Snowflakes, BEANILE Lace, and Invisible Tatting

I had a pretty good time at my parents last weekend, though I didn't get much tatting done. Did some crocheting though. Unfortunately, I didn't see my aunt. So more lessons will have to wait until Christmas. Now on to the tatting. The first motif is Ruth Perry's Celtic Snowflake 2008:

I love Ruth's Celtic designs. For this snowflake I used DMC Cordonnet thread in size 20. Size 20 made a large snowflake. This one is approximately 5 inches from point to point. I will have to make this snowflake again in smaller thread, probably a HDT. For those of you interested, the pattern is available from Ruth's Celtic Tatting group. The actual tatting is easy with only a couple split rings. I used approximately 5.5 yards of thread on shuttle 1 and 7-8 yards of thread on shuttle 2. This is motif #6 for my Second 25 Motif Challenge.

My next motif is a BEANILE Lace pendant designed by Nina Libin:

The pendant is called BNL-162b and is from Nina's newest Lace of Beads book called "#15 Translating Ideas Into Lace". I love Nina's BEANILE (which stands for Beadwork by Nina Libin) lace designs, but threading on all the beads can take a loooooooooooong time. However, with this pendant, and some beads I purchased at Wal*Mart, I discovered a trick to load large amounts of beads. The beads I purchased were prestrung (which is important here). Basically, to transfer the beads from the temporary strand that the beads came on to your tatting thread, you simply tie the two threads together and slide the beads from one thread to the other. Now the beads need to be large enough to pass over the knot (which the beads I tried this with were; some of them were a size 11). Once enough beads are transferred , you can untie or cut the knot and wind your shuttles. Now that I know this, I have to buy more beads that are prestrung. This pendant is motif #7. The pendant was given to my Mom as part of her birthday gift. She loved it.

Finally, I finally tried tatting with Invisible thread. It was, interesting. Here's a picture:

Like I said, the results were interesting. Kind of ethereal looking. This is the centre of Nancy Tracy's Layered Tatted Snowflake, available here. I only wound enough thread to make the centre of the snowflake. Since the invisible thread is really fine, I used four strands together. If I decide to continue, I will probably need to get several more spools of the thread for ease of winding large amounts of thread. You probably don't want to know how I managed to get four strands of thread off of one spool, without dropping them. It wasn't that bad, but I don't think I could explain it. I still need to do some experimenting with the thread. I would like to make a sample to compare the size to other threads. I also had a thought of adding a single strand of metallic filament thread to the invisible thread. And if I could match the thread to a size 20 or 30 thread, the thread might look cool as the fins on my Betta. Now look at what you started Jane! Hopefully I will get some more tatting done. I got some of Pamela's Rainbow thread, so expect to see something made out of it. That's all for now.

A BEANILE Lace Pendant (Motif # 8)

Here is my motif number 8.....


.....I'm just not sure which one. OK, that's not entirely true. I know which one I like, but I would like the opinion of my fellow tatters. Which of these three Green Iris Pendants (by Nina Libin) looks the best? The threads used are as follows:

A: One, three ply strand of DMC Metallic embroidery thread (I believe this is the recommended thread for the pattern).
B: Two strands of DFN 6 strand metallic embroidery floss (with beads I got from Kate in the December 2007 Ornament exchange).
C: Three strands of DFN 6 strand metallic embroidery floss.

All three used size 11 beads. The beads in A and C are Japanese Delicas. You may wonder why I made three of the pendants in different sizes/kinds of thread. I wasn't happy with the results I was getting with the DMC metallic embroidery thread. I contacted Nina to see if I was using the wrong thread. Apparently that was (one of) the thread(s) she was using. I suggested using metallic 6 strand embroidery floss. I guess she wasn't aware of metallic 6 strand embroidery floss, and suggested I try 2 or three strands to see how they work.

I would love to hear what you all think about the three pendants, so please leave comments about them. Oh, and the losing pendant will be cut apart for bead recovery. The cost of the Delicas requires it. My favourite is C, which is my choice for motif #8:


Besides the tatting I have been doing (I have a couple projects in progress), I was hoping to transplant my baby African Violets this weekend. Here is a picture:

As you can see, some of the pots are quite full of little baby violets. Of course, once they are repotted, I will probably have twice (or even thrice) the number of African violets when I am done. It's a good thing that most of the ones pictured are miniatures.