Betsy Snowflake

This afternoon I helped a Facebook Friend with a snowflake Pattern. The Betsy Snowflake can be found here.  I find it helpful to work the pattern along with the student, so I loaded 2 shuttles with size 10 Lizbeth in my favorite snowflake color Blue Ice.

This shows the center, 5 regular rings and then a split ring.

The split ring is followed by a smaller split ring and then a chain. The pattern did not say, but this join is a lock join. 

This shows the clover on top of the snowflake arm. It is important to switch shuttles before and after the clover.

After  an enjoyable tat and chat, I completed my size 10 snowflake. I immediately loaded shuttles and made another in size 20 Lizbeth thread. A 25 cent coin is shown  for size comparison. 

+

Celtic Snowflake

Time to update my neglected blog. I have been tatting, just not scanning or photographing or blogging.  It is so much easier to snap and share on Facebook, but I have not been doing a lot of that either.  

A Facebook Tatting Friend shared that she was going to make this snowflake. I remember back in 2008 when Ruth Perry shared this pattern with the On Line Tatting Class. I attempted to make it, made one heck of a mess and went back to tatting other things.   

Time passes. I've now attended Palmetto Tat Days 8 times (#9 is just a month away and I can hardly wait.) I've been to Fingerlakes 4 times, Fringe Elements Tatting twice. I spent 2 weekends in Indiana in classes with The Shuttle Brothers. I've had tatting classes with many talented tatters. I even spent a weekend at Ruth Perry's house tatting and chatting in January 2016.

I printed the pattern and loaded shuttles with size 20 thread. First attempt I got most way through arm 4 and realized that arm  3 was not twisted correctly, attempts to fix it resulted in a  major mess. Twisted, tangled and frustrated, scissors were brought out.  

 I briefly considered tatting this with size 10 thread. The arms were 2.5 inches from center to tip, and I still had the outer round to complete, and I did not want a humongous snowflake so I continued in size 20 thread.  Above is the second attempt when  I stopped for the night.

Here is the finished snowflake after a quick press. This will be going on my tree at home. I don't see myself making multiples of this snowflake. I am proud that I completed it!