Eye of the Sun & Traditional Tatted Wheels

I decided to continue exploring the book "Tatting Patterns and Designs" by Blomqvist and Persson.   I started making Coppelia, a small doily I really like the look of... but the rings are really large: 5 picots separated by 6 stitches and I was not enjoying it.  I may try to make a scaled down version of it.  Instead, I made one of the wheels called Eye of the Sun.  This is a very traditional design which can be found in many tatting books.  

What's interesting is that in old books, the centre ring is always tatted separately after which they say to cut and tie.  Nowadays though, there are different ways to tackle this design and thankfully, there is definitely no need to cut and tie after the centre ring!

This brings me to this post by Tat-a-Renda which had caught my eye... The ring-on-ring method (like a loop-tatted ring) that Jon describes is not for the faint-hearted!  I can do loop-tatted rings and have used them in one of my snowflake designs but I think they may be a bit daunting to many tatters... although this method really enables you to tat the wheel in one go with only one shuttle.

But there are other ways:  you can also tat the centre ring and then use a split ring to move to the next round.  You would only need a second shuttle to make the split ring and then the rest of the wheel is tatted with one shuttle only.  

Or you could also start this motif with the first ring of the second round and make it as a self-closing mock ring which means you could then throw the centre ring off this SCMR.  You would also temporarily need two shuttles to do this but after closing the SCMR, the second shuttle can be removed and the motif completed with one shuttle only.  You would use your full shuttle as the core thread for the SCMR and just wind a bit of thread on another shuttle, just enough to complete the SCMR.

And if you put two magic loops in that first SCMR, you can pull both ends into that first ring after tying them and your wheel is completed and ends hidden.

Which way would be your preferred way to tat this design?  I'm curious to know what's the most popular option!

And finally, I'm making another blanket.  I couldn't help myself.  We're on holiday at the moment and I have other blankets on the go at home but they are too big to bring with me so they stay at home when I travel but I just felt the need to make a simple blanket, just one colour (a dark green that my mother-in-law will like).  The design is Victorian Lattice Square by Destany Wymore which can be found free on Revelry.  I think it's a very pretty design which looks effective in one colour.  I now have 12 squares done.  

I hope you are all enjoying summer!

Best wishes,

Frivole