Side Quest doily: FdA 822

Lavori 07/30 took a quick break while I did another doily.

This is the doily from FdA 822.  I have no idea if there was a name attached, though FdA names tend to be more descriptions or random adjectives than names, really.

A friend and I did this one together, each choosing to interpret the chart symbols slightly differently.  That person has finished, and the doily is absolutely gorgeous.  I don't know if a pic has been posted yet, but we shared our photos with each other and that's how I know how nice it is.  Mine is above.  I'm reasonably pleased with it, too.

The little poof-like motifs in the middle section remind me a bit of Apache Plume seed heads.

I don't think I would have chosen to do this doily without being inspired by my fellow doily knitter.  About half of it is pattern-on-every-round.  And the outer rounds increase to a silly number of stitches.  But I do like how it turned out, so no regrets.

It turns out the every-round sections are brioche -- yarnover, slip 1, knit 2 together, offset on each round so the k2tog gets slipped and the yo-slip1 gets k2tog-ed.  That's the innermost motif and the middle motif.

The areas that aren't brioche are mostly hex mesh surrounding the other motifs as they grow and shrink.

The outer motifs are fans, with each fan consisting of three V-shaped sections separated from the other Vs of the fan by double yarnovers.  (In other words, each fan is O-V-O-O-V-O-O-V-O.)

So....

There are rounds that begin and end with yarnovers.  Some of these are typical Herbert Niebling hex mesh charting quirks.  I do the usual double-yo at the beginning of the round, with the first yarnover moving to the end of the round on the intermediate round.  (Is this a Herbert Niebling pattern?  This chart quirk is one piece of evidence pointing to him as the designer, as are the outer fan sections which are separated by double yarnovers.)

Some of them, though, are brioche yarnovers that just happen to be next to each other at the beginning and end of the round.  For those, keep them separate.  On the next round, each of the yarnovers will have something different happen, so they don't end up doing anything unfortunate to the overall design.

Also, in the every-round part, the chart will put a number (meant to be a number of knit stitches) above double yarnovers from the previous round.  For those, one does the usual thing of putting a knit and a purl into the double yarnover rather than two knits.

I changed some decrease directions (sk2p to k3t).  And I slipped stitches as if to purl.

I didn't block the doily very carefully, but it looks good anyway.  There are a few mistakes, especially in the brioche section, that I wasn't fully able to fix, but they're hard to see unless one is looking for them.

This pattern has 78 rounds, 16 pattern repeats per round.  I don't think there are any chart errors, but the knitter is expected to know how to handle the kinds of chart quirks I mentioned above.

Now back to Lavori 07/30!  At least until the next side quest.

It's also time to start thinking about the next travel project since I've been getting in some good knitting time on my travel shawl.  It's pretty, and will be more of a scarf than a shawl, as is typical for an asymmetric shallow triangle.

First Monday in October

October 1. Yikes, the year is zooming by!

However, we did manage to make it all the way to October before turning on the heat for the winter. We're probably going to have to give in tonight. Passive solar doesn't work on cloudy, windy, chilly days. Another cold front is due to arrive tonight. Warm shawls and cuddly cats only go so far.

Blätterspitzen



This doily was called Blätterspitzen in the issue of Lena magazine in which it appeared. (There's an umlaut over the a -- blatterspitzen -- in case it decides not to show up for some reason.) I have it in a couple of other formats, though it does not have a name in those versions. The Lena magazine even credited it to Herbert Niebling. I had wondered about that. The doily contains several stitch patterns and motifs that Niebling often used, but in a format that wasn't definitively his. I didn't know if it came from his design house or if it was a pastiche, created by someone who wanted to design something in a similar style. It's good to see a definitive credit.

Every version of the doily I've seen is slightly different. Maybe the center is a little different, maybe a chart symbol was interpreted differently, maybe the cast-off was different. The photos that accompany the patterns are sometimes different from the charts! I find this fascinating. Is there some Ur-Blätterspitzen in some old, obscure, very out-of-print source, and all of the more modern republications re-interpret it? Or were several slightly different versions of the pattern sold to different publications, and the newer versions simply republish from the original source they have rights to?

My version is different from the published version, too. The original pattern (all versions) finished with several rounds of stockinette stitch. I decided to quit at the last non-stockinette pattern round. If I had planned ahead, I could have done it more gracefully, but I like it well enough the way it is. Another minor difference is my use of directional double decreases instead of only using the one called for in the chart. (Someday I'll blog about context-based stitch variants for chart symbols.)

The Blätterspitzen doily was a summer KAL project on one of the lace mailing lists. That was a fine excuse for me to do it. If you look around, you can find photos of this doily in a lot of blogs and websites. After Lena published it (in the 09/06 issue, I believe), a lot of people knit it. One of the KAL people is putting together a blog to record the KAL and display pretty pictures. Once it's up and running, I'll share the URL for it.

I like seeing how different people have approached the pattern. It looks great with the stockinette framing. Different people used different materials and gauges, blocked it differently, and so on. One person didn't like one of the motifs and substituted a totally different one. Her version is lovely, too. No one chose to use thick yarn or twine and do it as an area rug, alas. I think it would work well for that.

Blätterspitzen means something like leaf tips or leaf lace. There are a lot of doilies with similar names. It's hard to come up with a good, unique, descriptive name for a doily. Some doilies have several names, while others have none.

My photo is somewhat out of focus. Drat! What I like best about it is the differing textures of the different motifs, and the way that the shapes combine and seem to intersect each other.

It was fun to knit. If you've never knit Niebling patterns before, you'll find it educational. The doily is almost like a series of mini-lessons on Niebling techniques. It's not a good doily for a beginner, though any determined knitter could accomplish it. It's a nice challenge and a good learning experience for the intermediate doily knitter. An experienced doily knitter will enjoy encountering familiar motifs in an unfamiliar arrangement. Fun and excitement start very soon after the cast-on.

Now I get to cast on for the list's fall KAL, the Frosted Ferns doily. It's another Niebling pattern, larger than Blätterspitzen. I'll cast on sometime this week.

In a somewhat related rant, I am finding it more and more difficult to acquire good doily-knitting threads from local sources. Even places that carried them a few years ago no longer have anything finer than #10, if they carry them at all. Soon I'm going to have to do an internet order to replenish my stock of certain thread sizes. This is too bad. I like being able to fondle the stuff in person, admiring the colors as I make my selection. I like being able to patronize a local store. Oh, well. Doily-knitting is an odd little perversion. Perhaps the local population isn't quite enough to support the market. I could probably find a decent source if I were willing to go 50-100 miles from home. However, at some point, the costs of sales tax and gas prices and driving time each way versus shipping costs and one-click shopping from home make it an impractical choice.

I'm going to use DMC Cebelia #30 cotton thread for this doily. My stash choices are light blue, dark red, and ecru. I'll probably choose ecru. The brighter colors I have don't seem quite right for a doily with leaf and acorn motifs. I think one 50g ball of #30 should work. It's between 550 and 600 yards. I don't feel comfortable with #20, which is somewhere between 400 and 500 yards. If I were to do this as a shawl (it's big enough for a small shawl!), I'd want 800-1000 yards of sportweight yarn.

I'll blog my progress here as well as on the mailing list where the KAL is taking place. I don't usually take part in KAL's, but I make an occasional exception for doilies.