Will It Stay or Will It Go?

Remember those threads behaving badly?

Well, there's a whole other silver and gold acorn, but this one has a different stitch for the acorn cap.

Silver and gold acorn 1 had a cap stitched with the same wrapping technique as the acorns stitched with silk.  But the second one has a cap stitched in an alternating up and down detached buttonhole.

I find this to be a tricky stitch under any circumstances, but the characteristics of this thread (Access Commodities Tambour #7) made it especially challenging.   The photos below represent attempt 5 and I haven't decided whether or not I want to try one more time with attempt 6.

After several tries, I determined that an outline of the whole shape was the way to go:

I also had developed another "cheat" to help control the stitch and thread.  The photo below shows the first row, worked over a needle to help stabilize the thread.  Here you can see how the stitch is supposed to look, with a series of little bundles of two threads.  At this point, things are really looking good!

Here's the cap with several rows worked the same way.  . . . looking OK, but you can see how in the center rows, the little bundles are tending to disappear.  What's happening is that this metallic does not act like a wire in that it does not "crimp" into a shape that stays in place.  But unlike a silk thread, it does retain a lot of :"bounce" that makes it tend to bounce back out of the little bundles when the stabilization is removed.  So instead of a clear pattern of little bundled threads, it looks more like an overall pattern of loops.

Here's the finished shape. . . with the pattern of alternating bundles pretty well absorbed into the loopy texture.  

So, does it stay or does it go?   If I had a really good idea on how to keep the little bundles in place, I'd probably take it out and restitch it.  But so far. . . inspiration has yet to hit.

Stay tuned.