Marigold

In my last post, I wrote that I was in the mood for something with a lot of symmetry and no knit-seven-togethers.

This Marianne Kinzel pattern was perfect.  Highly symmetric, and no complicated maneuvers.  It was a lot of fun to knit.

This is the Marigold pattern.  It is in one of those old ANP publications.  The Marigold pattern is a cheval set.  The larger doily (pictured above) can be blocked as an oval or a circle.  This is the smaller doily:

It was so cute that I knitted a second one.  So now I have a complete cheval set, similar to what is shown on the cover of the pattern.

Mind you, I do not live the cheval set lifestyle.  But what the heck.  It was fun.

Now I want to re-knit the larger doily, in thicker yarn, to use as a little floor mat or throw rug.

I have knit the smaller Marigold doily before, in some thread that was leftover from some other doily.  It's a quick knit.  But now I have a full cheval set in matching thread.  One 50g ball of #20 cotton thread was sufficient for all three doilies, with some left over.

I'd love to see all of Marianne Kinzel's patterns republished.  The First and Second Books of Modern Lace Knitting are fantastic.  But then there are these other designs that didn't make it into the books.  They deserve to be published again for the current generation of doily knitters.  I assume that either it's not sufficiently profitable, or there's some issue with copyright that is preventing this, at least for now.

Do I have anything erudite to add about the Marigold patterns?  Not really.  As usual with a Kinzel pattern, there are no errors.  The pattern is given in both chart and written form.  There are more stitches per round than are strictly necessary, but that just makes the final diameter larger and enables it to be blocked into either a round or an oval shape.  Kinzel is her usual picky self about how to cast-off, specifying different numbers of chains between single-crochet groups, depending on whether one is at the scallop or between scallops.  I like the care she takes with every aspect of her designs.

One minor point of interest:  Kinzel uses just one symbol for the double-decrease.  It's the standard slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over.  That is a left-leaning double-decrease.  For the larger doily, I changed some to knit three together, a right-leaning decrease.  And the vertical lines between sections were changed to a vertical double decrease, slip two (as if to knit, together), knit one, pass slipped stitch over.  Does it make a difference?  I'm not sure, especially with the vertical double decrease.  But it entertained me, and that's what doily knitting is all about.

I don't use the vertical double decrease in the small diamond patterned ground stitch area.  I've tried that, and I much prefer the SK2P double decrease.  In that area, I want to emphasize the diagonal lines rather than the vertical lines.

What's next?  Well, it's already finished -- Burda 418/33.  It's an attributed Herbert Niebling pattern, one of his symmetric, more geometric designs.  But that might be the topic of the next post.  There will be photos.

Back to my roots (doilies!)

It's been a while since I've finished a doily.  A while since I've posted doily pics.  My life has been a bit unsettled for a few years and doilies simply weren't happening.

Things are settling down.  I'm delighted to say that I am again knitting doilies!  Here are the pics and the general report to the blog.

First up was finishing the Azalea doily, which had been languishing for years waiting for me to get it off the needles.  I knit the full centre piece, the largest size in Marianne Kinzel's pattern.  I must admit that this was incredibly, dreadfully boring to knit.  However, as is always true with Kinzel's designs, the results are quite lovely.

Next up were a few small doilies to get my fingers and brain used to them again.  One of them was actually done before the Azalea doily.  It was an impulse doily, a quick little pattern that took about an hour or two.  There's nothing terribly special about it except that it was the one I cast on when I was in the mood for a doily fix.

The other two are from Kunststricken Folge 2, one of the Burda lace knitting specials.  They are both small since I was using a small ball of thread and was paranoid about running out in the last round before the crochet cast-off.  They are both small doilies in multi-piece sets.  I like them well enough to consider doing larger doilies in the sets, especially for the square pattern.

The square one seems Niebling-esque to me.  I like doing his geometric patterns with skeleton-like leaves (petals?  feathers?).  This pattern has that same feel to it, with the flowing ladder stitch motifs that grow and swirl and then are replaced with new ones.

The circular one is OK.  The larger doilies in the set are a lot more interesting.  This one is too small to really develop the motifs that are prominent in the other doilies.

The final doily for this post is a genuine Herbert Niebling pattern.  It's not attributed, but honestly, how could it be anything else?  It has asymmetric leaves, a nodding flower on a curving stem, wrap stitches, hexagonal mesh, and multiple rounds that begin and end with yarnovers.  I found it in an old book about many different types of lacemaking.  This pattern was in the knitted lace section, unattributed, as a Viennese lace cloth.  The pattern was written only, no charts, with UK terminology.

When I looked through other patterns online and in my collection, I decided that this doily is a standalone version of the inner motif of the Helene doily (from Zauberhafte Strickspitzen).

The inner part grows quickly.  The outer part has a fairly stable stitch count.  I was worried it might not block flat, but luckily it blocked out just fine.  The hexagonal mesh that surrounds the stem, flower, and outer leaf seems rather clumsily done.  I don't know if that is in the original charts, wherever they might have been published, or if it was added to fix stitch-count issues when the pattern was written out and proofread.

I am inordinately pleased with myself.  I am happy to be knitting doilies again.  I have the next several patterns picked out, I think -- another smallish Niebling, a couple of Engelns, maybe a non-boring Kinzel or two...

I will try to stay away from patterns that don't excite me.  I give myself permission to abandon anything that isn't fun to knit.  And of course all bets are off if and when real life intrudes again.

Happy knitting to all!

The Perfunctory January Post (with doily photo)

As I wrote in my very first week of blogging, this blog would go dormant when Real Life got too busy.

It's been busy.

Some of the busy-ness may be of mild interest to others. However, I think I'm going to keep this blog mostly concentrated on my fiber interests for now.

I have finished one sock since the last post, and started on its mate. I don't have any photos of it yet. It looks like a sock, in case anyone was wondering. A photo of it in progress was in my last post to this blog.

I've also done a bit of spinning. Fuzzy brown singles on a bobbin do not make for interesting photos, even if I had any.

Here's a photo of a doily I knit a while back. It's a Marianne Kinzel design. I'm sure many of you will recognize it. It's the center portion of Kinzel's Sunray pattern, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.


I was looking for a pattern that would look like a chrysanthemum, with several layers of overlapping petals. This is not it. However, it is very cute. It was fun enough to knit, tedious like many Kinzel patterns but not overwhelmingly so. (Unlike the Azalea doily, which is still sitting undone on my needles because it's so boring to knit.) I like the way Kinzel uses constant stitch counts in places to make the motifs spread out a bit as the doily grows.

This was also an experiment in seeing how the center would look as a standalone doily. I think it's a success. Dunno if I'll ever want to do the entire Sunray pattern. Probably not. If I'm going to do a large doily, it's going to have to be by some other designer. Kinzel patterns are lovely and straightforward to knit, but they tend to be rather tedious. I can take that for several dozen rounds of knitting, but not for several hundred.

I've thought about taking this center motif and modifying it a bit. The innermost part is very simple, just some eyelet rounds until the stitch count is where one wants it to be. The next part, the ladder motif, is also simple and easily modified. One can do fewer rounds or more, depending on how many stitches you have compared to the diameter.

The outer leaves are interesting. How many overlapping layers can one do? The leaves on each level could (and should) be taller and wider so accommodate the extra circumference. The leaves would have to grow even after the previous level had finished, in order to add more stitches to the overall pattern. The leaves could be changed to petals by changing the placement of the increases and possibly the decreases.

Someday, I'll write some thoughts about Marianne Kinzel's design methods. Her designs are an aesthetic success. And yet, they are simple in construction, especially compared to many of Niebling's more famous designs. Her lifetime output is not as prolific as his is, but she didn't publish any clunkers. Niebling's work is uneven, ranging from clumsy or undistinguished designs to the amazingly complex and gorgeous works we all drool after. It's possible that Kinzel published a lot more than I'm aware of, of course, and that some of it is clunky. However, even the simplest doilies of hers that I've seen are graceful and well-proportioned.

Boring Progress

Well, it's not really boring to do, only boring to read and write about. I don't even have any photos of the in-progress stuff to share.

I had promised photos of the Azalea doily-ghan. I lied. It was too barf-tastic in the thrift-store yarn. I quit in horror. Maybe it's time to give up and donate the yarn to some other thrift store. However, that's a rather cruel thing to do to the next unsuspecting purchaser. I'll toss it back into the depths of the closet, where it can help insulate the house this winter.

After abandoning the Azalea doily-ghan, I idly grabbed some perle cotton weaving thread and re-started the pattern as an actual doily. My poor Frosted Ferns KAL doily sits neglected.

The Azalea doily is coming along quite well. The cotton is too soft for my tastes, but works well in this particular pattern. The color is somewhere between champagne and a light pumpkin tone. It's pleasing enough.

The pattern is interesting. There's very little actual lacework in it, if you define lacework as fabric with yarnovers. A few yarnovers do occur on every 10th round or so. Most of the doily is solid stockinette with a few increases and decreases. It's a very easy pattern to remember and follow.

The pattern's movement is created by the lines of decreases that separate one leaf/petal from its neighbor. The new petals grow by doing a (k,p,k) into the center stitch of the petal. This does create a somewhat open texture in the middle of the petal, and it also causes the stitches of the petal to bias in a pleasing manner. The neighboring motif is a petal, created in the previous set of rounds, that is shrinking by means of decreases at the edges. The motifs swirl and flow, creating harmonious patterns as the light interacts with the stitches.

As usual with a Kinzel pattern, there are zillions of stitches per round, and it's rather tedious to knit in spots. I use the general rule that a doily needs to have approximately 4 stitches per round. So, by round 36, I should have 144 or so stitches. This pattern has about twice that number of stitches at that point. It works anyway, for various reasons I won't go into right now, but it makes the rounds slow-going.

I expect that when I block the doily, it will be a lot bigger than one might expect. All those stitches take up a certain amount of space. If you squish them horizontally, you will end up squeezing them vertically. I am using a fairly loose tension, to help the stitch distortion occur while still getting the pattern to lie flat.

The Azalea pattern still seems to meet a lot of my criteria for a decent afghan pattern. If I were to try it as an afghan, I'd do it as a square, with only 4 pattern repeats per round. It could be an interesting open-square shawl if worked flat. The pattern motif runs from corner to corner. It would be very easy to adapt it to flat knitting by adding a narrow border.

I do like the way that the doily grows by iterating the same pattern motif, adding more of the motifs as the item grows. Kinzel has a lot of patterns that do this, especially her square patterns. It's also a common concept for a lot of modern shawl patterns.

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The Frosted Ferns doily is at a point where new motifs are starting. I need to pay attention for the next few rounds. For some reason, I'm having a tough time with it. It doesn't help that my cat likes to sit on my lap and "help". He butts his head onto my hand. Several stitches fly off the needle and promptly run as many rounds down as they can. Since I'm at this point of new motifs, it can be very hard to figure out how to repair the dropped stitches. The first time, I simply started over. Now, I've done enough rounds that I'd prefer not to have to do that. It takes me a while to do the repairs, and then I'm frustrated and not in the mood to knit on it any more. Send it to its room (actually a small pencil box that serves as my Emergency Doily Knitting Kit) -- it's grounded for poor behavior!

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My lacy cables shawl is roughly 2/3 to 3/4 done unless I decide to make it longer. It's looking like Gayle Roehm's estimate of 750-ish yards of yarn is about right. I might use as much as 800 yards or as little as 700. I'll have a few hundred yards of yarn left. I suppose it will join my stash of small batches, and I'll wonder what to do with it every time I see it. I do have a few ideas, though, starting with doing another few repeats of the shawl stitch pattern.

I do wonder what the heck I'm going to do with the shawl. It's a fairly formal-looking pattern. I don't really live a lifestyle that requires formal-looking stoles. Also, the yarn I'm using is not formal-looking. It's variegated, and it's in shades of brown and gray. I do like the way it looks. So, what does one do with a long and lacy rectangular item like this? I guess I'll find out. It will no doubt join the rest of the shawls in the pile, brought out to wear around the house for the pleasure of wearing it, but rarely getting any public exposure.

It is fun to knit. That is the real reason I'm doing it. Some items I make are practical. A lot are done for the sheer pleasure of the doing.

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Speaking of practical, I am procrastinating on my sweater. I need to make sure the two sleeves are the same length, and that the sleeves and body are the approximate correct dimensions for me. Then I'll unite them and knit the yoke. I suspect that the sweater will go a lot faster when that occurs.

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Let's see; what else can I bore everyone with?

The scarf is doing well. I like the wider version. I'm about at the halfway point. The mindless style of increasing and decreasing is working well for me. (Mindless style: either increase or decrease one stitch near the beginning of the row, and then knit to the end.)

Spinning continues in fits and starts, depending on my mood. It's mostly boring-looking yarn, so I won't bother to take photos. The cats like to "help" with the spinning. One will wake up from a nap elsewhere in the house to come and sit on my lap while I'm on the wheel. He occasionally has to take a swipe at the roving or the drafting yarn. I have to stay alert to make sure that the yarn stays unchewed and that no cats get hurt by the wheel.

They are fascinated by my spindles, too.

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I am dreaming of new projects. There are yarn blobs I want to spin, shawls and other items I want to knit.

The shawl is the current project likely to finish first. That means I'll allow myself to start another large shapeless shawl-like item. There are two doily-shawl conversion projects I have yarn for, another one I need to order yarn for, plus this doily-ghan concept rattling around in my brain, plus a couple of other shawl ideas. I will share the photos of the shawl candidates when they are closer to getting cast on.

Oddly, I don't really have a must-knit doily candidate. The ones I want to knit are big enough that I'd rather do them as shawls or afghans. That could change at any time, of course. I'm easily seduced. Witness the Azalea doily.

Sweaters -- I want to finish this sweater so that I can wear it this winter. I also have my eye on the leftover yarn I'll undoubtedly have. That nice neutral gray will be useful. It would be nice to add another few sweaters to my winter wardrobe. I even have some yarn in sufficient quantities that would work. The next one will be top-down. Should I do cables? Stranded color-work? Another plain sweater?

There are several small items I want to play around with. They might get started sooner, or they might wait until my scarf is done. Wristers, mittens, socks, scarves, hats, bags... We had our first snow this weekend. Those warm knitted items are starting to be used. We can always use more.

I need to set up the marudai or a braiding disk and make a few braids, possibly for knotting purposes. I've been reading a couple of weaving blogs, and am feeling vaguely inspired to drag out the inkle loom or set up a card-weaving project. I haven't dyed anything in a while, and would love to get out the colors to play with. Looking at previously dyed roving and yarn always makes me want to do more.

And so on. I won't bore everyone further by listing all the ideas and plans I have.

A Tale of Three Doilies

And they're all pink. How odd. I guess it's not really all that odd. I made the doily above from a brand new ball of DMC Cebelia #20. There was enough thread left over to make a few more small doilies.

The first doily, in all its poorly-blocked glory, is a Herbert Niebling pattern. It's roughly 82 rounds. I don't think it has a name. It certainly didn't in the pattern source I was using! The flowers look a bit like tulips, so I often refer to it casually as the tulip-like doily. The flowers look more like campanulas or penstemons, some kind of bell-like flower. In any case, they were very interesting to do. The stamens near the top of the flowers are defined by a wrap stitch. That's the first time I've encountered a wrap stitch in a Niebling pattern! I have since done others.

The pattern is not attributed to Niebling, but it contains a lot of his characteristic quirks. The hex mesh background, the floral motif, the way the different stitch patterns are used for textural contrast... Who else would have designed it? (That's an honest question, by the way. I'm always interested in learning more about other doily designers and their design styles.)

As usual with Niebling patterns, it was a fun knit. There were a few rounds that didn't flow as well as they could have. Most of it was very nicely put together. It's not the best knitting or blocking I've ever done, alas. The blocking can be fixed, but I'm stuck with the uneven knitting. Oh, well.

The second doily I knit, from the leftover pink thread, is Kinzel's Coronet doily, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.

If you've gone through the archives for this blog, you'll see an off-white Coronet in my first post. I like the pattern, so I've knit it more than once. The Coronet pattern is a typical small Kinzel pattern, very elegant and restrained and with a whole lot of stitches. It has 46 rounds.

After this doily was finished, I still had thread left over.


So, I knitted up a quickie pattern by Erich Engeln. This one is the descriptively-named #9F. It has 42 rounds.

OK, it's not a descriptive name. Engeln patterns usually do not have names. Those of us who own the pamphlets call them by their pamphlet name. This is from pamphlet #9, and it's pattern F in the pamphlet. It's small but cute, perfect for the amount of thread I had left.

There was thread left over after this one, too, but I decided that enough was enough. It's in my crocheted-snowflake stash. After that, it will go into the weaving/braiding stash.

Anyway, one rather interesting thing about all the above doilies is that they all use the same hexagonal mesh lace pattern as a background lace stitch.

What's really interesting is that each designer uses a different method to increase in pattern.

Niebling uses many different kinds of increase methods, depending on the pattern. Some are clunkier than others. This one is both elegant and simple. The edges of the hex mesh, where it butts up against the tulip-like flowers, start and end with double yarnovers. This sets it up perfectly for the next round. It's all hex mesh -- either \OO/ or O/\O. It starts with one double yarnover and goes from there.

Kinzel's is almost as elegant. It has a kludge or two at the beginning. It starts with a single yarnover and works its way up to a (yo, k3, yo). The next round, which is the real start of the hex mesh, is slightly asymmetric in order to get to an even number of stitches.

Kinzel uses (yox2, k1) at the edge of each hex mesh section. (It finishes with a k1, yox2.) The middle part is all \OO/. The double yarnovers plus a single knit stitch allow the hex mesh section to grow effortlessly. But it is different from Niebling's version. And the first couple of rounds are not as seamless as Niebling's beginnings.

The Engeln pattern uses yet another method. The first round is a single yarnover. Then, he goes immediately to an even number of stitches by doing (yo, kp in stitch, yo). His way of increasing in hex mesh varies. The ones used for the patterns in this pamphlet are similar. The increases at the sides will be single yarnovers. The following round twists the yarnover (yo, k-tbl, yo). After that, he'll use single knit stitches at the edges instead of decreases to keep the pattern flowing until there are enough stitches for the full \OO/ pattern repeat. And by then, he's starting to develop the next set of increases.

I know that what I really should do is scan all three charts, and excerpt the small areas that demonstrate the differences. However, each pattern uses a totally different chart style! It's hard to follow unless you're already familiar with those charting styles. Someday I'll try to chart up the three different chart sections to show you the three different methods these designers used to increase their sections of hex mesh lace.

So, can these kinds of differences be used to identify the designers of unattributed patterns? Yes, I believe so. It's not definitive, but it's one more bit of evidence that allows us to infer the designer's identity.

Someday, I may design my own complex lace patterns. Should I choose to use the hexagonal mesh stitch pattern, looking at the way other designers do it will help me to develop my own style.

These are the kinds of things that fascinate my doily-obsessed mind. The doilies were fun to knit, too.

More thoughts on doily-shawl-afghan conversions

How to estimate how big a particular pattern will be with the yarn or thread you're using

Z's Momma asked in a comment to my previous post:

"I was wondering how large of a lap blanket can be made with a doily pattern using sport weight yarn."

You can make a lap blanket as large as you wish, depending on how much yarn and patience you possess.

The size of the lap blanket will depend on the size of the pattern and upon your blocked row gauge. It's very straightforward to estimate the final size.

Question 1: What is your row gauge? You can start with the approximate row gauge in stockinette. Remember that you may well be using a looser gauge than usual. You may well have some idea about how much blocking you'll do, anywhere from none at all to stretched very tightly or somewhere in between.

Question 2: How big is the pattern you're thinking about (number of rounds)? Take that number and double it, to get the number of rounds from the edge to the middle to the other edge. This is your diameter.

Answer: The diameter divided by your row gauge will give you an approximation for the final size of your lap blanket.

Conversely, to figure out what size pattern you need, take your row gauge and multiply it by the size you want to determine how many rounds you need to knit (edge to edge, not center to edge). Divide that by 2 to get the number of rounds in the pattern.

Example: for sport-weight yarn, let's use 7 rows per inch for the blocked row gauge.

If you have a pattern that is 105 rounds, its diameter is 210 rounds. The size of your lap blanket will be 210/7 = 30".

If you want your lap blanket to be 40" in diameter, it needs to be 7 x 40 = 280 rounds in diameter, or 280/2 = 140 rounds. You need a pattern that has approximately 140 rounds, give or take a bit.

After you've started knitting, you can refine the estimate a bit. After you've done, say, 30 or 40 rounds, measure it. Then extrapolate to the total number of rounds. Or measure your actual row gauge somewhere in the middle of those 30-40 rounds and extrapolate to the total number of rounds. Check again when you're farther along.

You can change your yarn (or your needle size) and thus your gauge if you want to use a specific pattern and want to end up at a certain approximate size. Make sure you like the fabric you're getting. If it's too solid or too open, it would be better to try a different approach.

There are ways to increase the size of your pattern if it's not big enough. They are easiest if you choose a pattern that doesn't finish in a flourish of scallops or fans. You can add another set of motifs, you can add an edging (either outwards-knit or sideways-knit), you can add a few rounds of crocheting, etc.

If a pattern is too large, you can often find intermediate points where you can stop knitting and still end up with something lovely. Some designers do this deliberately, creating a series of patterns that build on each other.

The other easy way to make sure the lap blanket is about the size you wish is to choose a general recipe instead of a specific pattern. In other words, choose a pattern or template that is infinitely expandable. The Hemlock Ring blanket is partly in this category. It starts with the center motif. But the feather and fan can be stopped whenever you think it's enough. It can be expanded for quite a while, too, though eventually you run into the dreaded f&f cupping problem

Someday I'll blog about some nice patterns that are near-infinitely expandable. I'm sure many of you are familiar with some of them through the writings of Elizabeth Zimmermann -- the pi shawl, spiral shawls, the square baby shawl, and other good templates for your creativity.

Intro to the long and boring part of this post

One nice thing about having a blog is that I can post whatever I've been thinking about lately, following digressions to wherever they may lead me. The last post got me thinking about the whole issue of converting doily patterns to shawls, afghans, and other items that are not made with fine, smooth threads. I did some abstract thinking, but then got distracted by a particular pattern. So, this post will be some mix of the abstract and specific. It's not the last post on the subject, since the topic is still rattling around in my skull. This is an interim set of thoughts, subject to modification.

A few thoughts on doily shapes

Doilies come in a lot of different shapes. Which ones do you like? What do you think is a good shape for a shawl, a lap blanket or afghan, a baby blanket, a rug, etc.?

Circles are common. They make reasonable shawls, excellent area rugs, and pretty good lap blankets (and baby blankets). Some can be blocked into polygons (octagons, for example) instead of being perfectly circular.

Polygons are also common. Some can be blocked into circles. Some are very definitely octagons or hexagons or some other shape.

Then there are squares, a common polygon. Some of these can be turned into triangles by only working one or two repeats (flat knitting instead of circular).

You can put several squares (or hexagons or other shapes) together to form a multi-motif pattern. There are a lot of multi-motif patterns out there already. The multi-motif patterns can be any final shape you choose, depending on how you arrange the motifs. Needless to say, you can choose to do only one motif of a multi-motif pattern as a stand-alone doily.

Some patterns are rectangular or oval. Some of these are done in one piece, using various methods to achieve a rectangle or oval. Some ovals start with a central motif, then have wings added to the sides to make it oval.

Have I missed any of the common shapes? Triangles are not very common in doily patterns. They are great for shawls, though.

Variations

I already mentioned the variation where you can take one or two pattern repeats from a square and work them flat to make a triangular shawl. It depends on the pattern, but a lot of squares' charts go from corner to corner and thus are easy to adapt. (The Hyrna Herborgar shawl feels very much like a half-square triangle adaptation; it wouldn't be all that hard to turn it into a square. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that there is a square doily pattern out there that the Hyrna Herborgar designer used as the basis for the shawl.) You can knit the entire square as a flat pattern, too.

You can often (but not always) do something similar to circular and polygonal patterns. If the pattern repeat lines are straight, you can easily knit it flat. You can choose the same number of pattern repeats as the original pattern has, or you can choose to do more or fewer. A narrow border of garter or seed stitch will help keep the shawl from curling. If the edge of the pattern repeat is more variable or is in the middle of something important, it's harder to adapt.

Another thing you can do is to omit the central portion of a pattern. You can continue in the round, ending up with a poncho-like garment, or you can knit flat, ending up with a cape-like garment. Meg Swansen's Mananita pattern is like this. I've done that pattern and will share the photos at some point. There are also some other wonderful shawls out there that use this idea.

Marianne Kinzel's Azalea pattern

I was idly flipping through patterns, thinking about afghan possibilities. I tried to limit myself to patterns that were easily available, so that I could blog about them without having to frustrate the casual doily knitter. I'd already mentioned the Mommes Lysedug pattern and the Egleblad pattern as being good possibilities (see previous post for links to the patterns).

Marianne Kinzel's Azalea doily, from the First Book of Modern Lace Knitting, jumped out at me. The photo is at the right, hopefully around this point if the blogger preview thingy is not lying to me.

It has a lot of elements that would make it a good pattern to use for a lap blanket, an area rug, a shawl, a baby blanket, a facecloth, you name it.

Good points: It's a relatively solid fabric. It would look good in a variegated yarn with long color repeats, or a variegated yarn with relatively subtle color changes. It would look good if you choose to change yarn colors every now and then. It would look good at many scales, from very fine thread to very thick yarn.

Bad points: It's boring to knit. I've tried to knit it twice. The first time, I ran out of thread at a crucial point and unraveled it in frustration. The second time, I simply got bored and then was distracted by a different pattern. However, maybe it would be more fun in yarn than in thread. Also, my definition of boring is not the same as anyone else's.

However, there are some cool things about this pattern that make it ideal for shawls, lap blankets, and other variations.

It's expandable. Each of the doilies shown in the photo is exactly the same as the one smaller, except that it has one more leaf/petal motif per side.

Obviously, one can keep going, making the pattern larger and larger by adding more motifs. The pattern chart and instructions are already set up to do this. The largest version in the original pattern is only 62 rounds. That's a good size for an area rug or for a small lap afghan made with thick yarn. But it's a bit small for other purposes.

Each additional level of leaf/petal motifs adds 12 rounds to the doily. So, even if 62 rounds is too small for your purposes, 74 or 86 or 98 or 110 might be about right.

Each additional set of 12 rounds also adds 14 stitches per pattern repeat. That may eventually become an issue, leading to ruffling due to too many stitches per round. But I don't think it would be a problem for another few sets of leaves. You'll need to block it well in order to get the thing to lie flat. You'll find that you'll get a bit of extra diameter out of the pattern as the stitches get squished horizontally and thus grow vertically.

Given the large number of stitches per round, you could cut this pattern down to 5 or possibly even 4 pattern repeats and still do OK. Do you like it as a pentagon? A square? Those could be increased to a much larger size without having to worry about too many stitches.

You could turn this into a flat-knit shawl. Do you like it as a hexagon? A pentagon? A square? A triangle (made from one or two pattern repeats)? A half-hexagon hexagon? An overlapping octagon (more than circular works fine for a flat shawl)? You could omit the center motif and start with enough stitches for the second or third level of leaves.

The pattern ends with a relatively flat edge. You can add something beyond that to make a more interesting finish. You could finish the half-leaves while putting little fans or plain stockinette between each leaf. You could transition to a totally different lace pattern. You could add a sideways-knit lace edging to finish off.

If you google terms such as kinzel and azalea, you'll see a few versions of this pattern, some done as shawls. Here's Rosemarie Buchanan's shawl, done flat as a cape-style pattern. Here's Schmeebot's shawl, with its interesting technique for finishing those last leaf motifs.

I am very tempted to try this pattern as a shawl or lap blanket. I don't know if I have a reasonable batch of yarn in my stash, though. I could go shopping for suitable yarn, of course. I'd probably do it as a circular-knit hexagon, just like the pattern, and continue for another few levels of leaf/petal motifs.

By tomorrow or next week, I will no doubt be entranced with a totally different idea.

Fun with String

So. I was jonesing for a doily fix. I reached into my doily thread stash (very small, just one shopping bag) and pulled out some thread. LBH #40 tatting cotton? Where the heck did that come from? I have no memory of acquiring this.

But it looked interesting. 20 grams, about 250 yards, a cordonnet-style cotton, off-white.

Now that the thread was chosen, I needed to select a suitable pattern. It couldn't be too big, because I only had 20 grams.

A few minutes of inspecting the pattern stash (which takes up far more space than the thread stash), and I decided on this lovely doily in an old MEZ pamphlet. There are three related doilies in MEZ 7105: a square, a small circle, and a larger circle. I decide on the larger circle. It has 12 pattern repeats and is about 62 rounds. It's cute. I think it's quite possibly a Niebling pattern, because it has a few of his typical touches and it was in a MEZ pamphlet and the small square is in one of the Burda lace-knitting specials. In other words, a lot of speculation leads me to the conclusion, but it is not entirely unreasonable.

The above doily is the result. It's MEZ 7105-C. It was fun to knit. I write that a lot. However, not all doilies are fun to knit. Some are beautiful even though they are tedious at times. It's a bit of a bonus when the doily is fun to knit as well as giving lovely results.

This was the first time in a while that I'd used a fairly fine cordonnet thread. I hadn't remembered how much I enjoyed working with it. A typical cordonnet thread used for doily knitting (and other lace) is often referred to as a "tightly twisted 6-ply." It actually has a cabled construction. The thread is made of 3 plies of cotton. Each of the three plies is a 2-ply cotton, plied in the opposite direction from the final ply direction. The resulting thread is very crisp and provides good stitch definition. It is also a tactile pleasure to use.

Interestingly, I don't think I can tell the difference in the final, blocked doily. It looks great, of course. It's different from softly-twisted 2-ply cottons. However, I'm not sure it's all that much different from a tightly-twisted 3-ply cotton such as DMC Cebelia.

There was enough thread left over to do another doily. I chose Marianne Kinzel's Marigold pattern (from ANP 5). I only had enough thread for the smaller Marigold doily, 34 rounds and 6 pattern repeats. It's a cute little doily, though I could stand to block it better when I get a chance. I'll have to do the larger Marigold doily one of these days.

I enjoyed working with the LBH tatting thread. I might have to track down more. I sure wonder how it got into my stash. As far as I know, no local store carries it. Oh, well. I have to rely on mail order for most of my fiber perversions. The local places mostly cater to the conventional knitting crowd.

The First Post

Is this where I'm supposed to give a brief introduction and my objectives for this blog?

The heck with that.

Here's a doily photo instead.




This is the Coronet doily. The pattern is in Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting, published by Dover and available from many fine vendors. It's the cover photo on my edition.

The pattern is given in both written and charted form. It is error free. I've knit it several times.

Doily knitting is very addictive.