FdA 958

Here it is:

I like it, of course.

Here's a close-up of the floral motifs:

Now on to the next doily!  Which starts by dithering over whether I have enough thread to make Lavori 7/30 and if it's good enough quality.

I expect the 210-round doily to take somewhere between 1500 and 2000 yards of thread.  Do I have 2000 yards of anything I'm willing to use?  Is 2200 yards of thread excessive?  Is 1600 yards enough?

Also, the vintage Clark's thread is kind of meh in quality, or at least the #30 is.  I might have enough of it, but should I try to get something better?  A large doily is a serious time commitment.

Luckily I have plenty of other things to distract me while I dither.

Today's doily post -- Blocking FdA 958 and other related musings

FdA 958 is done and on the blocking board.  My blocking board is currently a large-ish flattened cardboard box.  But it works well enough given that I'm not trying particularly hard to do a really precise job.

Here is the doily, all pinned out and drying:

I stood at the bottom of the box when taking the photo so everything is slightly trapezoidal.

Initial thoughts...

The flower motifs aren't all that distinct in spite of the textural tricks that are in the pattern.  Crossed stitches, k5tog, purls, twisted stitches, nine-to-five decreases -- it's all pretty muted.

The above is a close-up of the flower motifs from two repeats.  It was fun to knit, but the results are underwhelming, alas.  Simpler texture stitches would have been just as effective, I suspect.  Or maybe it would have been better in a different-weight thread, or done with a less gauzy knitting gauge.

I still have no idea what flower it is supposed to represent, if any.

Also, I had a consistent problem with the lines of yo-sk2p-yo.

As you can see, the right-hand side is very consistently larger/looser than the left hand side.  I had a similar though less obvious problem with general yarnovers, too -- the last one in the fan motif before doing a leaf motif is smaller than the first one of the fan motif after a leaf motif.  I'm not sure if this is happening during the pattern round, or if it's something about how the stitches shift around on the intermediate round.  But it's kind of depressing to see, and I'll have to think about if/how/whether I can do anything to minimize this in future doilies.

I don't think it made any real difference that I twisted the k-tbls on the intermediate rounds in the early part of the doily.  The purled purls also do not stand out in any way -- perhaps they'd be a little more noticeable as garter stitch than purls?  Or maybe it doesn't matter.

I made a few mistakes in the doily.  Or rather, made a mess in a few places with dropped stitches or whatever that were hard to recover perfectly.  My imperfect repairs are not at all obvious.

The pattern is 104 rounds, there are 8 pattern repeats per round, and the chart is error-free.  It was fun to knit.  I'm not disappointed in the results -- no regrets at all!  I like the silly motifs and enjoyed seeing/experiencing how the designer developed the different layers of motifs.

It is very Niebling-esque, so this is either a pattern from his design house, or from a designer using his known motifs to create a variation on a theme.

I'll make another post with a picture after the doily is dry and unpinned.  And then this doily will get stuffed into a drawer with all the others.  Though it's actually a box/bin these days.  I have too many finished doilies for the drawer.  I do give some away or it would be even worse.

I used about 75-80% of the 50g ball of DMC Cebelia #30.  There's enough left for another doily if the doily isn't too big.  Depending on the pattern, something between 40 and 60 rounds might be possible.

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More double-decrease musings -- not that this is terribly profound or anything, but in addition to the effects of changing around which stitch is on top (and thus the direction of the decrease), one can knit through back loops, slip stitches as if to purl so that they're twisted when they pass over the others, take the lower two stitches in a different order, and so on.

For FdA 958, I slipped a stitch as if to knit, knit 2 together, then passed the slipped stitch over.  The slipped stitches were open rather than twisted after going over the live stitches.  Ditto for the 9-to-4 decrease that closed off the main part of the flowers.

For the k5tog, I simply did a k5tog, nothing fancy about the order in which the stitches were taken.  They are right-leaning decreases, period.  Sometimes I could get all five stitches in one fell swoop.  Other times, I'd knit 2 or 3 together, then pass the next few over, one at a time, being careful to not drop them all off the needle.

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OK, so now it's time for doily dithering!  It's both fun and stressful.

I could use the rest of the Cebelia 30 to make a small doily.  I have several candidates in mind -- there are tons of cute little patterns I could bang out.

There are other FdA doilies that are <100 rounds or so that appeal to me.

Or I could do another serious project.

At the smaller end (in terms on number of rounds), there's the vintage probably-FdA Napperon Carré pattern I mentioned earlier -- French, words only, the left column slightly cut off so it'll be hard to see what's going on until I get there (unless I chart it out first).  It's a bit more complicated to deal with than if it was simply a chart, so that's why I am calling this a potential "serious" project.  The main doily is 88 rounds.  Then one does a crochet cast-off, and then picks up stitches from those loops to do an edging.  That goes to round 112 and then one does the second and final cast-off.  And of course I could just do the center part and skip the outer edging, maybe doing a few rounds of knit stitches to give it a border of sorts.

If I want to do something larger, there's Gloxiniaeflora, which always seems to fall into the "next time for sure!" category for me.  This doily is 168 rounds, so it's more of a commitment than a <120 round doily.  It's a lovely design, but maybe I should keep the ideal in my head rather than being disappointed in its reality.  In particular, the flowers worry me -- will they be distinct little motifs or will they be kind of muddy, the way that the flowers of Lavori 7/18 Centrino "Le Campanelle" turned out to be?

Or should I do a >200 round doily?  I don't think I yet have the stamina (or thread) for a 300+ round doily.  But there are some fabulous ones that are 200-250 rounds, give or take a bit, and I feel capable of slogging through something of that size.  In particular, I'm thinking of one of the Lavori 7 doilies -- Lavori 7/30 Centro Copritavolo.  It's the cover doily and is wonderfully Niebling-esque.  There are flowers and leaves and plenty of hex mesh.  It's a bit weird-looking but not too bizarre.

I love a couple of other obscure big doilies from Lavori 7 -- figures 31 and 10 -- but both are over 300 rounds and I don't think I want to take them on just yet.  I'm also fond of figure 5 "Le Campanule" at 252 rounds, but if/when I do that one, I'll probably use the charts from Burda 554/35.  Hmm, I also someday want to do 554/33, also known as Pfingstrose, a 176 round pattern.  Plus there are a few more Burda 554 doilies on my to-do list, and also some of the other Lavori 7 doilies.  (and then I go off on a tangent of everything I want to do someday...)

Ahem.  My want-to-do list is very long.  But I'm trying to keep my choices from overwhelming me into analysis paralysis.

Today I'm inclined towards Lavori 7/30, assuming I have enough thread or can easily acquire enough.

And of course I might well do something else entirely!

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Anything non-doily to add?  Hmmm, not really, though I still do need to cast on and/or commit to a few knitting projects so I'll have something for meetings and travel and such.  And ditto for the other things I do.  My guess is that I'll probably do a bit of tablet-weaving before getting serious about a large doily.  But maybe not.  With a large doily, I know it'll be a long-term project so I can multi-task rather than concentrating on only the one thing.

And because I feel a need to share -- today I found a small bird's nest in my yard.  It's on the ground inside of a fern, next to my house.  I startled the parent bird today as I walked past.  It flew off and chirped angrily at me for a while.  There are at least 4 small blue-ish eggs in the nest.  I hope they can hatch and move on quickly since I'm probably having work done on the house in a few months and don't want to have to postpone it until the babies fly off.  This assumes that the eggs hatch and the babies survive, of course!  I'm not sure what kind of bird it is, but maybe a chickadee or sparrow?  I couldn't see exactly what it was beyond it having black on its head.

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Here's a doily pic to finish off this post:

It's Lavori 11/39, a cute little 22-round doily.  I have no idea who the designer is/was.

Progress report on the current doily

I am more likely to keep this blog alive if I post even when I don't have a completed project to show.  And also if the posts are nattering to myself instead of trying to entertain or edify my imaginary readers.  My guess is that most of my former readers have long moved on to other blogs and forums and what-not.  These days I get more spam comments than real ones.  But that's fine.  I am content to write out my thoughts and post the occasional pic whether or not anyone else cares or sees it.

I am nearing the end of the current doily, yay!  FdA 958 is a 104-round doily and I finished round 94 earlier today.  Ten more rounds to go before I can cast off.  The number of stitches is slowly climbing but it's not too ghastly.  I think I have well under 10,000 stitches remaining though still more than 5000.

It's kind of a cool-looking doily though of course I won't know for sure what I think until it's blocked.  The inner rounds had round-ish flower motifs with crossed stitches and 9-to-5 decreases and other fun stuff.  That's long past.  Now I'm closing up the outer leaf motifs and working on the outer fan motifs.

I wonder what kind of flowers these are meant to be, if indeed they're meant to be anything beyond a stylized floral shape?  They could be fuchsias, maybe.

The above snip is from the FdA photo and shows the innermost hex mesh, the four flower motifs, and the start of the leaf motifs.

I tried above to outline the different areas of the motif into what I think are the different parts of the flower.  The lower part looks like an inner flower or maybe is meant to be stamens or pistils or something.  It ends with k5togs as the crossed stitches of the mid-level get going.  I'm not totally sure, but I think the lines of crossed stitches sort of define three petals or sepals or something.  Then the flower closes with a lot of decreases, with the little elliptical bit above.  The elliptical bit above is outlined in crossed stitches and filled with purls.  I don't know if it's meant to be garter stitch or reverse stockinette, but I chose to twist the twisted stitches and purl the purled stitches on the intermediate rounds.

I am not a botanist and don't feel like looking up the actual names of the flower parts.

Here's a random internet grab of real fuchsia flowers:

There is definitely a resemblance.  I'm not familiar enough with popular ornamental flowers and wildflowers of mid-20th-century Europe to have other ideas about what the flower motifs might represent, if anything.  Also, Niebling did several different fuchsia motifs in doilies over the years.  Dunno if this was one of them, or if he gave semi-random names to his flower doilies, or if the editor did, or what.  Whatever he intended, the motifs in my current doily do look like little stylized flowers of some sort.

All of the flower motifs in this doily are the same except that the little elliptical thing at the top of the outermost flower is one pattern-round shorter than the inner two layers of flower motifs.  I was rather tired of them by that point and was happy to move on to the next part of the doily.

The outer leaves are pretty basic Niebling leaves, found in a lot of his other patterns, and ditto for the outer fans -- a familiar motif from his other patterns.  Even these flowers look a lot like the motifs in the pattern on page 77 of Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling (edited by Eva Maria Leszner).  In my opinion, the leaf motifs don't look at all like real fuchsia leaves, though.

I feel pretty comfortable about the amount of thread I have left.  Whew.  I'll probably have enough #30 left to do another small doily, especially if I choose something simple.

I'm dreaming of future doilies.  This is a good thing.

Also, I'm having various thoughts about double decreases.  This pattern has a lot of them.  I'm not thinking things through all that seriously, but double decreases can be maneuvered to have different stitches on top, to appear to be right-leaning (K3T), left-leaning (SK2P or SSSK) or vertical (S2KP).  Sometimes it matters which one to choose and sometimes it doesn't.  Charts usually use only one symbol to represent a double-decrease (usually either SK2P or K3T) though I usually consider that to be more of a suggestion than a hard-and-fast requirement.  For this pattern, I chose to keep them all as SK2P even in areas with vertical lines.

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Here's a pic of a doily I knit a long time ago.  It's a cute little thing, a pattern by Christine Duchrow, pattern 64/05.  It's nothing terribly special, but that's perfectly OK.  I enjoyed knitting it and I like how it turned out.

I still need to get some travel projects going.  But I keep picking up the in-progress doily and doing another pair of rounds instead.  At this rate, hopefully I'll be done in another week or so.

The First Doily of Spring 2025 and other blatherings

I started a new doily today.  It's an FdA pattern that doesn't seem to be on Ravelry, not that it matters.  It has a chart and a bit of a description, all in French.  I think the original publication had a text version of the pattern but only rounds 45-59 are preserved in the copy I have.  That's OK -- a chart is easier to work from.

This is almost certainly a Herbert Niebling pattern.  It starts with hex mesh, so there are already rounds that begin and end with yarnovers by round 7.  Soon it starts getting into crossed stitches, k5tog, make-10, and other fun stuff.  Well, I think it's fun.

The motifs are ones I've seen in other Niebling patterns.  In addition to hex mesh that begins and ends with yarnovers, there are a couple of rings of a flower-like motif, and then a leaf motif and some fans.  I've seen all of these motifs in other patterns that are explicitly credited to Niebling.

It's a bit more than 100 rounds.  I'm already somewhere in the 30s, so maybe 1/10 done or so.  I found a full ball of DMC Cebelia #30 in my stash so that's what I'm using.  I should have enough to do the whole doily, I hope.  One never knows, though.

Here's a picture of another doily that I knit with a different ball of DMC Cebelia #30.  This pattern is not much more than 100 rounds, but I used almost all of the thread, yikes!

This is Lavori 11/35.  It's in the Ravelry database as Stern (star) since apparently it was called that in an earlier publication, Neue Mode Sonderheft 5601: Kunststricken.  I used the chart and Italian-language instructions in Lavori 11.

Although this is a pretty doily, it was not as much fun to knit as I had hoped.  For one thing, it has a LOT of stitches per round.  Lots and lots.  Way more than seemed necessary at the time.  That's part of why the doily ended up blocking out so big -- if stitches can't spread out horizontally, they will spread out vertically.  I was kind of sweating by the end, hoping that I'd have enough thread to finish.

Also, I don't know how to describe it, but it seemed kind of blah as I was knitting.  It's well-designed, but, well, it felt ordinary.  No delightful (or aggravating) surprises.  Just elegant leaf motifs and stacked increases and decreases amid plenty of hex mesh.

I don't believe it's a Herbert Niebling design.  It's not attributed to anyone in particular, but it doesn't have the chart quirks that I find characteristic of Niebling's charts.  Yes, doily chart forensics...  In particular, the hex mesh area never starts and ends with a yarnover and no further information.  Instead, the two yarnovers hang out together at the end of the round, and one is given explicit instructions on moving one of those stitches at the end of the intermediate round.  Also, the crochet-ing off is more complex than Niebling usually calls for.

I don't regret making this beautiful design, but I have no desire to knit it again.  I'd love to know who designed it, though, and also what else he/she designed.

Lavori 11 is a fun publication.  I was lucky enough to be able to get it when it was published, and I've never regretted doing so.  It's a mix of patterns by a variety of designers.  I've made at least 9 patterns from it so far and will undoubtedly make more.  A lot of the patterns appear in other publications, often German-language ones such as some of the Sonderheft issues.

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And because I feel like it, and this blog is just for me, I want to dither about doilies for a few paragraphs.

There's another old French-language pattern I'd like to do, but it's text only, no chart.  Also, some of the leftmost abbreviations are cut off in the copy I have.  It's a cute pattern, very Niebling-esque, with typical leaves and flowers and hex mesh.  It looks like it binds a bit in the outer rounds, which deforms the stitches in a way I find attractive.  Also, it has one do a crochet cast-off in the middle, and then pick up stitches and do an outer motif.  It's possible that the motifs wouldn't bind if they were allowed to be round or scalloped instead.

Dunno if it would be a fun experience or not.  I could also chart out the pattern, though that too might or might not be fun.

I'm also considering some of the patterns in Lavori 7.  I've done a few so far, but there are some larger ones that are intriguing.  I'd need to make sure I had enough thread, though.  And enough ambition/stamina if I choose one of the larger designs.

There are some other FdA patterns I'd like to do, too.

I do keep a list of doily patterns I'd like to make, organized in size from smallest to largest.  Some things drop out as my tastes change.  New things get added.  When I'm not seduced by an unexpectedly alluring pattern, I look at my list for inspiration.  I've knit a lot of doilies from that list over the years.

That's enough about doilies for the moment.  Other knitting is occurring but nothing is particularly photogenic or worthy of blogging about yet.

Back to the k5-togs!  The crossed stitches are calling!

Giant wool/mohair frisbee (aka unfelted cat bed) is accepted by the local felines

I finished the cat bed I'd been working on for the past few weeks.  I put it down for a minute and a cat immediately crawled in.   She's all curled up and still sleeping in it.  I guess I'll felt it at some point...

What I did is barely a pattern.  It is based on a lot of free cat bed patterns I found on Ravelry.  I took the basic concepts and ideas and made it work for my yarn with little or no planning involved.

Improv Cat Bed:

Cast on 8 stitches.  Knit 1 round.  Next round:  *K1, m1 (the backwards loop increase), place marker* .  Next: k 1 round.  Next:  *k to marker, m1, slip marker*.  Etc.  Repeat these last two rounds (i.e., increasing 8 stitches every other round) until the bottom is big enough.  Well, for me, it was until I used half my yarn, and I had 25 stitches between markers (200 rounds total), not that it matters.  Then I knit without any more increasing, to make the wall.  When I had about one-quarter of the yarn left, I switched to k2p2 because I was tired of the rolling stockinette.  When I was almost out of yarn, I cast off in knit.

It used almost all of 4 skeins of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted (85% wool, 15% mohair, single ply).  I used it 2-stranded with the largest needle size I had that came in a long length.  So I guess I knit roughly 375-380 yards (760 yds total).  The yarn is variegated in shades of brown.  It's also some kind of seconds yarn, so there are a few knots and a few less than perfect spots.  For a cat bed, it won't matter at all.

I plan to felt it once I get a chance.  No rush, apparently.  The cats seem content with it as is.

I like how the yarn works up two-stranded.  I wonder if I have enough to make something for me?  A vest, perhaps?  Dunno if there would be enough for sleeves.  This is from a friend's destash -- several colors of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, but only 2-4 skeins of each color.  I've used a fair amount of the yarn already but there's still some left.  Heck, maybe it'll mostly get turned into cat beds.

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I think I've decided on my next doily.  It is an FdA pattern and has every indication of being a Herbert Niebling design.  It uses motifs that are used in some of his other patterns and has that very characteristic thing of rounds beginning and ending with yarnovers.  It's a bit more than 100 rounds.

I'm also thinking about doing one of the doilies from Lavori 7 if I have enough thread in the stash.  I could always order more, of course.  Or do Gloxiniaeflora and then the Lavori 7 doily.  I'm pretty sure the Lavori 7 doilies I'm considering are Niebling designs -- they have things like familiar-looking flower motifs and lots of big decreases and crossed stitches and hex mesh, and charts with pattern motifs that start and end with yarnovers.

I do seem to have a thing for Niebling's designs.  Not on purpose -- I'm not a snob.  But there's something about the way he designs and the fun of knitting his patterns that I enjoy.  Not all of his patterns, though.  Some are annoying or entirely too weird.  I do enjoy other designers' patterns, too!  Many talented people have come up with gorgeous and fun designs.

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I also need to start a few more knitting projects.  I have a couple of shawls started.  One is a potential travel knitting project -- one of those sideways-knit asymmetric triangles.  I'm doing it out of one of those long-variegation sock yarns.  It's mostly garter stitch with faggoting/lace stripes every now and then, quite similar to shawls I've done in the past.

The other is a lace design by Sharon Miller.  I have to remember what the chart quirk was since I don't seem to have written it down.  I'll probably remember the next time I pick it up.  But will I remember to write it down this time?  Who knows?  In any case, although it is pretty straightforward, it won't lend itself to travel knitting.

Both of the above have been sitting for a while.  So it's possible one or both will be unraveled and I'll try something else.  Plus there's the next use-up-small-bits-of-handspun project to plan out and start.

I want to make a sweater for myself, too, since it's been a while.  I keep starting and then abandoning different things for various reasons.  Something will stick eventually.

And then there are always the quickie hats, mittens, cowls, and socks.

I'm probably going to start another spinning project soon, too.  I keep dithering about what to spin first, so nothing has gotten started at all.

Précieuse Dentelle post-blocking pics and another bonus doily pic (Viola)

Here's the bad post-blocking pic.  It's cute, in spite of the aggravation and all my mistakes and not terribly careful blocking. 

Here's a close-up of the hex-mesh-substitute texture stitches.

The upper part of the photo shows where I was doing slip 2, knit 2, pass the 2 slipped stitches over, which were done over the double yarnover of the previous round.  (Actually, the double yarnover plus 1 of the 2 stitches of the s2-k2-p2sso couplets of the previous round.)

The lower part of the photo shows the other texture stitch, in the columns inside the petal/leaf/whatever motifs.  For this, one round has a double yarnover between two double-decreases (A OO A).  Above it, on the next round, is a k-tbl, yo, crossed-stitch, yo, ktbl.

Was it worth the hassle?  Eh.

I'm still glad I knit this, since it's been on my list for years.  What can I say? I'm attracted to a certain kind of oddball doily.  I can check it off my list and move on to the next doily that intrigues me.

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Here's a pic of the Viola doily, knit many years ago.  I don't know if I've talked about this on this blog.  It's from Kunstbreien B39, pattern No. 5905.

There are charts for square and oval doilies using this motif, but I preferred the round one.  I did this one after the tulip doily in Leszner (which does have a pic on this blog from way back when), so it was not my first time wrapping stitches.

I do like the textural contrasts -- crossed stitches, wrapped stitches, columns of double yarnovers, and so on.  As I wrote earlier, the individual flowers in the Lavendel doily are this little motif.  There are many more of these flowers in the Lavendel doily than in this one, of course.  And Niebling used this flower motif in other doily patterns, too.  The Viola doily is small but it was educational and interesting to knit.  I enjoyed knitting it.  Or at least I don't remember not enjoying it, and I know I must have been very impressed with myself given the lessons it taught me.

I'm not really doing doily dithering about the Next Doily, but I'm not not dithering.  I can't do much until I see what's in the thread stash and estimate how far I expect each batch will go.  Much of the current thread stash consists of thrift store finds of vintage thread, mostly purchased as single balls and often as partial rather than full balls.  I have found, though, that the thread color (white and off-white, mostly) is surprisingly consistent over the years.

Also, I have other things I want to do.  Doilies may have to wait their turn.

Waiting to dry

Précieuse Dentelle is done, yay!  I pinned it out on a box and it's drying.  I'll have better pics next time, once it's dry and I can put it on something more suitable to take the usual uninspired mug shot (aka bad pic).  The pic is from a slight angle so the doily looks somewhat elliptical.  Plus I didn't take great care to block it perfectly.

It's a perfectly nice doily.  I made a zillion mistakes and oopsies while knitting it, which were fixed or kludged to varying degrees.  That was humbling.  I even dropped stitches while doing the crochet cast off, something I've not done in a long time.

I did run out of thread in round 71 (the entire doily is 72 rounds plus the cast-off).  Luckily, very luckily, I found a partial ball of thread that seems to match.  I'm pretty sure it really is the same thing, Fincrochet 20, from a previous pattern I knit a while back.  Whew, that I hadn't already used the leftovers for something else.

In round 69, there's a number in a box that sure looked like a 3 (kpk in stitch).  But no, it's a 5.  And I didn't discover this until round 71.  Sigh.  I took out the intermediate round and then, as I reknitted round 70, fixed it on the fly.  The spot in the chart is on a crease and rather hard to read -- I'm still not sure if it's a chart error or simply indistinct and thus easily mis-read.

And so on.  It's not been a tranquil knitting experience.

But it is now done, and looks acceptable.

What next?  Maybe Gloxiniaeflora, from Kunstbreien B39.  I've loved this pattern for many years.  So maybe it's time to knit it?  I need to make sure I have enough thread before I try, though.  It's 167 rounds or so.

I've knit several patterns from this Kunstbreien -- it was one of the first sets of charts shared with me through the Doily Underground, long long ago.  It was much photocopied and re-photocopied, back in the day when the technology wasn't that great and copying/mailing costs were a factor, and thus only the basics were shared and they are somewhat hard to read in places.  I've knit 5 (I think) doilies from this publication, though for some, I used charts or written descriptions from other sources (such as Gloria Penning's pattern collections).  After this one, there are maybe one or two more in Kunstbreien 39 that intrigue me, but who knows?  There are already way too many doily patterns on my want-to-do list, more than I'll probably ever be able to knit.  Alas.  Though I can dream, and the potential makes me happy.

Here's something I don't think I've shared before, that I knit from Kunstbreien:

It is Filices (pattern Nr 5913).  It is 80 rounds (plus cast-off), 11 pattern repeats per round.  There are a few chart errors, but the pattern is so symmetric that they were easy to spot and fix.

Filices is a reference to ferns.  The doily was straightforward and enjoyable to knit.  I liked the symmetry and the way the motif was in strict wedges that didn't really interact with the other pattern repeats.  It might well be a Herbert Niebling pattern, but whether or not it is, it is well designed and attractive.

I enjoyed using the DMC Cordonnet #40.  Although I'll knit with #20 if that's what I have, I've really started preferring finer and finer threads.

The other patterns I've knit from Kunstbreien B39?  In no particular order, Clematis, Adonis, Convallaria, and Viola (the round one of the set).

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My cat bed is almost finished.  I've switched to k2p2 ribbing, because why not?  Well, hopefully it'll help with the shaping once I start felting this beast -- either keeping the sides from curling or flopping and/or making it easier to fold over the edge.  Dunno.  Anyway, my guess is that I have maybe another half-dozen or so rounds before it's time to cast off.

I'm thinking about what travel knitting project I want to do next.  I recently finished yet another dishcloth shawl, a large and cozy worsted-weight alpaca in variegated shades of blue and green and purple.  So what next?  I have several hundred yards of gray Romney handspun that I might want to deal with.  Blobs of it were dyed different colors and either spun as a 2-ply or plied with a ply of undyed gray to make a barberpole yarn.  So maybe a half-hap (i.e. a hap shawl, but triangular rather than square).  I could do the Sarah Bradberry feather-and-fan shawl pattern again, since that's a perfectly respectable pattern recipe in the half-hap tradition.  I've already made one to use up some small batches of hand-dyed Beast yarn, many years ago.  I'd really like to do a full hap at some point, but that would require more planning.  Someday.

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And just because I have vague plans for doilies, shawls, or anything else doesn't mean they'll actually happen.  I'm easily distracted.

Mistakes, oddities, patience, and other musings

Précieuse Dentelle is slowly growing.  I'm making a lot of mistakes, sigh.  When I'm tired, it's easy enough to misinterpret a symbol, to forget a quirk.  Some of them are easy to fix.  Others are easy-ish -- I can get the stitch count correct, but will the discrepancy look OK when the doily is done?  I hope so, because it's kind of an annoying doily at the moment and I don't want to take it out and start it yet again.  If I make some kind of huge mistake, though, I'll have to decide whether to try again or abandon the pattern.

I'm pretty sure I'll be running out of thread.  Apparently, 20g of #20 cotton (172m) is not sufficient for a 72-round doily.  I probably did know that at some point, but it's been a while since I've done a lot of doily knitting with #20 thread, and when I do, I tend to use 50g balls and their much higher yardage (meterage?).

Again, I'm not loving this doily.  I think I have some leftovers from other projects that will be sufficiently compatible, so I'll make do if and when the time comes.  I've done more than half the rounds, but I'm probably not at the halfway point yet for the knitting.

This doily uses some unusual stitches that I've not seen in other doily patterns.  I've already written about them -- ladders that alternate a round of double yarnovers with a round of crossed stitches, and a background motif that consists of double yarnovers separated by a 4-to-2 stitch decrease.  (By the way, for the second set of ladder motifs, I'm doing k3tog on the left and sk2p on the right.)

OK, I'm slow on the uptake.  Well, not too slow, because I knew this already, but trudging through the stitches gives me time to think about it.  Both of these are hex-mesh alternatives.  They both give the honeycomb-like structure of the more common hex-mesh that Niebling uses (\OO/ and O/\O)) but use different methods to create the network.

I've kind of gotten used to the ladders (and I'm almost done with them, yay!), but the background mesh is still fairly tedious.  Slip 2 stitches, knit 2 stitches, pass the slipped stitches over the knitted stitches, double-yarnover.  Hopefully I'll get better at them, and hopefully I won't drop anything too important while slipping stitches and passing them over the knitting stitches.  Except for the stitches that are supposed to be dropped, of course.  It's a lot slower than the more common \OO/ hex-mesh pattern and I have to work carefully and pay attention.

Why, though?  Was this some kind of experiment?  A joke?  A variation on something else?  I will have to look through my collection of patterns, but I don't know if I've seen these texture patterns in any other doily, by any other named designer.  Is this a Herbert Niebling pattern, or was it by someone else who was riffing on some of his design characteristics?

Hopefully my kludges will be sufficiently unobtrusive by the time the doily is finished and blocked.

Because pics are fun, here's a pic of a different doily:

Way back when I last nattered on about doilies, I mentioned that I'd be doing Burda 418/33, and that there would be pictures.  Well, here's the picture!

It's part of a set.  I knit 418/31 and 418/32 (the square and the hexagon) earlier, and this is the octagon of the set.  It's an attributed Herbert Niebling pattern.  I knit it in 2014, yikes!  Where does the time go?

I don't remember much about knitting it, except that it brings a smile to my face when I look at it along with a memory of "fun", whatever that might mean.

Here's a pic of 418/32:

and 418/31:

Wow, apparently I knit those in 2004.  That's rather a while ago.  Apparently there are a few more versions of this pattern that were published in Beyer 7014 (and perhaps elsewhere) -- a smaller octagon and a larger hexagon (that can be blocked as an oval).  Maybe someday I'll crank those out, too.

If/when I get through Précieuse Dentelle, I'll try to choose something a whole lot less aggravating for my next doily.  It doesn't need to be quite as straightforward as the Round Lace Mat I just did, not unless the pattern I choose just happens to be that simple.  But it will be a pattern without any of those sl2, k2, p2sso maneuvers.

Précieuse Dentelle and other topics

In my last post, I wrote about possibly re-starting a doily I had tried a few years ago.  I had abandoned that attempt for various reasons mostly having to do with me making mistakes in areas that were difficult to recover from.

I've started it.  This time, I'm using some #20 cotton.  Hopefully I have enough, because I'd rather not rip and re-do too many more times.  There are 72 rounds total, and as you can see from the pic, 6 pattern repeats per round (12 in the outermost rounds).

It's kind of a weird-looking doily, which is part of why I wanted to knit it.  I'm a sucker for certain types of zoomy-looking doilies.  Here's a pic from the pattern copy I have (this is not my own version of the doily, which is currently a wad of thread on my needles):

The background mesh in the middle section consists of alternating double yarnovers and a stitch pattern that is slip 2, knit 2, pass the slipped stitches over.  That has to be done carefully or the slipped stitches will slip over and off the needles, with chaos ensuing all around.

The ladder-like textures inside the flower-like inner motif are also a bit unusual.  They alternate a pattern round of double yarnovers and a pattern round of crossed stitches.  The ladders alternate, so that the double-yarnover round of one ladder happens at the same pattern round as the crossed-stitch round of the ladder next to it.

The outermost fans/scallops seem relatively sedate and normal, but I'll reserve judgment until I get to them.

Anyway...  I've cast on and am making progress.  The fun starts very quickly -- crossed stitches and double yarnovers and double decreases and twisted stitches -- so it's slow going.

This is likely to be a Herbert Niebling pattern, since this kind of textural contrast is pretty typical for him.  Plus there are k7-togs.

As I wrote before, the pattern is in French, though luckily charted.  No designer is listed, as far as I can tell, though maybe it was elsewhere and not in the sections that were preserved on the 'net.  The source was published in Belgium, but there's no info in my copy about the name of the publication.  My guess is FdA (Femmes d'Aujourd'hui) since the chart style and the yellowing paper seems similar to other patterns known to be from old FdA issues, and since FdA is/was published in Belgium.  But I honestly do not know.  My source is also unknown -- I found it online a very long time ago and either don't have a record of where I found it (though it was a French-language site, I remember that) and/or the site no longer exists.

The doily looks vaguely familiar but I can't figure out if I have a version of this in some other publication.

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One of my other in-progress knitting projects is a cat bed.  It's being knit from two strands of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted and will be felted when finished.  I looked at a lot of the free and not-free patterns on Ravelry and am winging it rather than following an actual pattern.

I cast on 8.  I increased 8 stitches every other round (using the backwards loop increase) until I'd used half the yarn.  Conveniently for my slightly OCD mind, this was when I had 200 stitches on the needles (8 sections of 25 stitches each).  Now I'm knitting those stitches without any more increases to make a bit of a rise or wall for the cat bed.  When I get close to done, I'll do a few rounds of ribbing or seed stitch or garter stitch, maybe, and then cast off.  Then we'll see how well I can felt it, if I can get it shaped to what shape I want it to be (if I decide I care), and then see what the cats think about it.

The yarn is from a friend's destash.  I have 4 skeins, not quite enough to make something like a sweater for me.  Also, the skeins are seconds, meaning that the quality isn't perfect and it's possible the yardage is a bit short.  It seems like about the right amount for this cat bed.  The radius was about 11" (diameter 22-23") when I stopped increasing.  My estimate is that the walls will be roughly 5" high.  There will be 400 yards of knitting (800 total, but I'm knitting 2-stranded).

I finished a Monmouth cap recently and it too is awaiting felting.  I'll talk about the hat in a future post, maybe.

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I haven't started dithering yet about The Next Doily.  I'm still at the stage where I'm simply pleased I'm knitting doilies again.  Also, I'm dithering about the next tablet-woven band and don't want to be too distracted from that.  (Actually, I think I've mostly figured that out and will be warping it up and starting soon.)  Plus I need a new travel project since I finished the giant dishcloth shawl that had kept me occupied for the last several months.  Doily Dithering will have to wait its turn.

A Round Lace Mat

I'd been dithering about The Next Doily for a while.  I knew I needed something little, something simple and quick and relaxing to knit.  One of the old patterns from Sarah Bradberry's site caught my attention.  Hers were some of the very first doily patterns I found online, so it seemed appropriate.  It's this one, a Round Lace Mat, from Paragon Crochet Book 129, Doilies.  The pattern is here: https://www.knitting-and.com/crafts-and-needlework/knitting/patterns/doilies/roundmat/

It's 56 rounds of simple lace knitting, nothing more complicated than a double-decrease, though I did have to move the first stitch of a round to the end of the previous round for many rounds, which wasn't an enormous amount of fun in the early rounds.

The doily looks askew in the photo due to my poor photography skills.  It is more round in real life.

It looks familiar but I have no idea where else I've seen it, if anywhere.

It's kind of weird, which I didn't realize when I first began.  It starts with 12 pattern repeats per round.  Then it does some fun with increases to jump to 32 pattern repeats per round, which settle down to 16 pattern repeats per round in the outer motif.  Why 12 to 16 (or 32)?

Also, which isn't weird but is kind of fun, there are very few increase rounds in the entire doily.  The increases happen between the different motif sections.  Oh, and in the first section, the pattern round is even and the intermediate round is odd.  In the outer parts, the pattern rounds are odd and the intermediate is even.  Not that it matters, really.  It was just kind of interesting.

I rather like my doily.

Here's a close-up of one of the quadrants:

I used a partial ball of light green thread.  I think it's DMC Cebelia #20.  There's not enough left to make another doily of this size, though it might be enough for something that has fewer than 40 rounds.  Or I can use the leftovers for crocheted snowflakes and narrow wares.

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Stephenie Gaustad passed away recently.  In her honor, the crew at Long Thread Media (home of Interweave, Spin-off, and other publications) made Steph's video on spinning cotton available for free until March 24, 2025.  (If you have an account there, you can add it to your account and re-watch it forever.)  I hadn't seen the video before.  It was a good video even if I did get a bit teary.  I didn't know Steph well, but I treasure every interaction I had with her, and also with her husband Alden Amos (who passed away several years ago).  Sigh.

Maybe I should do a little bit of cotton spinning in her honor.  Or any kind of spinning, really.

https://spinoffmagazine.com/memories-of-stephenie-gaustad/ has the link to the video, though if it's after March 24, 2025, the video will no longer be free.

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Hopefully I will decide on a new doily and actually get it cast on.  I might re-do one I had started and then unraveled about a year ago.  It's in French.  Luckily it's charted, though the chart is old, yellowed, fuzzy, and hard to read in places.  The name of the doily is Précieuse Dentelle, and my guess is that it's from an old FdA since the yellowing and the chart style seem to match.  I have no idea where my copy came from -- some very old trawling of the internet, way back when.

It has some vast expanses of  yo-x2, Sl-2, k2, p2sso as a background stitch, and I think I ended up either getting misaligned or dropping a bunch of stitches in an awkward spot the last time I tried it, and I gave up.  Or it looked like I wouldn't have enough thread, or something.  I can't remember.  There are also crossed stitches and big decreases and other fun stuff.  It's not too big, only 72 rounds or so.

We'll see if I do that or something else entirely.

I have a few knitting projects on the needles but I don't want this post to be too long.  Gotta have something else to write about for the next post, after all.

Ten Years of Blog Silence (and a doily pic!)

Wow, I can't believe it's been ten years since I published anything on this blog!  I kept meaning to, but Life got in the way.  Cross-country moves.  New interests.  So many other Real Life things.  No ambition to organize a post.  Plus I am still a lousy photographer.

Cell phone cameras are helping with the lousy photographer problem.

I still knit doilies as well as lots of other things.

Here's a photo of a doily I knit a while back.  It's still a terrible photo, but what the heck, I'll share it anyway.

It's Lavendel, a Niebling pattern from Erikas 79.  It has 6 pattern repeats per round and 184 rounds (plus the crochet cast-off).

This was a lot of fun to knit, though by the end, I was VERY ready to be done with it.  I'm still working on the stamina for larger doily projects.

The thread is some vintage stuff I found in a craft-recycle store.  At the time, it was getting harder and harder to find nice-quality fine threads for knitting doilies, especially in person in the local stores.  Heck, it's still nearly impossible -- I'm mostly using mail order for fine, tightly-twisted, high-quality thread even though I would love to support local places.  So...  at the time when I got this thread, I was going through thrift stores and craft-recycling stores and buying out any reasonable and affordable fine threads I could find.  If it was #30 or finer, and there was enough for a decent-sized project, it came home with me.

Anyway, the vintage thread is Clarks Big Ball 3-cord crochet #30.  I found several balls at various times/places.  Dye lot?  Who knows!  Age?  Who knows!  Mid to late 20th century, I assume.

Although I'm really loving #40 and finer, I will still knit doilies with #30.

Luckily this vintage stuff really doesn't have much of a dyelot.  There is no sign of where one ball of thread ran out and the next began.  I'm not going to question my good luck.  The thread itself is kind of mediocre, but it was good enough to be worth knitting a doily with.

I love the flower clusters of this pattern -- it's the flower from Niebling's Viola doily (that I did a long time ago), but repeated to be a full bouquet.  I mean, in the middle of doing wrap stitches along with crossed stitches and big-honking-decreases and all the other fun, I was questioning some of my life choices, but the results are so worthwhile.  I love the crossed stitches, the honeycomb mesh, the leaves, the asymmetry, and even the distortions in the fabric and how they serve the design.

It was tricky to block since it was larger than my largest blocking surface, and it was large enough that I had difficulty finding open floor/bed/etc. space for pinning it out.  It's slightly elliptical as a result.

This was finished a few years ago, and I don't think I've finished a doily since.  The next one I tried had a tricky background stitch, and after I screwed it up the third time, I decided that Fate was telling me something.  Then I got distracted by something else entirely, and I have not yet returned to the fine needles and threads and weird foreign-language obscurely-charted doily patterns that I seem to love so much.

I have a couple of small and simple doilies on my to-do list to get my doily-knitting mojo back.  Lavendel itself was the last doily in my previous doily-knitting binge.  Hopefully I can keep blogging here and go through some (or all) of the doilies I've knit since the last time I posted doily pics on this blog.

Much other knitting has occurred -- shawls, hats, sweaters, mittens, etc.  Hmm, no socks in the past few years; I need to get my sock-knitting mojo back, too.  I've done a lot of spinning.  Some sewing and crocheting.  A fair amount of narrow wares -- inkle weaving, tablet weaving, braiding, fingerloop braiding, and so on.  Other things that aren't fiber-related at all.

Hopefully I will keep this blog going for a while again.  I have many years of doilies and other knitting to document and natter on about!  Well, until the blog goes silent again.  Hopefully it won't be forever, and hopefully it won't even be ten years.