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.

---------------

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.

---------------

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.