TA DA! my December 2018 snowflake

I finally got the December 2018 Snowflake drawn. I've designed so many snowflakes that I've started naming them by the date they were created. On the original design I started with a central ring of 2-2-2-2-2-2 and normal size picots, but as you could see when I posted earlier it made for a scrunched up snowflake. I tatted it again with a central ring of 3-3-3-3-3-3 and picots twice as long as normal which made the circumference of the central ring much larger. In case you are unfamiliar with tatting a flat rose, take a look at the links on the right side of the page where I've included a tutorial on how to make them. When making roses try to keep your tension even and make sure you snug up the chains before you make the lock joins.

Even with the larger centre the finished snowflake looks very crumpled, although it did block out flat to a snowflake about 3 inches across. The first chain of Row 5 was 12 stitches, but I changed it to 6-6 with a very small picot on both side of each arm, then joined arm to arm which made the snowflake pull into shape better, made it easier to block and made it look better over all.

Showing those 6+6 chains was a bit of a problem, so I showed the stitch count with little arrows where they ought to go.

That means my Christmas snowflakes are done and dusted and now I can go back to that pattern drawn from the snowflake cut out and play around with it a little more. I think I'll just use a central starting ring this time and not get too creative Until I see where this thing is going. The problematic row should be left ring, right ring, split ring down ring, then chain, up ring, chain and repeat, but getting to that point may be a stinker.

In any event, here's the part you were waiting for, the finished snowflake and of course, the pattern.

If you have any problems with it please let me know, as I dashed the drawing off in a hurry.