Some spring time colour

The birds are singing, the black flies are biting, the flowers are blooming...Well not here they aren't. It's still a bit cold for most flowers. One of the earliest to poke their noses out of the ground are the crocus. A few years ago when the dark dreary depressing days were beginning to drag me down, I was really longing for some colour. Pristine white snow can change the world into a sparkling winter wonderland. When it's sat for a while and acquired a layer of dust, dirt and factory fallout, it starts to look like the world is covered in dingy dust bunnies.

To give my indoor world a splash of colour, I designed a crocus. A cheery little ball of colour on top of a spindly stem. Like a real crocus, it's only about an inch across done in size 20 thread. This one is Lizbeth Violet/Pink Dark #635.

The flower just uses rings and chains and isn't difficult to make. It starts with a central ring with 4 picots and ends with a mock picot and reverse work into another small ring. Then it's just ring and chain up one side of the petal and back down to the starting mock picot where you shuttle join to finish the petal. It kind of looks like this, except that I was watching TV and not paying attention so the mock picot got stretched all out of shape. I also forgot the picot on the last chain, so I had to wiggle the hook between the stitches to make the join on the next petal.

Crochet uses the term slip stitch quite often. It's not a term that used much in tatting, but it just means to carry the thread over to the next connection point. In this design it means that you do a normal join into the next picot on the central ring. From there it's just a matter of repeating the petal, joining into the matching chains on the first petal.

It gets a little tricky when you get to the last side of the last petal. Did I mention it's about an inch across? Ever try to tat inside a one inch space? It gets a little bit crowded. You could struggle with it, but I found it easier to turn the flower inside out and tat on the outside. That gives you lots of room to complete the flower.

I made a whole bouquet of them in blue, purple, yellow and white and have an indoor garden full of colour. They'd be kind of boring all on their own, so I made a matching leaf. The leaf does make use of split rings. It starts near the top of the leaf and there are graduated split rings that get larger as you work toward the base of the leaf. At the bottom, you start working a chain all the way up one side, make the outward facing ring at the tip of the leaf, and then continue the chain down to the base of the leaf. The leaf needs wire or some serious stiffening to keep it perky. I used stiff nylon fishing line because I don't like wire that can potentially rust, being used on my lace.

Here's my little bouquet and now you can make a bouquet just like this one. All you have to do is follow the pattern which is shown below.