Rose Window

About a week ago I completed another one of Jon's lovely patterns.  In fact, I like it almost as much as much as her Sweet Rose pattern!  The whole concept of negative space is often mentioned with designing, but I have to say I am unconvinced.  My personal preference is for a more compact piece of lace with not much negative space.  I think both Rose Window and Sweet Rose are perfect patterns in terms of the density of lace.

Some working notes:

• I made the center as a separate round since I didn't want to wind the shuttles CTM.  Right as I closed the ring, I realized I should have adjusted the stitch count to start with 1 ds and not 2.  Since I started with 2, there are 3 ds at the start of the ring.  It's not very obvious, but something I will keep in mind if/when I repeat the pattern.
• The pattern bowled like crazy when I completed the first round!  I seriously wondered how it would ever lie flat!
• As soon as the second and third rounds were completed the snowflake lay flat!  It's a little ruffled as you can see by the shading in the scan, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would look when the second round was completed.
• I didn't think too far ahead when starting the third round.  I did wind the shuttles CTM, but didn't realize that rounds 2 and 3 were worked in one pass.  I had *barely* enough thread wound on the second shuttle, but luckily I didn't have to add more.
• I made a mistake in the first clover of the third round (top right hand side).  If rounds 2 and 3 had been made separate I would have cut it out, but I didn't want to cut off two rounds.  I decided I could live with it, but id does bother me a bit.  The mistake will make a good excuse to make another snowflake:)

Made with DMC special dentelles 80 in white.