For the last requirement for the JTA Level 1 certification, we needed to show an example of jyouge douji kagari, often translated into English as the “merry-go-round” stitch because of a particular pattern that introduced the stitch to many people in the English-speaking temari community. This stitch is defined by going from one side of a simple division ball to the other, crossing over the equator. This definition is a little hazy, because there’s no real rule about how far on either side the stitch has to cross, etc., but the safest bet is that they mean a symmetrical path on both sides of the equator, with the stitches at all the points being identical. This is really what makes it different from just being really big kiku herringbone stitches, because those have the stacked triangle shape at the inside points and nice sharp points at the outsides. For jyouge douji stitches, you want to do either the stacked triangles at both ends, or the sharp points. I usually choose sharp points. (More than half my readers at this point have no idea what I’m talking about, so here’s a picture! I’m talking about those big green zigzags.)
Blue Morning Glory, obi view
One interesting thing all this “up and down, but with the same style of stitching on each end” action makes happen is that all the threads have to cross over each other as they go over the equator line, hence those big green gathers in the middle there. If you don’t add something there to hold all those built-up threads in place, they’ll eventually get sort of knocked over, and disorganize your nice, clean zigzags.
As it turns out, though, the zigzags weren’t the thing I found the most interesting about this pattern, which is Barb’s Morning Glory. Our local group got to help test the pattern back when she was first developing it for classes. As you can see, the main part of the pattern before the jyouge doujistuff is wrapped bands along all the S8 dividing lines. (Let’s look at another picture that shows that a bit more clearly.)
Morning Glory group
(Those bands really are wrapped on all the dividing lines. The metallic lines you see going through the middle of the open diamonds around the middle are added as decoration at the end. I just realized that’s slightly confusing.)
Anyway, while we were testing the pattern, we realized that the way the instructions were written for the order to wrap the bands in was different than what the picture showed. Both are perfectly valid way to wrap bands, of course, there are no real rules about that, but they created rather different looks. The picture showed the way the blue ball is done, with all the white parts wrapped first, and then the blue parts done later, to create a stacked square around the pole. (There’s a clear picture of this below.) The way the instructions read indicated that each band should be wrapped fully, both white part and colored part, so there’s one solid stripe passing over the top of whatever band got wrapped last. (This is how the purple one is done below.)
Morning Glory group, pole view
And then because I was so interested in how those different pole designs were coming out with different ways of wrapping, I did the orange one just to see what would happen if I wrapped each and every row of thread for the bands individually and in order, so they interlock and stack all the way out. (Like the blue one, but more complicated, basically. You can blow that picture way up by clicking on it and look in more detail.) Conclusion: It looks really neat, but it encourages the threads to spread out too much, so I had to constantly be pushing them back into place to maintain the nice outline of the pole center and keep the outer edges of the bands actually with their bands. The purple one, on the other hand, looks too blah. So the blue pattern, the way Barb originally did the ball, is the best combination of looks and stability.
And I got a lot of practice with wrapped bands and jyouge douji kagari while discovering that. (Plus this interesting set of balls.)
