In The Bleak Midwinter...

...or should that be dreich midwinter as there's so much wet and grey weather about?

Thinking of crisp and brighter days:
there are so many wonderful snowflake patterns around...
to narrow them down I started by browsing Helen's snowy white posts from last Christmas... 
and tried this lacy 6 pointer

The pattern is here. 

I liked it.. but it involved a lot of counting and blocking...

Then I used some of the free patterns Deramores published
from 101 Snowflakes to Crochet by Caitlin Sainio.

Nevada

Again the pattern worked well but I found the picots a bit tricky and a lot of pins and spray starch were involved to straighten out the pretty pointy parts.

However after a little tweaking this motif emerged from the hook

and this one...

....which is much chunkier having been hooked in dishcloth cotton!

The yarn and hook size make a big difference to the final appearance and the amount of finishing each requires.

Some of the photos were taken last week when the frosty wind really did make the earth as hard as iron...the others are on the naked Christmas tree!

Today we had some welcome winter sunshine on the shortest day..

Hope you are all finding some calm, still moments in the rushing about!