Cro-tat hooks & snowflakes

Well, so much for keeping my blog updated regularly. For the second February in a row, I've spent most of the month experiencing varying degrees of migraine hell. On the bright side, through most of the times when it was possible to focus my eyes without pain, I kept on churning out snowflakes as a way of keeping my mind off the headache. So I have a backlog of snowflakes to show off, but I think I'll start with the most recent ones and gradually work my way backward in time.

The latest news is that a friend got me a set of Prym cro-tat hooks, so I've been re-learning how to cro-tat. I had tried it out back around 2001 or so with a hook I'd gotten from Annie's Attic,  but the hook was so huge (2mm or more!) that it was just about impossible to make neat looking cro-tatted rings in size 10 thread.

My new set of Prym cro-tat hooks has three sizes of hook to choose from: 1 mm, 1.5 mm, and 2 mm. For size 10 thread I've been using the 1.5 mm hook, since that one is the closest to the 1.65 mm (size 7) hook I prefer for size 10 thread.

Here are a the hooks, and a couple of their cro-tatted snowflake byproducts:

Here is the 1.5 mm Prym cro-tat hook compared to a Boye size 7:

There is definitely a knack to cro-tatting, and at the beginning it was very clear that I didn't have it. However, after practicing by making a bunch of classic tatted "flowers" (clusters of interlocking rings), then four snowflakes, I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting the hang of how to manage the thread as I'm drawing the final loop of thread through the core of all the tatted stitches on the cro-tat hook.

I'm also finding that it's working best for me to do most of the crocheting of the snowflake using my usual vintage Boye 7 hook, and only switch to the cro-tat hook to make the tatting-style rings. It feels to me that the handle on these is too far away from the business end of the hook, so if I try to do normal crochet with it, I end up grasping it somewhere around the middle, just above where the handle ends. And for full disclosure, I should confess that I always hate using any sort of steel (thread) hooks that have handles, so disliking using this one is not unexpected, and YMMV.

Another factor which I've found helpful (or not) is which thread I'm using to cro-tat. Today I tried using a ball of Red Heart crochet thread which I was not, in general, terribly in love with, but it worked amazingly well for cro-tatting. This thread is kind of... stiff? resilient?? It's the opposite of floppy. I've found that when using softer threads, splitty bits of the thread comprising the tatted stitches is more likely to get caught on the hook as I'm pulling the final loop through the cores of those tatted stitches.

Beaded Snowflakes II

The beaded snowflakes have continued, inspiring me to trek out to a favorite bead store. I'd sought but not found this store the last time I passenger-ed past, so I'd been mourning its demise, fortunately without any grounds in reality. Its recently-updated Facebook page confirmed that it still existed, and when I got there it exactly where it had always been, though the neighborhood context has shifted.

Which is not surprising; now I've torn through the mental archives in search of bead-related evidence, I've reconstructed that I hadn't been out there since before 9/11/2001. I remember working off my 9/11 stress by crocheting unreasonably small beaded snowflakes in tatting thread. Tatting thread turned out to like sizes 13º & 15º seed beads, relatively rare items, especially the 15º. It turned out that of all the bead stores in Portland, A Bead Source has the only decent selection of unreasonably small seed beads, and the best selection of seed beads overall.

Today poverty constrained me to a limited budget, but a bead store can be a lovely low-budget shopping venue. Though an extra cool hank of beads can run as high as $8.50, these two tubes together cost only slightly more than $5 (size 7 steel hook added for scale).

You may note that these are at off at the other end of the spectrum from 9/11's delicate 15º beads. I've decided that I prefer the look of 8º beads with size 10 thread snowflakes. And I'm working a lot in size 10 thread these days, now have my fresh cone of Garden 10, (as well as what remains of a once football-sized mega-ball of natural (unbleached cotton color) Coat's Royale 10).

Here are a couple of the (eek, still unblocked) snowflakes I've made over the past couple of days.... which are among the patterns I still need to write down. But on the less negligent side of the ledger, today I wove in the ends of all the beaded snowflakes I've made so far.

I'm feeling frustrated with my camera & photo-processing skills, since the beads don't show at all. On the top flake they beads are a warm, silk finished silver color, and on the lower flake they're a pearly eggshell. I'm hoping to better pictures of them once they're blocked. That should happen once I've finished my latest glue testing experiment in beaded-snowflake blocking.

Beaded Snowflakes

I've found myself on a beaded snowflake kick for the a couple of days now. I know my obsessive streak is kicking in when logistics and engineering of a crafty situation begin occupying my insomnia. I was driven from my bed to my hook the other morning by mental crocheting, with badly focused video  playing in my head: various different methods of creating 3-bead trefoil picots. The blurriness of the mental video finally drove me to accept that real string would be needed to bring things into focus.

This evenings conundrum is how to get a bead to sit right on top of a stitch, thwarting it's yen to slide off toward the back of my work. If anyone has good suggestions for this, please comment. I think I may take the question to Ravelry.

First I was using my new Garden 10 thread, and some old silver-lined rochaille beads (i.e. donut shaped beads that are clear with a silver lining. Very sparkly!), found cheap at at a craft store, ages ago. Here I was playing around with variations on a design. (warning: unblocked snowflakes ahead. and unfortunately the beads are far less sparkly in this pic than in real life).

I think the simplest one, on the far right, works the best. The center on the left one is too busy. The second one isn't bad. But the third has a simple grace.

What I realized, though, was that my craft store beads sucked. They were all irregular in size, and some had wonky holes. So my friend and I placed an order at Shipwreck Beads, and I shall have good quality beads arriving with the Monday mail. And because I knew I'd go crazy waiting in the meanwhile, I picked up couple of hanks at the bead store whilst erranding downtown on Friday.

Here they are, with a couple of snowflakes I made up to test them out:

The sea-greenish ones on the left are cloudy but translucent blue-green glass, with a rainbow-y finish (Aurora Boralis). The brownish ones on the right are clear glass lined with metallic copper, precisely the beads I'd been looking for. The sea-green ones had to come home too, since they were color of sun through ice, and thus appropriate for snowflakes.

Here are better pictures of the two snowflakes. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the green-bead snowflake is made with white thread, and the copper bead snowflake with ecru (both Cebelia 20).

Tomorrow I'll make a few more of that particular snowflake, and then write down the pattern. Maybe also the rightmost of the first three snowflakes, though maybe not tomorrow.

Double Pillar Snowflake

Please comment if you find a mistake. I've tried to test this pattern, but it's hard to catch mistakes when you already know how it's all supposed to go...

ch 6, join w/ sl st in first ch

Rnd 1: ch1, 12 sc in ring, join w/ sl st in first sc

Rnd 2: ch 3, dc in next sc, [ch 7, dc in each of the next 2 sc] five times, ch 4, dc in 3rd ch of beg ch 3 to join (this dc counts as second half of a ch 7 sp).

Rnd 3: ch 1, 4 sc covering dc just made, * sc between next 2 dc, in next ch 7 sp work [4 sc, ch 3, 4 sc], repeat from * 4 more times, 4 sc in first/final ch lp, join with dc into first sc of round (this dc counts as a ch 3 sp)

Rnd 4: ch 3 (counts as first dc), dc in same ch 3 sp, *ch 3, sl st between 2 dc just made, ch 7, sl st in 4th ch from hook (first picot made), ch 7, sl st in 7th ch from hook, ch 4, sl st in 4th ch from hook, sc in each of the 2 chains before first picot, ch 1, 2dc in same ch 3 sp, ch 3, sl st between 2 dc just made, ch 5, sl st in the sc of previous round which was worked between 2 dc of round 2, ch 3, sl st in same sc, ch 5, 2 dc in ch 3 sp at tip of next point.* Repeat from * to * 5 more times, omitting last 2 dc on final repeat. Instead, join in 3rd ch of beg. ch 3. Finish off.

I'm planning to try to learn how to chart my snowflake patterns. Would this be a feature you'd use and enjoy? Please comment to let me know :)

Binder full of snowflakes

Last night's big project was decorating the binder containing my collection of snowflake crochet patterns. The old blue cardboard binder was way too small, not to mention falling apart at the seams, so last month I'd picked up a cheap, sturdy, and very bland white vinyl replacement on sale at Fred Meyer (along with a bunch of glue for stiffening my snowflakes).

The first plan had been to slide crocheted snowflakes into the transparent view pockets of the new binder, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to stay put once they got in there. Meanwhile, my roommate Donna has put together an awesome array of die-cutting supplies, so instead I used some of her many snowflake dies to cut silver contact paper into snowflake shapes, and from there it was simply peel and stick onto the new binder.

Well, peel, and then the various arms of the snowflakes would stick to each other. But with a bit of cleverness I was able to outsmart them and get them stuck onto the binder where they belonged. The trick seemed to be to get the center of the snowflake placed right where I wanted it, while keeping the arms fluffed up and out of the way. Then I carefully stretched out each arm and pressed it into place.

Garden Thread

I'm starting out very excited about thread. Lots of thread. A big cone of Garden 10, to be exact. Here is a picture of my cone, sitting next to it's little brother, an ordinary 50g ball of the same thread.

And here it is contemplating its fate:

The second shot was taken to illustrate what I did with the spoils of my first holiday craft fair booth, where I sold (of course) crocheted snowflakes. It seemed fitting to recycle my profits back into snowflaking supplies.

I really like this Garden thread, made in Turkey out of Egyptian cotton, by a company called Nazli Gelin (which means "shy bride" in Turkish). It's very glossy and smooth, which makes it a joy to work with.

But there seems to be some variation in batches. The 50g balls I bought to test out the thread were smoother and shinier, but not quite twisted tightly enough, so the thread was a bit splitty. With the cone I've had no splitting problems, but the thread doesn't feel quite as smooth or look quite so glossy. I don't think that shiny smoothness and non-splittiness are mutually exclusive, I just think my results were the luck of the draw. But either way, it's still lovely thread to work with.

It can be bought through Universal yarn, in sizes 3, 5, and 10, in cones or balls, and in many different colors. It's also availabe from Herrschners.