Progress report on the current doily

I am more likely to keep this blog alive if I post even when I don't have a completed project to show.  And also if the posts are nattering to myself instead of trying to entertain or edify my imaginary readers.  My guess is that most of my former readers have long moved on to other blogs and forums and what-not.  These days I get more spam comments than real ones.  But that's fine.  I am content to write out my thoughts and post the occasional pic whether or not anyone else cares or sees it.

I am nearing the end of the current doily, yay!  FdA 958 is a 104-round doily and I finished round 94 earlier today.  Ten more rounds to go before I can cast off.  The number of stitches is slowly climbing but it's not too ghastly.  I think I have well under 10,000 stitches remaining though still more than 5000.

It's kind of a cool-looking doily though of course I won't know for sure what I think until it's blocked.  The inner rounds had round-ish flower motifs with crossed stitches and 9-to-5 decreases and other fun stuff.  That's long past.  Now I'm closing up the outer leaf motifs and working on the outer fan motifs.

I wonder what kind of flowers these are meant to be, if indeed they're meant to be anything beyond a stylized floral shape?  They could be fuchsias, maybe.

The above snip is from the FdA photo and shows the innermost hex mesh, the four flower motifs, and the start of the leaf motifs.

I tried above to outline the different areas of the motif into what I think are the different parts of the flower.  The lower part looks like an inner flower or maybe is meant to be stamens or pistils or something.  It ends with k5togs as the crossed stitches of the mid-level get going.  I'm not totally sure, but I think the lines of crossed stitches sort of define three petals or sepals or something.  Then the flower closes with a lot of decreases, with the little elliptical bit above.  The elliptical bit above is outlined in crossed stitches and filled with purls.  I don't know if it's meant to be garter stitch or reverse stockinette, but I chose to twist the twisted stitches and purl the purled stitches on the intermediate rounds.

I am not a botanist and don't feel like looking up the actual names of the flower parts.

Here's a random internet grab of real fuchsia flowers:

There is definitely a resemblance.  I'm not familiar enough with popular ornamental flowers and wildflowers of mid-20th-century Europe to have other ideas about what the flower motifs might represent, if anything.  Also, Niebling did several different fuchsia motifs in doilies over the years.  Dunno if this was one of them, or if he gave semi-random names to his flower doilies, or if the editor did, or what.  Whatever he intended, the motifs in my current doily do look like little stylized flowers of some sort.

All of the flower motifs in this doily are the same except that the little elliptical thing at the top of the outermost flower is one pattern-round shorter than the inner two layers of flower motifs.  I was rather tired of them by that point and was happy to move on to the next part of the doily.

The outer leaves are pretty basic Niebling leaves, found in a lot of his other patterns, and ditto for the outer fans -- a familiar motif from his other patterns.  Even these flowers look a lot like the motifs in the pattern on page 77 of Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling (edited by Eva Maria Leszner).  In my opinion, the leaf motifs don't look at all like real fuchsia leaves, though.

I feel pretty comfortable about the amount of thread I have left.  Whew.  I'll probably have enough #30 left to do another small doily, especially if I choose something simple.

I'm dreaming of future doilies.  This is a good thing.

Also, I'm having various thoughts about double decreases.  This pattern has a lot of them.  I'm not thinking things through all that seriously, but double decreases can be maneuvered to have different stitches on top, to appear to be right-leaning (K3T), left-leaning (SK2P or SSSK) or vertical (S2KP).  Sometimes it matters which one to choose and sometimes it doesn't.  Charts usually use only one symbol to represent a double-decrease (usually either SK2P or K3T) though I usually consider that to be more of a suggestion than a hard-and-fast requirement.  For this pattern, I chose to keep them all as SK2P even in areas with vertical lines.

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Here's a pic of a doily I knit a long time ago.  It's a cute little thing, a pattern by Christine Duchrow, pattern 64/05.  It's nothing terribly special, but that's perfectly OK.  I enjoyed knitting it and I like how it turned out.

I still need to get some travel projects going.  But I keep picking up the in-progress doily and doing another pair of rounds instead.  At this rate, hopefully I'll be done in another week or so.

Mommes Lysedug

The above photo is a close-up of the Mommes Lysedug doily pattern, does as a lap blanket or small circular shawl. The pattern is available here at Nurhanne's yarnover website. It is a design by Christine Duchrow. The basic motif and charts can be found in Volume III of the Lacis compilation of her work.

I did take a photo of the shawl on my bed. As you can tell, it is not a great photo. I was standing at an angle, the bed is not flat, and so on. The shawl/doily/blanket really is circular, I promise!

I knit this shawl from sport-weight yarn, Jaggerspun 3/8 Heather, to be exact. It was a lot of fun. I only had the text version of the pattern at the time I knit it. It was accurate and easy to follow. I think I found one very minor error which also turned out to be in the Duchrow charts for the pattern.

Since this is a Duchrow pattern, there are quirks that strike the modern doily knitter as being a bit odd. In particular, there's a section where there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the decrease directions in the motifs. I never did get that straightened out to my satisfaction. I ended up knitting it as directed, and it worked out well enough.

Duchrow's doily designs were mostly intended to be knit with very fine thread. Decrease directions don't really matter when the thread is fine enough. A lot of her designs are a bit arbitrary about decrease directions as a result. I change decrease directions as needed according to my moods. It's not all that important most of the time. I try to stay consistent within a pattern, but don't worry too much beyond that.

This doily upsizes quite well. The 110-round pattern ended up giving me a doily close to 4 feet in diameter. It is a warm lap blanket and a small but quite adequate shawl. It drapes down to my elbow level, and it can be pinned in the front so that it stays on without effort.

As a lap blanket, it is quite successful. It works especially well for cuddling small children who are napping or who do not feel well. It would work as a baby blanket for similar reasons. (I won't get into the whole issue of whether eyelets are dangerous for babies.)

I've included two photos of the shawl on a local 10-yr-old. I've shown the back view and the side view. Two cats are in the photo for scale.

The shawl took about 8 ounces of yarn, almost exactly. I had 2 yards left (out of 740 yards) when I finished. I modified the crochet cast-off to use less yarn, which did indeed turn out to be necessary.

I used this for several years before I ever got around to blocking it.

More thoughts:

I like Jaggerspun Heather. I should buy more and use it for shawls or sweaters or lap afghans. It comes in a couple of different weights, not just sport weight.

Circular shawls are not the most practical shawl shape in existence. However, they work well enough. Since they are fun to knit, I put up with the impracticality.

This is a good size pattern for small shawls or lap blankets. Even with a short attention span, I can get it done before I get bored. Duchrow has plenty of other patterns that are similar in size and complexity.

Christine Duchrow uses an interesting stitch pattern in this doily. It's a (yarnover, slip 1, k2, pass slipped stitch over). It's offset on each pattern round. You can see it in the top photo, the closeup. It's quite decorative and fun to do. I've seen similar patterns under the name of Mrs. Hunter's pattern and a couple of other variants. It's a fairly uncommon stitch pattern for doilies, especially the ones I've seen from this time period. Herbert Niebling sometimes uses it, too.

Although the basic motifs for this doily are in the Lacis compilation, this exact pattern is not. Apparently, Duchrow's patterns were published in several different variations as well as several different languages. (The original for this was in Danish.) One version of a particular pattern pamphlet might contain slightly different doilies from another version. That intrigues me. Why was this done? What does it say about the European doily publishing business during the time these were being printed and sold? One of Duchrow's designing strengths was her ability to use a small set of motifs to create a variety of different but related doilies. How many more variations exist besides the ones in the Lacis book plus these other few that I'm aware of?

I'm sure I had more thoughts, but they seem to have abandoned me for the moment.

Sweater Progress

My plain gray sweater is almost finished. Getting past the decision point did turn out to get me past my knitting block. It's gone quickly since then. I hope I got the raglan yoke calculations right on my first try. If not, I'll have to rip and re-do some of it.

My yarn paranoia stood me in good stead. I'll probably have enough yarn left over to do another entire sweater. It will be somewhat different, since it would be rather silly to knit two identical play gray sweaters.

Should I do a fancy cabled vest? Although it's enticing, I don't wear vests.

Therefore, I'll probably do another sweater. Do I have enough yarn to add a cable panel? It's iffy. (yarn paranoia...) I could do some kind of stitch pattern. Or, most likely, I'd add some stranded color patterns at the neck, cuff, and bottom edges.

Should I do another gray sweater immediately? Or should I do a sweater out of some different yarn?

One of the fun things about getting towards the end of one project is dreaming about the next.

Mary Walker Phillips

Rest in peace.

Her book on Creative Knitting contained many interesting and influential ideas, even if the wall hangings look a bit dated for modern tastes. Her descriptions of eastern, western, and combined knitting techniques are quite informative. Her book on Knitting Counterpanes is one of the definitive books on this style of knitting and the patterns typically used for them.

She wrote other books on knitting, and she also wrote about macrame and knotting. She was an accomplished weaver and artist. According to Wikipedia, she was born on November 23, 1923. She died on Saturday, November 3, 2007.

Egleblad (a Christine Duchrow classic)

This is the famous Egleblad doily. You can find the English translation on Nurhanne's site here. Egleblad means something like oak leaf, which is probably a reference to the leaf-like motifs in the outer rounds.

The doilies on that portion of Nurhanne's site are actually designs by Christine Duchrow, a talented early doily designer. Her works are in the public domain. The Egleblad doily is the first pattern in pamphlet 64 in Volume III of the Lacis compilation of her patterns. Volume III has the most doilies, in case you were wondering.

I knit this doily years ago. (It needs re-blocking after being stuffed in a drawer for so long.) I don't know exactly what I used, but I'd guess #10 cotton and 2mm needles. If I were to do it again, I'd use finer thread or larger needles to get a more open fabric.

Actually, that's not true at all. Because I am thinking of doing it again, but as a lap afghan.

I did the Mommes Lysedug pattern as a small shawl or lap afghan around the same time as I did the Egleblad as a traditional doily. It turned out great. It took about 748 yards of sport-weight wool yarn. This was good, because I only had 750 yards of yarn available. Someday I'll get a decent photo of it to share with everyone.

Anyway, there's been a lot of recent chatter on the various mailing lists about Jared's (aka brooklyntweed's) lovely adaptation of the Hemlock Ring doily into a lap afghan. There's even a KAL mailing list devoted to it. It reminds me yet again how satisfying the proper doily pattern can be when it's upsized. Facecloth, shawl, lap afghan, area rug... If you like to knit doilies, you'll look for any excuse to knit them, right?

No offense to those who love feather and fan, but it's not my first choice when something more interesting is available. I do have a couple of f&f patterns on my tentative to-do list, but they keep getting bumped by other projects. The Hemlock Ring doily, whether small or large, is not one of them.

So, what would make a good doily pattern to do as a lap afghan? I like the relative solidity of Jared's Hemlock Ring blanket. An open lace pattern is not as snuggly and is prone to snagging.

I don't want anything too enormous. This is a lap afghan, not a kingsize bedspread. Given a row gauge of roughly 5-7 rows/rounds per inch, I'm probably looking for something in the 75-150 round range, preferably at the lower end. I can add edgings or another motif or something to smaller patterns if necessary.

The pattern has to look nice and show up well when knit in a thicker yarn. It's not as critical as a shawl, where I'd prefer not to look like I'm wearing a tablecloth. However, the decorative elements of the pattern have to look good at the gauge I'd be using.

The Egleblad would work.

So would a lot of other patterns. Clearly, I'll have to go through my pattern collection and my yarn stash to identify some good candidates. This is such a hardship. The things I do for my addiction.

However, I am a good little lemming and find the prospect of a warm doily/blanket project for fall to be very enticing. Will it happen? We shall see. I'd like to finish one of my other projects before I start anything new.