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.