Easily distracted

I still think I want to do Lavori 7/30.  But while I dither over thread I'm getting distracted by other things.

Dither:  I have a fair amount of vintage Clark's Big Ball 30.  But would I rather use something finer and better quality?  Is what I have actually one color or is it two (white and ivory, maybe, or perhaps two slightly different shades of white)?  And will I need closer to 1500 yards or 2000 yards?  Should I use the big batch of vintage #50 thread (2200-ish yards), or should I save that for another project?  Should I buy something and if so, what?  Even mail order doesn't have the selection that used to be in all the stores back when these magazines were being published.  Also, the prices for good quality thread for doily-knitting are a lot higher, which I suppose isn't particularly surprising.  And at least some of the brands that used to have many colors now only do white and ecru.

Here's what the doily looks like in Lavori 7, by the way.  It's hard to discern the details, but it's obviously very Niebling-esque.  Isn't it adorable?  It has 210 rounds, so it will take quite a while once I get started.

While I was dithering, I cast on FdA 684.

It is a charmingly silly pattern, again, with very typical Niebling-esque touches.  Is it from his design house?  I'm not sure, but it uses motifs and stitch combos he's known for, and it's from FdA, which is known to have printed a lot of his patterns.  Whoever the designer was, it's a very clean design, satisfying to knit.  There's a minor chart error in round 25 but it's easy to recognize given the overall symmetry of the design.

I decided to use a colorful ball of thrift store vintage Clark's Big Ball 30.  It's a very bright salmon/coral pink.  The ball claims to have 250 yards, so with 78 rounds in the pattern, I knew it would be close.

I ditched at round 76.  Round 77 was just stockinette so this was a simple fix.  The cast-off above didn't look right so I changed that a bit, too.  It's marginally possible I could have knit round 77 and still had enough for the cast-off, but I can't say that with a lot of confidence.  And I definitely wouldn't have been able to add round 78.

So...  note to self -- 250 yards won't go as far as I hope.  Stick to shorter patterns.  Will I believe myself next time?  Who knows?  I have a few more balls of this thread in different colors.

I'll have a better pic for the next post, but here's the doily pinned out on a big piece of cardboard.  I wasn't as careful as I should be, but it's OK.  As usual, the slightly trapezoidal perspective is due to me standing above the doily when I took the pic.  Ditto for the shadow at the bottom of the photo.

Will I get distracted by other short or short-ish doilies while dithering about Lavori 7/30?  I guess I'll find out!

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Sechsblatt, from Frau und Mutter:

Here's a pic of another red doily, though it's a different shade of red.  I knit it many years ago.  Yeah, the photo sucks, but that's true of most of my photos.

This is a credited Herbert Niebling pattern.  It's called Sechsblatt and it's from Kunststricken Nr 476, also known as Frau und Mutter.

I like this pattern because it's actually a rather clumsy design as well as not having any of the fancy tricks that we all know and love from Niebling's most elaborate designs.  The way that the inner motif has 6 pattern repeats and the outer motif has 10 is something that I find rather odd.

It was a very quick knit, not surprising since it's only 34 rounds.

I do like the inner star/flower motif, and there's nothing wrong with any individual element or even how they all go together.  I've knit many of this type of doily, and should probably knit even more since they're a good size to give away or to fit inside a macrame hoop as a sun-catcher.

It's also good reminder that there are many lovely patterns that don't have immediately-identifiable designers, and that all of the designers made generic-ish patterns as well as identifiable ones.  It's a good way for designers to experiment with motifs that often show later up in larger patterns.

Frau und Mutter has several other very attractive designs as well as some I find awkward-looking.  Most patterns are credited to Niebling, though at least one of the designs recorded on Ravelry is credited to Duchrow.