Snowflake 2021

First of all, the Pumpkin shuttle from the previous two posts has now been shipped to its new owner. Thank you to everyone for taking part, for your nice comments, and for your congratulations to the winner.

"Snowflake, snowflake, how I love thee!"

Now is the time of the year when I start thinking of my new snowflake.  Well, to be honest, as we're already into November, I need to hurry a little!  Sadly I have been struck again (the other arm this time) with tendonitis.  Urgh!  This is preventing me from doing so many of the things I love as they pretty much all involve a lot of small repetitive movements.  I'm trying hard to be patient but there is a lot I'd like to be doing right now.  So only very minimal tatting allowed to try not to aggravate it further.

Not the best situation to try to design a new snowflake in.  *Sad Face*

As I'm sure you know by now, I particularly like to base my snowflake designs on real snowflakes, taken from photos by Wilson Bentley. There is so much variety in real snowflakes!  There are truly fascinating.  Every year recently, when comes time to design a new flake, I flip through the pages of my book and wait for one to catch my eye.  This year, it's this one:

I started first by working on the interestingly shaped tips.  In the first version (top right on the image below) I left the arms unattached as per the real snowflake.   But I find they are a bit too floppy so in my second version, I attached the bottom JKs to each other.  I also slightly changed the shape of the tips to make them look more like the original:  flatter and wider than in my first version.  I added a picot in the middle of the JKs to elongate them, again to look more like the shape of the tips of the real flake.

I'm making good progress but I'm not quite there yet, more testing and sampling required.  I'm pretty happy with the arms but I'm still debating what to do with the centre.  If I want to keep to the straight lines of the real snowflake, I'll have to use lock chains... but I could allow myself a bit of artistic licence and use split rings and chains, which is what I did in the bottom version.  But that centre is too full so I'm testing again to get it looking a bit more like the real snowflake.  I'm also trying my best to keep the proportions right by gauging my samples against the photo so that it's as much like the real thing as possible (as much as thread and tatted lace can be made to look like ice crystals that is!).

Back to the worktable!

Best wishes,

Frivole