Monday 30 April 2012

Doilies

Don't you just love the word "doily"? It sounds so charmingly quaint, I think. :D And I guess it's true that in terms of use and usefulness, doilies are a quaint bit of silliness. Still, I think they are ever so pretty, good fun to make, and can look rather pretty underneath an item on a table or so - enhancing both, even though the former will cover up part of the pattern. Also protecting the table from scratching, I suppose. :)

I first started making doilies almost 30 years ago and tend to get phases in which I make a few of them, followed by years of not touching a crochet needle. One of those phases came upon me last year, and here are two results I gave away as Christmas presents.


They are both from "Diana Spezial, Filethäkeln" (D 168, published in 1996).

The first is Modell 8, which I chose because it's quite small - I wanted to use some yarn I'd found in my yarn box, so needed to make sure there would be enough. However, it turned out that the numbers of stitches as given in the pattern didn't work out for me. It's possible that this is because my yarn and needle-size differed from the one used in the pattern, although I'd have thought that if you use a thinner or thicker yarn, your stitches are accordingly bigger or smaller, too, so it should work out either way.
I used a 0.75 or 1.0 size needle, so pretty much as recommended (1.0 for the pattern) I don't know what gauge the yarn was, only that it was what I'd used with the same needle before.

Anyway, to make the chains in the outer part fit in length, I had to use 26 chain stitches, instead of the 14 suggested by the pattern!
I used 18 gr of yarn, and the diameter of the finished doily is 23 cm (as opposed to 20gr and 15 cm diameter as stated in the pattern - a very curious disagreement, to my mind).


The second doily is Modell 9 from the same magazine, but only two thirds of it. The second and third segments (if you look at the different basic shapes in the design as three different segments) would have been repeated, but as it was exactly the same and - again using a different yarn from the one used in the pattern - it was beginning to look critical whether the stitch counts would fit, I decided to stop it at that point.
The yarn is Anchor Aida, plain white (col. 00001), gauge 20.

Another reason was that this way the diameter is similar to the one before, so I could give them both away as similar sized presents.

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