JANE EBORALL'S MYSTERY 2018 TIAS

Jane Eborall's 2018 TIAS (tat it and see)
Link:  http://tatitandsee.blogspot.com/   (look in the top right frame for day links)

DAY 1, Jan 21, 2018:   Ok, here's my day 1 work, with 2 pic/guesses:

Day 2, Jan 21, 2018:   My note and guess to Jane:  OH NO!   THOSE POOR ANTS!   This is taking a sinister turn.... I’m going to hide under the covers!

DAY 3, Jan 24, 2018:  As soon as I saw the pattern, I KNEW it was a chain saw sawing a log - but that's all I saw!   Then another participant, Sherri, caught a pic of FOXES sledding down a hill on a log sled!  With this new clue, I realized who it was that was using that saw! 

DAY 4, Jan 27, 2018 ~ My note & guess to Jane:

Last winter, our local zoo had a pre-mature hippo named Fiona, who has become world famous!   Last year, I saw your old TIAS for a hippo, I knew I had to make a Fiona of my own!    Now I see how silly all my previous guesses were, when all along, you were making the nice birthday surprise that Fiona loves – a watermelon!   You fooled me again, Jane!

DAY 4, Jan 27, 2018 ~ My note & guess to Jane:
Last winter, our local zoo had a pre-mature hippo named Fiona, who has become world famous! Last year, I saw your old TIAS for a hippo, I knew I had to make a Fiona of my own! Now I see how silly all my previous guesses were, when all along, you were making the nice birthday surprise that Fiona loves – a watermelon! You fooled me again, Jane!

BOOK: A Flurry of Snowflakes (cro-tat) Snowflake No. 3.

The body of this snowflake is all crocheted, so on the second round I decided to swap out to a reg crochet hook, as this was not ring and chain, ring and chain, just crocheting and a little harder with no comfortable place to hold for a long time, on the cro-tat hook. I will say that for some odd reason, the mm size of cro-tat hooks does not match the sizes of crochet hooks. Since my cro-tat hook is a 1mm, I searched for a size 13/1mm crochet hook - nothing alike in size. Comparing sizes, I settled on a size 8 steel hook, switching to the cro-tat hook in the last round when rings and chains would finally come together for true cro-tatting.   I used Hobby Lobby's Artiste Egyptian Cotton Thread with 1mm cro-tat hook and size 8/1.50mm crochet hook.

I took about 2 hours to make, and about 2 hours to get a pic that didn't have something stupid showing up in it! I painted the back with mod podge glossy, to stiffen it.

JANUARY 8, 2018:   Valentines Fridgie

I saw these wonderful variegated colors in a package at Walmart for just under $4 and didn’t know if I’d be able to cro-tat with them, but for so cheap, I wasn’t worried about losing money on them, and I’d probably be able to do something with them, if they didn’t work. They are a very small amount on each embroidery floss skein, and so I figured flowers & leaves, which are often part of cro-tatting, would work fine with them. One thing, the threads should never have had any separating to them, you want them to still be very close together, like pearl cotton, which doesn’t divide. I worried if it would stay together, since it is divisible, unlike pearl cotton, that isn’t, but it did pretty good. It also helps that I now have some experience cro-tatting so can work with more difficult thread. I did have a few places where I caught a single thread out of the group, but not so many that it was hard to work with. With the 6 strands intact, I used the annie’s cro-tat hook (6) which is very similar in size to prym 1.5 cro-tat boullion hook.

I was just about finished, coming up the last half of the outside rim of the heart, when my skein ran out. Naturally, I was not happy to have to open another skein, and use about 45” from it. I did find one that had an end that was the same color the old one left off with, so no loss there.  It took about 2 hours.

Pattern is from crotatters yahoo group and one must join to get access to the patterns. Once a member it is in the files as 2003 tat-a-long, pattern by Amy Yendall. 
Group: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/crotatters/info