Snowflake and Jingle Bells

I'm still designing snowflakes. Here's yesterday's flake. I found some jingle bells and I know a couple of weeks ago I was making something and wishing I had some bells to add to it. Of course now that I have the bells I can't think of what it was that I wanted them for, so after I finished the snowflake I started another and morphed it into a bell. I think I'll add more to the bottom and make it taller. Or maybe I'll just start over.

Look! It's not a snowflake!

I'm still in a designing snowflake mode, which will probably last until January when I need to come up with some new designs for the seniors class. To give readers a break from the flurry of white stuff I thought I'd show you something else I designed. This one was done a couple of months ago when I was trying to think of ways to incorporate beads that didn't have to be strung on to start with. This worked, sort of.

Merry Christmas Snowflake with pattern

Here's another snowflake that just fell off the shuttles. It starts with a basic 6 ring daisy and requires 2 shuttles. It uses 2 split rings to climb from the daisy into the second row, but other that that it's all just ring and chain and I think it turned out kind of cute. For those of you in need of a quickie snowflake, here's the pattern. For anyone who doesn't know how to do split rings you can complete the daisy and cut the thread, then start again with ring "G" as a normal ring and just follow the pattern. There are normal joins from the rings on the second row to the top of the daisy petals and shuttle joins (lock joins) where the chains join to the tops of the daisy petals. There is 1 stitch which is easy to miss going from one petal to the next. So it's shuttle join on one petal, 1 stitch and then shuttle join on the next petal. The outer chains on row 3 are broken up with a ring and then a chain joined to the tip of the ring.

No Rings-For real this time

Can you see the difference? The bottom snowflake is the original which I though I had done entirely without rings except for the one in the middle. The first row is actually ring and chain but the rings are tiny. I re-tatted it last night and the top picture IS made without rings. The centre ring is a mock ring, but at first glance they are identical. The second snowflake appears to be a tiny bit bigger, but that may be due to some more aggressive blocking as the first was pinned to my blocking board and air dried, while the second was pinned to the ironing board and pressed.

Yet another snowflake

This is the latest design finished at 3:00 AM.

This one needs some tweaking on the chains. I should have made the first row 1 stitch longer so that the last one was equally divisible, but I didn't and had to add an extra stitch on the last row so it doesn't sit with each row neatly snugged up. It's an OK design but not anything really special. I have to get cracking on writing out the patterns for these designs. I only have 2 or 3 done so far. I can tat while sitting with hubby in the evening but drawing the patterns means being at the computer so it takes a little longer to get finished.

Writing out patterns is faster if it's done right after you completed the design because you can remember all of the stitch counts. Of course when getting to creating the drawing takes a while, there's usually a new design on the shuttles so the stitch counts get replaced by the new set. There are always a few where you have to go back and count the stitches. There will be a book eventually. I was hoping to have it done before Christmas and I might yet if I can get the computer time.

No Rings!

Well...there is one, but it could be a mock ring. I just wanted to see if I could make a snowflake shape without using rings. Not especially dramatic or particularly interesting, but it is lacy.

Like the previous snowflakes, this one can have a bead added to the centre for interest and it would probably make this one more attractive. It's also an ideal design for the lovely variegated HDT's since it's just one long continuous chain.

Another Snowflake

This is another of the same type of snowflake which can be used as is or have a one inch bead added to the centre. You'll see the beaded version in the composite picture posted a few days ago.
This is the snowflake I showed earlier but this time it's been blocked and it doesn't look like the design needs to be modified.

More Snow

Today's snowflake design, unblocked, hot off the shuttles.
This is another design that can incorporate a one inch Bead, Button, Picture or be left plain. I didn't like the way the design was going and then suddenly on the last row, I love how it looks. I think I might tweak the penultimate row a little, or not. I'll know better after it's blocked.

Rhinestones

I haven't blogged in ages. Well, that's not totally correct because I have been keeping up with the 25 Motif Challenge blog, I just haven't been keeping up with my own blog. Now that I'm all caught up I can show you what I've been tatting. I found these one inch diameter beads, the package calls them Rhinestones and I've been incorporating them into tatted snowflakes. A couple of them got extra large.

All of these designs can be made without the stones and some of them have 2 stones back to back so that they look the same from both sides. You could use any one inch size stone, bead, button or even a picture like the small wallet size photos they do for kid's school pictures. I think they'd look cute as Christmas ornaments.


I was thinking of doing a book of them, but then wondered if other folks would think they looked chintzy, inelegant and clunky with this big beady thing in the middle. So I modified it yet again so that the one inch bead cand be replaced with one inch of lace.

So what do you think? Can the world take one more book of snowflakes?

Edited to add

Here is a large picture of one of the pieces with a double stone. The blurriness is due to the depth of the stones being much greater than the flat lace. And yes I know it's still a bit of a tease, but what else will keep you wanting more? :-)