Hearts in our Heads

Its getting closer to Valentine's day and every tatter is thinking about hearts. What could be more appropriate for Valentine's gifts than hand made lace? Gina (http://threadsofatattinggoddess.blogspot.com/) has been making her favorite hearts, most of which are classic designs. Some are ones I've made a lot and some I haven't seen before.

Betsy Evan's rainbow heart bookmark is one of my favorites. I'm too lazy to make six hearts so I only make one heart for a bookmark. My mom and I (mostly my mom)once made over 300 of these hearts. She gave them as a gift at a Special Ladies dinner for the widowed wives of Shriner's. Thankfully, this pattern is still available at: http://www.frontiernet.net/~TammyRodgers/rainbow_heart_bookmark.html.

Just a note to those avid collectors of heart patterns that Jon over at http://tatsaway.blogspot.com/ has shared a new pattern that is very pretty. Its a very unique pattern. In the line of unique hearts, I really like Tattycat's Victorian Heart at http://www.freewebs.com/laurasmuse/heartpatterns.htm. I have to confess that I've never done the pattern but I love the way it looks.

I have been thinking of hearts and since I can never decide on one pattern I just fiddled around. Do you ever wonder why we tend to start at the top when making hearts? I have 2 attempts that turned out so I thought I would share them here. They are relatively simple patterns- I only ask you to do split rings and onion rings.

Love on a Stick
Size 10 thread CTM with 2 yards on each shuttle
p- picot
lp- large picot
vlp- very large picot
vsp- very small picot
R 9 p 1 lp 1vl p 4 vsp 4 vlp 1 lp 1 p 1 9
Ch 30 lj (to vsp) 30 lj to base of ring
SR 10/10
SR 8/8
SR 6/6
SR 4/4
SR 2/2 tie and cut.
Hearty Butterfly

2 shuttles CTM
Seta- 3 1st half stitches
Setb- 3 2nd half stitches
vsp- very small picot
lj-lock join
Shuttle 1:
R1 10 vsp 7 vsp 7 vsp 10
Ch 15
R2 4+ (1st p R1) 4
Ch 15 lj (2nd p R2) 15
R3 4 + (3rd p R1) 4
Ch 15 lj to base of R1
Ch 15
R4 7 seta setb 7 (the next ring is an onion ring but there’s no joins, just make sure that R4 sits in R5)
R5 30
Ch 18 switch shuttles
Shuttle 2 R6 6 vlp 6 cut vlp to make antennas switch shuttles
Ch 3 join back to base of R1 tie and cut.

If you are a huge butterfly person then you're in luck because Sherry has her new book of butterflies hot off the press at http://ladyshuttlemaker.blogspot.com/.