A Bracelet

 I hesitate to say this because I fear I am just jinxing myself, but I think we've finally gotten a nice routine established that keeps me working in the afternoon. School wasn't the problem really, it was me. Shifting myself from a morning person to an all day active person was a bit of a challenge. As you probably know I'm up at a ridiculous hour and I get an insane amount of stuff done before the kids even wake up. So you can image by the afternoon I'm dragging a bit which meant I wasn't in the mood to get any tatting done especially since schooling has become an all morning activity full of much more work than ever before. Yesterday though it just felt good to work after lunch. I sat down and tackled the bracelet idea.

The first problem to overcome was how to link the motifs for the best visual. First I went with the small ends together as the center, but it just wasn't right that way though I did manage to tackle the second issue at the same time and that was creating a stable and strong join between the motifs while keeping the beading. I went with long beaded picots attached across and it is mighty strong.

Then I decided to go ahead and make the bracelet up with the fat ends together and have these nice beaded sections on the sides. You can probably see my problem here. The design in nice, but joining at one point with a bead is a disaster waiting to happen. So this ended up in the prototype pile as well. For the final piece which is done, but not photographed, I added a three bead long joining picot on either side of the center bead for a similar look as the side beads. More importantly it is not stable and wearable. Hopefully the afternoon energy yesterday wasn't a fluke and I'll get this listed and maybe make it up in the same colors as the earrings and pendants so there are whole matching sets. Of course that has me wondering what creative way I can use the motif to create a choker as well. Not strung together like the bracelet, but maybe hanging down from a base design with a chandelier feeling. Yeah, don't know yet, maybe in a few days that idea will solidify. For now I'll take the progress I've made to productivity and enjoy it.

Oh, one more thing before I go. I've been asked by more than a few people if I plan on sharing this pattern and as I worked yesterday I tried to mentally write it down to see if I could communicate it. I'm afraid it's still a mess as a pattern, there are just these odd things I do to make it work that I have no idea how to write out in a traditional pattern. I know it looks like an onion ring pattern, but as I'm never tried one of those with an existing pattern, they seemed very shuttle specific when I first saw one, I'm not even certain I'm doing it like those are done. It might work in an Instructables format with plenty of pictures to explain what I'm doing, but I don't think I can justify squeezing in a project like that right now. So the answer to the question is, not right now anyway. I may at some point find the time to tackle it, probably during a school vacation or something, but don't hold your breath for it...sorry.