Adaptable Cornelia

There! See how adaptable "Cornelia" is! It's just the most amazing pattern. I was playing around with the size 40 red thread after I made the size 20 ornament strap adaptation. It came out as a really nice little heart, so I put it in a ring. I dropped it on the table and it landed upside down. Oh -- wow! A tree, I could see a tree.

The green size 40 and some silver beads made a nice little tree. It needed a trunk, but as I just had a bag of necessities (I was visiting), I didn't have any brown. (Just kidding -- I don't actually own any brown. It's so brown!) I did have a shuttle with some ecru thread on it. Ta-da, a tree with an anemic trunk -- inside a ring of course, I'm making ornaments! And more ornaments. I did two more with little changes, like different bead colors and some different stitch counts.

Guess what happened when I turned the tree upside down? Yup -- an even better heart. I doctored this one so you can see it, too -- but I've not made a nice red one yet.

I think a combination of the second and third one will work out best if I decide to make more (and how can I resist?). Wouldn't these make great presents to fit inside a card? Of course, the post office would probably mangle 'em unless I use a padded envelope. (People who need padded cells ought to have lots of padded envelopes -- but they are sadly lacking in this household).

Making Ornaments

Cornelia by Iris Niebach (from Tatted Doilies) is one of my favorite patterns.
When the Bonneville Tatters Guild asked me to make another ornament or two for the guild submission to the Festival of Trees I was a little worried that I wouldn't have time to get something made. I've made other ornaments by adapting Cornelia, but that adaptation required quite a bit of tatting. This is what I finally came up with:
It's made of size 20 Lizbeth ecru. I wrapped it over the top and down the sides of a burgundy satin ornament. I had intended to make a couple of little motifs to put on the sides below the center of the strap, but there wasn't enough time. I didn't even get a picture of it. So I made two more. :) One is a nice Christmas Green and the other is Christmas Red both are size 40 Lizbeth thread. I had time to make the extra little motif for the sides for these.

Ice Crystal

November has been month for doing things I hadn't before. I've made one (yeah, just one) piece from Tatting Patterns and Designs by Blomqvist and Persson (Lucky Clover -- but I've done it a bunch of times). There are so many pretty patterns in this book, I finally decided I needed to make Ice Crystal. I've made some little icicle ornaments adapted from this pattern, but not the whole pattern.

When I was trying to decide what color to use, I finally reached dither-point. After dithering around for a while, I figured I'd just use all the colors. This is Ice Crystal in Rainbow colors. The thread is a size 80 DMC tatting cotton which my sister dyed for me. It measures just 5.25 inches (13.5 cm) across at it's widest point

Okay, it doesn't look like ice -- but it's certainly cheerful!