Cluny Tatting

Day 105: A very long time ago, I was quite active in a mediaeval reenactment group, and naturally was part of the needleworkers' guild. Our Guild Mistress was...well, there's really no polite way to say this...she was rather too convinced that her scope of knowledge included all there was with respect to the needlearts. I had lost my instructions for cluny tatting and couldn't remember the complicated lacing of the thread between the fingers, and approached her, hoping for assistance in finding a source for written instructions. My inquiry was met not simply with rejection, but with outright dismissal: "There is no such thing as cluny tatting. You mean cluny crochet." I suppose I must admit to a little of the same pride in the extent of my needlework knowledge, but at least I try to remain open to the idea that there might be something I've never heard of. She was not, even when I tried to explain the method as best I could recall it. However, somewhere down the line someone else confronted her with photocopied pages from a vintage booklet showing how to do "petal tatting," and thus it was that copies of the copies came to me some three or four years later without a word of apology.

Now in those days, I was still tatting with a shuttle, and the process of creating cluny "leaves" like the ones shown inside the row of typical tatted "clovers" in the photo on the right was a tedious and tangled process. I did very little cluny as a consequence, although I kept the instructions where they could never again go astray. Recently I was searching for fine-weight crochet thread and discovered a source for tatting supplies of all sorts. Their catalog offered a leaflet on cluny tatting, and something called a "cluny loom." I thought it looked like a gadget, i.e., something which would only serve to complicate the process, but I bought one, and I have to admit that last night, I kept shouting, "This is just the greatest thing since sliced bread! Look at these cute little clunies!" until Tippy moved off my lap. The instructions for the loom are almost idiot-proof, not only printed on the loom itself, but also in a photographic step-by-step guide. The loom can be used with shuttle or needle, and the cluny leaves come together very quickly and easily. The Guild Mistress is no longer with us, or I would be tempted to send her one, just for snark.