DONE!!!!! It's gorgeous, of course. And it feels really good to know that this project is complete.
I took the above photo while standing up next to it, thus the foreshortening. It really is circular.
It's about 5' in diameter, give or take a bit, and I used somewhat more than 1500 yards of this vintage #30 cotton thread.
I had no trouble getting it to block flat.
It was a lot of fun to knit -- relatively straightforward with an interesting development of the various motifs, and the intellectual challenge of identifying and fixing chart errors.
It was not easy to find a place big enough to block it that would also be safe from the cats. If I do another large (or larger) doily, I'll need to think about blocking earlier in the process.
Since I always like to list this info: there are 202 rounds plus the crochet cast-off, and 6 pattern repeats per round (12 pattern repeats per round starting in round 171). The chart is NOT error-free.
As promised, here's my comprehensive list of chart errors, along with a couple of other things to note.
Lavori 07/30 Chart Errors, Quirks, Typos, etc.
The chart numbering jumps from round 191 to round 201. There is no reason for this. So, although the chart itself goes to round 210 (as charted), it's really only a 202-round doily (as counted).
There's an error at roughly round 165 that affects everything in the hex mesh area all the way through roughly round 191. I'll discuss that below.
Round 55 -- missing V early in the pattern repeat (it's fairly obvious -- there are a lot of V-1-V maneuvers and one of the Vs is missing)
Round 93 -- missing 1 in the stem area in the middle of the pattern repeat (it's fairly obvious -- it should be O-1-O-1-O, but the second 1 is missing)
Round 97 -- there is an asymmetry on the outer sides of the 5-X-5 leaves. On the right side, there's a single yarnover. On the left, a double yarnover. The single yarnover is the correct version. Again, fairly obvious when you get there.
Round 105 -- missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat, another fairly obvious error.
Round 113 -- another fairly obvious missing yarnover, just to the right of the flower. There should be seven sets of double-yarnovers on each side of the flower. Also, the flower really is slightly asymmetric here; each knit turns into a (yo, k1) to go from 13 to 26 stitches with no extra yarnover at the end, i.e., no chart error in this section of the pattern repeat.
Round 121 -- a missing yarnover in the middle of the hex mesh section to the left of the flower (i.e., there should be a double yarnover there, not a single yarnover), fairly obvious like most of the chart errors so far.
Round 123 -- a missing yarnover directly above the missing yarnover of round 121.
Round 127 -- a missing yarnover between the left side of the flower and the hex mesh section. It should be (yo, sk2p) after all of the crossed stitches. This took me a few minutes to figure out -- sure, there's an asymmetry, but I needed to count the stitches in the next round to decide whether I had a missing yarnover on the left or an extra yarnover on the right. The next round requires two stitches at that spot, so a missing yarnover it is!
Round 135 -- 2 errors in this row! There's an extra yarnover to the left of the crossed-stitch section (the right side of the crossed-stitch section has the correct single yarnover), and also an extra yarnover in the center section of the leaves (there should be no double yarnovers in the leaf motif area, just single yarnovers)
Round 141 -- Missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat.
Round 153 -- Missing yarnover at the very beginning of the pattern repeat.
Round 159 -- After the first set of leaves (and the skp, k3, k2t that finishes it off), the stitches at the beginning of the stretch of hex mesh are charted as yo, skp, k2t. This should be symmetric with all the others, and the skp should be a double-decrease (sk2p, left-leaning to preserve symmetry).
Round 163 -- In the first set of leaves, the last leaf has a missing yarnover. It should be (k4, yo, k-tbl, yo, k4) like all the other leaves in this round.
Round 165 through Round 191 or so -- see discussion, but the hex-mesh motif area has a serious chart error that affects this section of the chart from round 165 through 191 or so. There are several possible fixes -- my approach is in the below discussion.
Round 169 -- There should be a 1Mv at the beginning of the round. (In other words, the last stitch of round 167 doesn't get knit in round 168, but rather, moves to the beginning of round 169)
Round 173 -- there's a yarnover on one side of the hex mesh but not the other. Whether it's an extra yarnover or a missing yarnover will depend on how one chooses to re-chart the hex mesh section of the pattern. (For my choice to follow the chart as written as much as possible, it's a missing yarnover that needs to be added after the leaf tip at the beginning of the pattern repeat)
Round 175 -- For the second decreasing leaf motif (the one before the outer fans), there is an extra yarnover that shouldn't be there. The leaf motif should be (skp, k7, k2t) and NOT (skp, k7, yo, k2t).
Round 177 -- Same as 175. That second leaf should be (skp, k5, k2t) like the other leaves.
Round 179 -- Two chart errors in this round! The first is the same as 175 and 177. That second leaf should be (skp, k3, k2t) like the other leaves. Also, the final growing leaf is missing a yarnover. It should be (k2, yo, k-tbl, yo, k2) like the others in the round.
Round 201 (which should be labeled as round 193) -- First, note that the round numbering has jumped, with the previous round being labeled as 191. There's no design-related reason for this; it just is. Second, there is a missing yarnover at the end of the pattern repeat.
And I think that's it for the chart errors/typos I noticed! There may well be a few I missed. The pattern is mostly very logical and symmetric so it can be hard to notice one little missing or extra symbol in an area where it's obvious what one is supposed to be doing.
I also noted that there is some asymmetry where the middle leaf tip transitions into the flower stem. It didn't mess up anything, so I just left it alone while remarking on it as one of the few places in the doily where things don't seem to be perfectly regular and symmetric.
In round 165, the hex mesh areas are different from each other. One of them fits in with the stitch counts, but won't line up with round 171, when the chart officially goes to 12 pattern repeats per round. The other lines up with round 171, but doesn't fit in with the stitch counts.
The problem has to do with how the hex mesh motifs line up from round to round. The ones in the 6 PR/round chart area don't align properly with the ones in the 12 PR/round chart area.
So, some recharting is necessary in this part of the chart until it can gracefully rejoin the actual printed chart.
To summarize what I did, I added an extra chart motif (i.e. like the area with the correct number of motifs for the existing stitch count), and then continued with that extra motif all the way to round 181. For rounds 183 to 191, I kludged a bit to keep the area looking pretty reasonable while trying to converge with the published chart. After round 191, I could resume working the pattern as charted.
The above is the chart I eventually ended up using (starting at round 171, in the 12 PR/round part of the chart). It's not the only possible approach!
In the above chart, the rounds with stars to the left of the round number are where leaf tips join the hex mesh area. Also, I used a basic symbol for the double decrease on the chart but did directional double decreases as I knit.
I started this doily in late April, finished the knitting in late November (with a break for angst-ing over how to rechart the hex mesh area in the outer rounds) and finally blocked it yesterday. It's been a fun journey with a beautiful piece of lace to show for it at the other end. I like the symmetry of the pattern, and I love the way that carefully stacked increases and decreases are used to warp and scallop various parts of the design. As is common with a Niebling design, different stitch patterns and increase/decrease patterns are used to add textural contrasts. I'm very glad that I tackled this project. Not only is the result well worth the effort, I have confidence and faith that I can handle other large designs I've been interested in. Will I do so immediately? I don't know, nor do I know what doily I might end up doing next. We'll see!
And now.... On to the next project!
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