Snowflakes

A new design in progress is never a pretty thing.

I knew I wanted to make a snowflake starting with a spiral center, but I wasn't quite sure where I was headed from there. The first try, at the top, had too many rings around the edge of the spiral, plus I wasn't doing so well with the 3-ring clusters in the next round. On the next attempt, I had the general shape of the thing right, although some stitch counts needed to be adjusted. Then on the last round, I could see after the first section that it wasn't working, so I did something different with each subsequent repeat just to see what I liked. On the third one, at the bottom, I had something that almost worked, except that the last round still didn't lie flat, and also it was just too round for a snowflake.

Jon and Jane make designing look so easy, maybe because they have enough sense not to post their failures.

Finally, I got it. I give you "Ice Crystal":

 It needed something to break up the long chains on the outer round, and regular rings just weren't working, so I finally hit on split rings. Also, thanks to the magic of split rings and SCMR's, this whole flake can be worked without cutting and tying. This is done in the "Icicle" colorway by LadyShuttleMaker. You would think I would have enough sense not to design in expensive HDT, but each time I really thought I had it. That'll learn me.

I've made a couple of other snowflakes lately, but these designs are older. 

If you've followed my blog for a while, you've seen this design before. It's "Angels in the Snow", for which I had a giveaway contest a few months back for the best name (the winner was Linda). This time I've done it in LadyShuttleMaker's "Winter Haze". And yes, that's a cat hair.

Finally, a design you haven't seen before, but which I did a couple of years ago for a round robin snowflake exchange. This was my first real attempt at designing. I call it "Starflower" because I can make it look more like a star or more like a flower, depending on how pointy I make the points when I block it. This is Yarnplayer's "Snowflake" thread. The scan really doesn't do the colors justice.

This brings up the question, is it really a snowflake if it's not white? Well, no, it's a 6-pointed motif. But these are all winter-inspired colorways, and anyway, we've gotten so much in the habit of calling any 6-pointed motif a snowflake, why stop now? Just don't eat the yellow snow.