Lavori 07/15

 Lavori 07/15 is finished!

This is an 80 round doily (plus crochet cast-off), 8 pattern repeats per round (and 16 PR/rnd in the outer rounds).  The chart is NOT error free.

Chart Errors:

Round 51:  Towards the end of the repeat, there is a | symbol that should be a double-decrease instead.  It's fairly obvious.

Rounds 57-59 end up having an issue, but it's easily fixed.  Instead of what's charted, do the following:

Round 57: (yo, k1b, yo, k3) all the way across.  (This is how it's charted, but the chart omits one repeat, which ends up affecting how to chart round 59)

Round 59: (sk2p, yo) all the way across  (you could do yo, sk2p instead of sk2p, yo, though that'll affect the next error fix)

And somewhere before round 65:  K 6 more stitches at the end of the round before beginning the next round, so that the first stitch of round 65 is directly over the sk2p of round 59.

This was a reasonably fun doily to knit, though it had way more stitches than seemed necessary by the end.  Perhaps it would have been better doing this with either 6 or 7 pattern repeats per round instead of 8.  Dunno if that would have worked well enough, though, since the number of stitches in the early rounds is just about right.  It's the later rounds where things go wild.

I think it is probably a Herbert Niebling pattern, and if not, then it's a design by someone who used motifs that are characteristically Niebling-esque.  Whatever.  It's a cute doily no matter who the designer was.

The thread was from the thrift store vintage stash.  It was 300 yards of something that seemed like it was roughly #30 in weight.  I ran out in the middle of round 79.  Luckily, the leftovers stash yielded some DMC Cebelia that was sufficiently similar, whew.

Hmm, what doily shall I tackle next?  There are a few more small doilies in Lavori 7 that could be quick to knock out.  There's the old French language non-charted text-only doily I've mentioned before, clearly a Niebling design, that could be interesting to puzzle out.  I could pick another big pattern, or do some designs by Erich Engeln or Christine Duchrow or Marianne Kinzel or one of the other greats.  I guess I'll see what appeals, and also what thread I feel like using.

Other than finishing Lavori 07/15, I've been slowly working on my Miami Vice shawl and my Appledore gansey.  There's not enough progress to be worth sharing.  I've mostly been busy with other things.

A new year, a new doily (and a new post!)

This is another doily in Lavori 7.  This one is Figure 15 Sottovaso.  It has 80 rounds and, as you can see, 8 pattern repeats per round with 16 pattern repeats per round in the outer part of the doily.

It is very silly looking.  So I decided I wanted to make it.

It might be a Niebling pattern, given those outer sets of fans, and also given the silly stuff that happens early on in the doily.

The early doily has several rounds of twisted stitches, which isn't all that unusual, I suppose.  I twisted them in the intermediate rounds since it helps define the columns so well.  And then the columns of twisted stitches turn into columns of crossed stitches.  That (complicated stuff early in the doily, including crossed stitches) is more commonly found in Niebling designs than in patterns known to be created by other designers.  So maybe.

The outer sets of fans are the thing where two or three fan motifs are next to each other with a double yarnover between the fans, as I did in the Lavori 07/30 doily and many others.  As far as I can tell (i.e., from a quick glance), there are no rounds that begin and end with yarnovers.

I rummaged through my collection of vintage threads and found something that might be #30, and, if it's a full rather than a partial ball of thread, might have about 300 yards.  If that's not enough, I found another partial ball (I am nearly 100% sure that's it's partial) of similar-weight thread in a color that's not too different.  I don't care if the outer rounds are slightly different in color from the earlier rounds.

Yesterday was the cast-on day.  Fun fun!

As often happens, I get tired of dpns somewhere in the early slog and try to move to a circular needle a little bit too soon.  So the next few rounds were a bit annoying, as I used variations on the two-circulars and the magic-loop methods until I had enough stitches, and more importantly, enough diameter, to fit on my circular with no more fuss.

I don't always end up doing that, but really, I should know better.  But the dpns kept trying to slither out of the knitted stitches, and it was annoying doing crossed stitches and horizontal-running-thread increases and I wanted to be done with the dpns.

I don't have high hopes for this doily given it's less than well defined motifs in the pic above, but we'll see.  Once I get past the section with so many crossed stitches, the rest seems relatively straightforward and hopefully a bit quicker to knit.

Then I can ruminate on what doily project I might feel like tackling next.

My sweater is growing again -- I'm knitting the back above the armhole.  I'm still vaguely dithering about whether I want to put a couple of short rows in there somewhere.  Quite possibly.  Then I can do the front, and I'll probably do a dropped area in the middle to shape the neck area.  Then the shoulder straps!  Those will require a bit more dithering, too.  I also have to decide how many inches to knit for the front and back before the shoulder straps so that the sweater will fit well and so that the sleeves will have a reasonable number of stitches.

My travel shawl is continuing to grow, too.  Soon I'll be done with the current set of eyelets.  Then it'll be time for another round of increases.  I'm getting close to the end of the first skein of yarn.  It's a bit soon, but I'm already thinking a bit about ways to make the shawl bigger if I still have a lot of yarn left after the official pattern reaches its end.

And that's it for this post!