Flake-y Tatting

Waiting for inspiration, sketching, figuring, fussing, doing, re-doing, waiting for further inspiration, fussing some more. I really have been doing something, it just doesn't look like much! Since I've been so lax about blogging what I'm doing, I'll just dump it all in here at once.
First, Bonneville Tatters is donating a Tree to this year's Festival of Trees (those are Christmas trees for a local children's charity). It's being done in maroon and ecru and is intended to look Victorian. (Personally, I would have done a Tattycat tree -- white with rainbow snowflakes!) I've done nothing maroon, but will be donating this snowflake from the last pattern I worked out. It is made of size 30 ecru Cebelia. Of course I'm going to be working on some other stuff, too. This is just the bare minimum start. It's just soooooo hard for me to tat in ecru. I'm always convinced I've made a dirty spot (because I carry it all over the place) that is never going to come out. If you see one on this snowflake, don't tell me!

As for the fussing and figuring, I saw this bit of machine embroidery and thought I might be able to make it into a tatted snowflake. The pattern I drew out looked really great. Ummmm...I couldn't tat it the way I drew it. There were too many disconnected open bits and all the little hearts had to be done separately (lots of ends to hide). I couldn't get the shape even close, except by using lock chains, and they don't look quite right -- well, not as I had invisioned this thing looking, anyway. It needs a lot of work. I've set it aside for now and am thinking about it. This test piece was made in Opera size 10 cream thread. I didn't weave the threads in very well, but had to do something with them to see if this looked even halfway interesting. It does, but I couldn't get six points in, so it's no snowflake! I'm thinking about it, because i do like that center star.

Finally, this one was also from a bit of machine embroidery. It didn't end up looking much like the embroidery flake, but it pleases me. The first test of the drawn pattern didn't work well at all. It's SCMR connected by chains. Right, those don't have a lot of substance and the center shape is all weird. The second try turned out pretty good, but was a pain to do. It has a central ring with 11 picots and one mock picot to work out to the round with the SCMR and spacing chains. It works fine and doesn't look too bad, just a bit gobby at the center. So, for the third incarnation, I tried out covering a bone-ring (which is actually plastic). Since this is the first time I'd tried covering a ring, I just tied the threads together so I could work out how many stitches would cover the ring. Hey, I guessed right and put the little picot gaps in the right places too. How weird is that? Then I had to deal with those thread ends and the knot where I tied my two shuttles together. There's a lumpy spot right at the base of one of the arms. The fourth one is the one I will be donating to the Tree. I still have work to do on getting the ring covered evenly, and need to figure out how to do rings at the edges, but I think these little rings are nifty. Oh, this flake is made of size 30 Cebelia, as well.