many of the tatting blogs I hunted down the mysterious Micro dragon by Anne Bruvold. I found it at the Online Tatting Class by Georgia Seitz. The pattern requires using an ingenious technique called the single shuttle split ring to make consecutive rings with only 1 shuttle. So simple, so smart and once you wrap your head around the idea its very easy. Since I'm always trying to keep the number of shuttles involved minimal I think its great! In fact I liked it so much I spent Saturday fiddling around with SSSRs. I made lots of dragons- here's two.

After making the dragons I continued to fool around to make a few dragonflies ( I should have made the wings larger and used black beads for the eyes). The red one kinda looks like a lobster.
Dragon fly
sp- small picot, lp- large picot, vlp- very large picot.
R 3-1-3
R 4/4
R 6/6
R 3 lp 2 vlp 2/ 2 vlp 2 lp 3
R 2 sp 3 lp 3 sp 2, cut and tie, cut lp.


Then I ended with a few baskets, one made only of SSSR and the other using SSSR and a split chain. I think that the split chain makes it look like mushroom.
SSSR Basket.
R 4 vsp 4
R 4/4 , 3 times then join to vsp of 1st ring to create the base.
If making the ring handle then R 4/4 ,6 times join last ring to 1st ring tie and cut.
If making chain handle then split chain 26 ds or as needed to fill space.

In other news, I'm excited today because I ordered Marilee's book Boutique tatting. I want to make the Bedazzled butterfly necklace to go with a strapless black dress I'm wearing to a wedding. In a few weeks. I can't wait to try out a few of her patterns and I love books with lots and lots of pictures!