Obsession

Ever since I made these

for my Giveaway I have been obsessed with making more snowflakes and this time instead of Really Easy snowflakes I offer you some Easy Real snowflakes or at least as close to the real things as I can get.

I think maybe I must be a bit crazy, not only have I spent much of the last few days working out how to create patterns for these snowflakes when I could have been knitting my socks but today I so concentrated on putting together a page for these patterns on the blog that I forgot I’d put the washing on, didn’t have any lunch and didn’t notice it was raining. (So maybe it’s just as well I didn’t hang out the washing! :-))

To me snowflakes are these six sided things made of ice that fall from the sky but I have noticed over the years that some people draw or otherwise create snowflakes with eight sides. I have always imagined that his was either a lack of observation on their part or a rather cavalier attitude due to the fact that eight sides are easier to reproduce than six.

However having found this picture of a five sided snowflake in a book on crochet I borrowed from the library, I have decided that in crochet, snowflake just means a multi-pointed motif.

But just as I wanted to draw my inspiration for my Flower Cloth from real flowers, so I have been determined to base my crochet snowflakes on real snowflakes.

So I returned to this website http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

and put together these photos as ones I should use as inspiration.

All except the top left looked as if they might be possible. And I am still searching for an easy way to do even that one.

I had some white bamboo yarn that I had bought cheaply when it was being sold off by Hobby Craft for only 50p a 50g ball and decided to use it for these new snowflakes. I can’t decide if I like it better than the acrylic or not. It is not such a snowy white but as it is absorbent could be stiffened if I so wished.

So far this is what I have managed to make with this yarn.

I have decided to leave the one that is in the middle of the bottom row, in the picture of snowflakes, at the moment as it has a totally different character to the rest: much more ornate in texture.

And I have yet to work out how to do the one that is top left.

But this gives me seven.

I have now also completed them in acrylic, which gave me a chance to check out the accuracy of the patterns I had written. Acrylic is much easier to work with and I would definitely recommend it or something similar rather than cotton or bamboo for a first attempt.

The Patterns should be available on Ravelry in a few weeks time. (Edited 9th June 2017)

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My first snowflake patterns created snowflakes of different sizes. This time I tried to make them all a similar size.

These snowflakes probably take about 20-30mins each to make.

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Snowflake 1.

 

Snowflake 2.

 

Snowflake 3.

 

Snowflake 4.

 

Snowflake 5.

 

Snowflake 6.

 

Snowflake 7.