Fig. 30.
Knotting needles are, as the accompanying illustration shows, small hooks set in wooden handles, and can be purchased where the trimmings for wig-making, etc., are procurable. These needles are fine, medium, and coarse, each one being employed according to the kind of work required to be done. For instance, in knotting over galloon or ribbon, where the knots cannot be seen when the mount is examined, they might be coarsely done, especially if thickness of hair be required. Upon net, perhaps the medium-sized needle had better be used, but a needle sufficiently fine to carry only a single hair will have to be employed in partings and crowns if you attempt to “defy detection.” Care is necessary in the selection of a needle, the point of which should turn, as it were, into the neck of it, otherwise, in drawing back, the hook is likely to catch the net, and your handiwork stands a chance then of being spoiled before it is completed. Let me here give one word of advice. When you have obtained needles to your liking, take the greatest care of them, for if you are proud of good workmanship they might come to be regarded as “little treasures.”
The first thing a learner should do is to make a “single knot,” and I would recommend that a mount be put on the block, say similar to that here shown, merely for the sake of practising.
Fig. 31.
Take some straight hair about six inches long;[[18]] put it between the drawing brushes, and place a weight thereon as though you were going to do weaving. Draw out a weft and double it over at the roots, leaving them (the roots) rather long. You have now made a loop, which is to be held firmly between the thumb and finger of the left hand. Take the knotting needle and hold it with the thumb and finger of the right hand; insert the hook in one opening of the net and allow it to pass out at the next. By this movement you have taken up a thread (or line) upon which you are going to knot the hair. Now bring the looped portion of the hair forward and hook it with the needle; Fig. [31] clearly indicates the position. Turn the open part of the hook downwards, but keeping firm hold of the hair (by a little dexterity you may avoid catching hold of the net) and draw the needle back again. Let the open part of the hook now face the weft, and by a slight movement of the needle the loop will slip back a little towards the handle while you catch hold of or hook the weft again. This is well shown in the following illustration.
Fig. 32.
You have now to give it a turn (which to a certain extent secures the hair), draw the hook (with the hair) through the loop; let go the hair from the left hand at the same moment, and pull rather tight. The knot will then be upon the net, and if the roots are long fairly secure. Of course there is a difficulty in describing these technicalities, but I think with a little practice there need not be any trouble in mastering the details, at least so far as I have gone.