Little Crochet Snowflake Earrings

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For Christmas I made the tiniest crochet snowflake earrings for my Mom and sister.  The pattern I used can be found here.  Please note it uses UK terms (if you read dc in UK terms, make a sc in US terms). The real challenge with these earrings isn't the pattern, it's working with tatting cotton.  I used a magnifying light to help me see and save my eyes.  I also stiffened them with some glue and water while I blocked them, and painted them with a light coat of sparkly nail polish to make them shimmer.

The Littlest Crochet Flower

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My Irish Crochet materials finally arrived!

From Top Left: DMC Cardonnet Special 30 in white, DMC Cardonnet Special 40 in white, DMC tatting cotton (size 80) in medium plum, Boye steel crochet hooks in sizes 7, 11, 12 and 14.

For anyone who's not familiar with crochet thread sizes, the higher the number, the thinner the thread.  The same goes for the hooks, the higher the number, the smaller the hook!

The first thing I did was create a teeny tiny flower motif using the tatting cotton.

Yes, that's my thumb!

For comparison, here it is next to a flower of extremely similar pattern (the big one has a few more stitches in each petal) where the big one is done in what I think is size 10 thread (it was just in my stash and I didn't have a label).  

It was much more difficult to crochet with the size 80 thread!  It was a welcome challenge though, as I haven't felt challenged by the grab-the-yarn-and-pull-it-through process since I was a kid.


I had to adjust the pattern for the thread size (80) and hook size (14).  Here's a pattern for those sizes of thread and hook, which is based on my tiny flower motif pattern (the bigger motif in the picture).  I realized that for these sizes, you didn't need 25 double crochet in the initial loop, so it's reduced to 20, and the rest of the pattern is appropriately scaled:

Irish Crochet Practice

Hi readers! The patterns associated with this post have moved to my new blog at the following links: 

Three Petal Flower

Tiny Flower

Old Posts:

I've been working on some "practice" Irish crochet motifs before my new thread and hooks come in next week.

First I tried some doily motif's from a copy of The Harmony Guide to Crochet Stitches.  I don't have a small enough hook yet, so they're too loose, but getting used to working with thread instead of yarn was the most important goal. The motifs are called Mica and Floribunda.

Next I moved on to some free form crochet based on some pictures I've seen around on Irish crochet.  I ended up developing the patterns below for the tiny flower and the 3 petal flower (stem added in picture below).

Tiny flower

Three-petal flower