July Snow

Jon Yusoff's new Tatted Snowflake Collection is a wonderful book. I like all these little snowflakes with clear directions and comprehensive diagrams. They work up so prettily in any thread. These use size 12 DMC Perle Coton, Coats Dual Duty Plus button cotton, Oren Bayan gold metalic thread, Gutterman sewing cotton and Signature machine embroidery thread, and Coats quilting thread. The largest is 3 inches (7.62 cm) in diameter and the smallest just half that. There are more in the book -- I'll get them all eventually. I've taken a break from them to work on Sharon Brigg's blog challenge (from her July 3, 2008 entry). I don't know if what I came up with looks at all like the original shape, but it's been fun getting where I am so far...

And...One More Time!

There. I think I'm done with this pattern for a while. After fussing and fiddling to eliminate those three rounds of chains this is what I ended up with. The chains and I just couldn't get along -- they looked like a pile instead of elegant lace when I did them. However, I'm still not satisfied with the last round because it's too big. It required lots of finger manipulation to get it to settle down this flat. Made with DMC size 30 Cébélia, it measures 8 inches (just over 20 cm) in diameter. The big question now is -- what am I going to do with it? It's sitting in a pile with some other things about which I am undecided. I keep wondering if there is a home for purple and green doilies (or maybe just a "Home" for the people who make them). Given that minor worry, I'm moving on to something else. Maybe I'll revisit it again sometime in the future. I can see it now: I go up to the fence at the purple-and-green-doily-home and say, "Hi, doily," then wander away knowing it's doing well and is as happy as can be expected.