Do you ever feel frustrated when a pattern does not work out the way you thought it would?

This snowflake design by Luella Rossow is shown here in a
Better Homes & Gardens Special Interest Publications, Christmas Ideas, magazine from around 1992, I think. I love the way it looks.

And here are MY attempts at the same pattern! Can you see the difference? The centers are almost completely filled in with the first two. I tatted the third one differently.

The directions say to use size 20 thread. There was a ball of white thread on the table next to me without a label but I thought it was size 20. When I saw how closely the chains came to the center, my first thought was that I must have a ball of size 10 thread instead. So I tatted it again, this time in size 30 thread which is the middle motif in the second scan. Same result.

See the negative space in this one, a cropped motif from the original photo, where the center is separated from the outer round chains? I happen to really like that bit of negative space and I want it in the one I tat for me.

I started another one making the chains differently and with the outer rings of the clover one stitch bigger on each side. I was using the thread left on the shuttle and only got through three repeats but I could tell the effect was not what I wanted.

So I tried this one with fewer picots on the clovers and also fewer picots on the chains with more stitches between picots. It did lay flatter before blocking than the other two, and there is a bit more negative space, but it doesn't look like the original. I'm not sure that adding back the extra picots at the clovers will make a difference. I think the problem is actually with the chains but I can't figure out what to do. The original had 3 tiny picots with 2 stitches between. For this one, I made 2 tiny picots with 3 stitches between. I'm going to try one more, maybe 3 tiny picots with only 1 stitch between. That will shorten the chains and possibly open up more negative space.

What do you think????

And yes, I know a snowflake has 6 points. This one is described in the instructions as a snowflake, even though it has 7 points. I don't really care about the technical definition. I just want it to look the way I expected!