Needle tatters you will use the top diagram at these pages for guidance:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~TammyRodgers/rhtech.html right-handed
http://www.frontiernet.net/~TammyRodgers/lhtech.html left-handed

http://personalpages.tds.net/~tatting/ by Carrie Carlson's
These are the choices you will like to look at for right or left-handed:
First Half of the stitch
Second Half of the stitch
Making Picots
Closing the Rings
Joining Instructions
* Hint: Shuttle tatters when doing your first few practice rings you may find it helpful to run a permanent marker across the part of the thread you will be wrapping around your hand so that you can see when the flip occurs.

One version of the Hens and Chicken's edging
http://www.georgiaseitz.com/classes/henchicks.jpg
Debbie Drake had done beautiful Communion Cloth Napkins in what some think of as a Brooder House Hens and Chicken's pattern.
http://www.fortunecity.com/millennium/circus/593/tatting2.htm#Napkin
(http://www.fortunecity.com/millennium/circus/593/communion_cloth_pattern.htm)
Hens and Chicken's snowflake
http://www.georgiaseitz.com/classes/hcflake.html

Thread spacing can be kept consistent with the use of a picot gauge; here we see the use of the gauge in both the horizontal and vertical method for picots. When making picots I normally use the horizontal method for both shuttle and needle tatting however when doing the spacing between rings when doing single shuttle/needle work I use the vertical method. A gauge can be made out of almost anything, Georgia sells wooden ones unfortunately I have never been in the position to acquire any so I make mine. I have used coated paperclips, bobby pins, cardboard cut to size, embroidery floss cards cut to size, I have even put permanent mark dots on my finger, (so people even have their finger tattooed), an end of crochet hooks work too.