Back to School

I'm involved in Sharon Brigg's Design-Tat course, and am thoroughly enjoying it. We have homework! First time in my life I ever really, really liked homework. The first two lessons were back to rings and chains -- building blocks. How to get different configurations of rings and chains by changing the stitch count or where and how connecting picots are used. It's not something I consciously think about when working someone else's pattern -- but how essential to making one's own!
The third lesson was to take a round 8 ring and 8 chain center and build a second round with some interesting negative space connected to only 4 chains. All of this cream-colored Opera size 10 thread was just crouched under my bed waiting to grab an unwary ankle. I wrestled some into submission and wound it onto a couple of shuttles (that size 10 stuff is big and tough!) and came up with this:
Hey, I like it (but you should have seen what I threw out!). Today I had to go get the oil changed in my car so I took a bit of thread and a couple of shuttles (well, of course!). These bits of orange and blue ombre size 80 went meekly into my bag and onto the shuttles. It looks different in two colors, doesn't it?

Interesting scale as well. These pieces were scanned side-by-side. Maybe I should have posted them the same way -- or how about this: