Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who voted in the 2016 Craftree Awards, and congratulations to all of the winners! I was (and still am) quite embarrassed to find that I've won in two categories. There are loads of talented tatters and designers, may of which were not included (as each category was limited to five nominations). When it came time to vote, I found it very difficult to choose!

As for tatting projects, I've switched gears and have started making snowflakes for the holiday season. I wanted to try using Joëlle Paulson's technique for adding Swarovski crystals to the center of a snowflake, as seen in her Crystal Star pattern. Joëlle provides a 52 mm picot gauge to add five crystals to the center of her star. With a little bit of math I calculated that six crystals would need a 62 mm picot gauge, and luckily it worked out!

I love working with DMC thread whenever possible, so I designed this to be used with DMC size 80 Cordonnet Cotton:

My next version will be tatted with rings in the center instead of beads, and I'm going to play around with the stitch counts to see how it looks with less negative space.