Well, I couldn't put off those Japanese knots any longer. I had a whole Sunday at my disposal, so I decided to just get them done. I started from the bottom up, on the theory that my first knots wouldn't be as good, and it was better to have those knots in the lower, less noticeable area:
It was a little tricky to make the knots with the metal thread in there. It has a tendency to kink and wasn't as smooth or cooperative as the silk when I was tugging the knot tight. But I managed to achieve a goodly number of knots without too much struggle:
The knots are not all perfect, and frankly, I'm not sure they necessarily got better by the end. I was kind of tired of making knots at that point, so for all I know, the ones at the top may be worse. But on the whole, I thought they looked pretty uniform — at any rate, as uniform as I was going to get them.
For the partial squares, I couldn't fit full knots in all of them. But I noticed that the original design picture had some very tiny knots in some of the partial squares. So I decided to try doing that myself. I used 2-->1 twisted silk, with just the lavender silk thread this time (no metal thread), and filled the partial squares that were large enough with tinier knots:
On the whole, I think it looks pretty good. It's far from being my favorite segment and may even be my least favorite one. But I'm rather proud of having made all those knots — 357 to be exact. It took me a little over six hours to do. And if I'm not an amazing knot maker, I do feel, with so much practice under my belt, at least quite comfortable with making knots now.
Here's how the segment looks with the fan as a whole:
Again, that particular segment doesn't thrill me the way some of the others do, but I think it looks nice enough. It certainly adds a bit of texture to the piece. And it's my fifth complete segment, which means I'm roughly at the halfway point. And I do feel pretty amazing about that.
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