Seventh Day of December, Stuck on the Eighth

Well, due to a crazy amount of snowfall yesterday (the cold, slippery kind, not the nice tatted kind) the boxes are still sitting in our house, just tempting me to open them up and grab more tatting stuff...but I am holding strong!!

I finished The Seventh Day of December pattern from Lene Bjørn's "24 Snowflakes in Tatting" yesterday:

It was a tough pattern with all the onion rings, but very satisfying to tat. 

Shuttle or Needle? These rings are one of the many elements of these patterns that make me wonder how well a needle tatter could execute these patterns. I needle tatted for years and never attempted an onion ring. I'm notsayin it can't be done, but I am saying some of these patterns would be quite frustrating, especially for a beginner needle tatter. 

Speaking of frustrating...has anyone out there ever successfully made The Eighth Day of December?? This is the motif with all the beautiful blocks, and frankly the pattern that first drew me to this book, but for the life of me I can't figure out how tat it!

I have started this twice, once with two shuttles and then a second time with one (the pattern calls for one shuttle, but I prefer Jane Eborall's method of block tatting with two shuttles). After my first failure I figured the pattern had to be done with just the one shuttle, but this korning I made it to exactly the same place I had to stop yesterday:

It's hard to explain without showing the pattern, but according to the diagram, right how I am supposed to make a cloverleaf, then tat 4 more rows of blocked chains underneath the last 7 ds tatted above?! How do you tat chains underneath a chain? The picots will be going the wrong way, for starters, and it just doesn't make sense. 

Yesterday's mess is on the left--see the problem with the chains under the chains? Eventually that second block is supposed to attach to the first block's corner, opposite of the false picot from the ring. 

So, dear tatting friends, help me out. Take a peek at your copy of the pattern and let me know, how do I do this?! :)

In the meantime, I'm skipping it and going on to The Ninth Day of December. :) I have too much stress right now, I refuse to let tatting be part of it. :)