My beginnings....

So I mentioned on my first post that I am a beginner.  I taught myself this past June.  Thanks to Jane Eborall's wonderful website mostly.  But it occurred to  me today that I have never shared some of my very very earliest of workings.... so here they are... please don't laugh to hard.... or do it's okay :o)

So this first picture is my very first butterfly and my first (and only come to think of it) "chain" of single colored split rings the butterfly was done in Lizbeth 20 Spring Garden and then split rings were just done in embroidery floss.

And then there's this huge thing and if you know the pattern and and author of the pattern could you enlighten me?  I had never though that I would actually share this piece so I didn't write down the source.  Also since I messed up with the center by adding a extra stitches... I just kept it that way for the whole middle flower.  It is not that way in the original pattern.  But anyway, I actually did this one with "braiding cord" I guess that's what you'd call it... that or hemp.  And this thing is slightly longer than the length of my forearm, which is 8 inches.. and this piece is 10 inches.  ( I took the time to measure both of these mid sentence.)

So I think I've improved don't you?

*** update... if you are wondering, at this point in my hobby I had not yet discovered clover shuttles(which I love) and while I had a susan bates shuttle I didn't care for it.  So I was using wooden clothespin exclusively for the huge bookmark and the single colored split rings.  I did however use the susan bates for the butterfly.