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.