The Holly and the Ivy

Here’s the second Christmas garland that I finished this last week.  In these colors it reminds me of holly and ivy.  This one uses a pattern from Priscilla Tatting Book number 2.  I’ve just realized that though I started using this pattern a while back, I never actually posted the pattern or my variation.

It’s always nice when I have very few changes to make on the original pattern.  That’s been the case a lot lately and I think this is because I’m still working on the tea cloth which has lots of changes so I’ve been picking easier patterns to work on as side projects while I struggle through that.  I’ve had my eye on a couple of more complicated projects and I’m trying hard not to start them until I’ve finished up some more of my other works-in-progress.

And here’s one of those former WIPs!  I started this soon after Christmas and decided to just keep going with it until I ran out of the red thread.  Ended up getting just under 7 feet of it.

Here’s the instructions.  My main change was to make the rings of the flower 7-1-7 instead of 8–8.  I don’t like to join all my rings to one center picot because then I have to guess at the right length to make it and because I think it’s stronger if you do a serious of picot joins instead of one large one.  Seems to also make it a lie a bit flatter and more even as well.  Except for that and a pair of Shoe Lace Tricks the pattern pretty much stayed intact.

*R  7-1-7

**Ch 3-3-3-3

R 7+1-7 (join to picot on previous ring)

Repeat from ** 4 more times for a total of 6 rings, joining the second picot of the last ring to the open picot of the first ring.

SLT

Ch 3(-3)x5

R 3+3-3-3 (join to the middle picot of the last chain of the flower.)

Ch 3(-3)x5

SLT

Repeat from * joining the second picot of the first chain in the flower (first 3-3-3-3 chain) to the ring between flowers.  Continue until desired length is reached.

That’s it!  Hope you like it!  Now that I finished off both the Christmas garlands that I started around Christmas last year I’ve been flipping through the Priscilla books to pick out the next on to do.  I think I’ve got a good one picked out, but since it involves changing a single shuttle pattern into one with split rings and maybe even three shuttles with split rings and single-shuttle split rings I want to make sure it works before I post in detail about it.