Fun with Squares

In January, I posted a photo of a small square doily.  It was the smallest doily in a three-piece set.

Since then, I have knitted the other two doilies in the set.

The largest one is 72 rounds.  The medium one is 62 rounds.  And the small one is 42 rounds.  They all start out the same.  But as you can see, each successive size up develops the motifs a little bit more.

I've seen this set in an old Beyer magazine.  But I knit it from the charts and description in Burda Alles aus Garn Kunststricken Folge 2, also known as Burda 305.

The photos are obviously not to the same scale.  The biggest one really is quite a bit larger than the smallest, with the medium one definitely between the two in size!

Burda 305/12A

Burda 305/12B

Burda 305/12C

I enjoy knitting sets.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I don't think it's because I actually want a set of anything.  I think it's because I liked knitting one of the patterns, and thus enjoy knitting something that is similar without being exactly the same.  It's much the same fun to knit.  It's interesting to see variations on the same motifs, to see how the designer re-arranges or builds on the elements to make something new.

Some designers, such as Engeln and Kinzel, do this deliberately.  They design nested sets.  One starts with an inner motif.  Then one can cast off, or keep going to another layer of motifs.  And so on, up to quite large pieces.  Sometimes outer layers are the same motif as an inner layer, but with more repeats per round.

Another trick I've seen is to merely increase the number of pattern repeats.  So you might have a square, a hexagon, an octagon, an oval, etc.  Sometimes a few stitches are added or subtracted to make it work out better.  Sometimes it's almost exactly the same.  Those are also fun sets to make.

The three piece set above is slightly different.  Each is a standalone doily, not merely an inner layer of a larger doily.  Instead, it builds by making each motif bigger.  So, the small doily has 3 ladder-stitch columns in the inner diamonds and 6 columns in the outer fans.  The medium doily has 5 columns in the inner diamonds and 9 columns in the outer fans.  The large doily has 7 columns in the inner diamonds and 11 columns in the outer fans.  Therefore, it takes more rounds to grow and/or shrink the motifs.

I imagine one could build on these theme to make even larger squares.  Well, until the stitch counts per round get too distorted.  These squares have rounds with way more stitches per round than strictly seems necessary.  I also wonder about building a larger square by adding another layer or two of those inner diamonds.  These squares have two layers of diamonds.  What if one repeated that idea and made three or four layers?  The number of outer fans per side would of course increase to match.

I have no plans to experiment any time soon, though.  Time for the next doily!  What shall it be?  As usual, there are so many beautiful candidates.  I will flip through my pattern collection to see what catches my fancy.  Some quick 40-rounders?  A larger 100+ round doily?  Something in between or something much larger?  Take a break from doilies and knit more hats, socks, mittens, sweaters, etc.?  Decisions, decisions...

Lily of the Valley

A lily of the valley by any other name would still have as many knit-seven-togethers.

OK, that's not quite what Shakespeare wrote.  And probably not anything Herbert Niebling was known to mutter while designing another of his doilies with lily of the valley motifs.

This is Convallaria.  And it's also Maiglockchenflor.  And maybe other names, too, but those are the names of the pattern in the two sources I have for it.  Both of those names translate to lily of the valley, more or less.

It is a fairly complex doily for its size.  There are all of the flowers -- seventy-two k7-tog maneuvers, along with some associated k4-tog, k3-tog, SK2P, and related fun.  There are the lovely asymmetric leaves.  There's all the hexagonal mesh, with all of the double yarnovers and decreases.  There's the characteristic Niebling trait of starting and ending pattern repeats with yarnovers, with nary a mention in the pattern that this could be an issue at the beginning and end of the round.  And there are many, many stitches per round.

It was fun to knit.

Here's a close-up that shows most of one pattern repeat.  There isn't a lot of symmetry in this pattern.  There are three leaves per pattern repeat.  Each one is different.  Same with the flower stalks -- three flower stalks, each one different.  The hexagonal mesh develops differently in each of the spaces between flowers and leaves.

But the results are beautiful.

If you knit the pattern, be careful how you transition from the tops of the flowers to the round that is only hexagonal mesh.  Both the chart and the written version of the pattern had an issue that meant that the hexagonal mesh wouldn't line up properly for the entire pattern repeat.  I had to do a bit of cussing and improvisation at that point.  But all went well enough.

I don't know if there is an in-print source of the Convallaria version of the pattern, which is charted.  I don't know if there are other chart sources or other names for this pattern.  The written version of the pattern, Maiglockchenflor, is in print, in Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures.  You can buy Old World Treasures from Gloria Penning or from any reputable dealer who carries books on lace and doilies.  There are several unattributed Niebling patterns in Old World Treasures as well as many pretty designs by Lillie Meitler.

I wrote about this doily several years ago, as being on my list of doilies I wanted to do someday.  I hadn't remembered that!  Now I can check that off the list.  I don't think I'll knit this again, but I'm glad that I did finally knit it, all seventy-two knit-seven-togethers and all.

Next up, I think, will be something with a lot of symmetry and no knit-seven-togethers.

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!

A Doily Shot and Various Ramblings

The above doily is Burda 085/15. It's from Folge 1, an early Burda lace-knitting special. The pattern is probably a Niebling design. Most of the patterns in this collection are Nieblings. The magazine starts out by celebrating Burda's purchase of the rights to many of Niebling's patterns.

The reason the doily in this photo looks blue is because it is blue. I'm pretty sure I used #20 Coats Opera thread, light blue in color. I'm not a huge fan of Coats Opera for doilies. It's nice to knit with and shiny in appearance. However, the cotton is fairly soft. Doilies made from Coats Opera seem a bit limp and lose their blocking fairly quickly. I have some in my stash I've slowly been using up. I don't know if I'll buy more after it's gone. It works well for a lot of other kinds of lace even though it's less than perfect for doily knitting.

This was a fun doily to knit. It has a lot of the Niebling touches, such as multiple decreases and berry/leaf/flower motifs that hang from stalks. Those outer motifs, the fan of feathers or open leaves or whatever they are, are also a common Niebling touch. I liked the way the pattern grew. It has a recursive aspect that appeals to me.

The pattern's structure is interesting. It is seemingly simpler than some of Niebling's designs. Each motif is in its own triangular wedge. The lines of each wedge are straight. The structural increases and the decorative touches all occur within each wedge.

Many of Niebling's most admired patterns don't separate the motifs so stringently. Each pattern repeat swirls into the next. The structural increases can occur anywhere, and rarely follow a straight line or even a simple increase pattern. There are no lines or obvious breaks between the pattern repeats.

Is this an earlier pattern of his? A way to experiment with some new decorative motifs without having to worry about uniting them into a flowing design? Or is it a design preference, a deliberate choice to use this motif in this particular way? It is by no means the only Niebling design with isolated motifs separated into distinct panels.

The doo-dad on the stalk motif is interesting, too. Are these leaves? Flowers or flower buds? Some kind of fruit? I don't know. Each one is relatively long and narrow, with a double decrease in the center keeping it the same width until it's attached to the stalk motif.

I have seen a similar motif in a Russian-language Niebling pattern that goes by the name of "birch catkins". (I've seen the birch catkin pattern somewhere else, too, but can't remember where offhand.) The birch catkin pattern looks very much like the famous "snowdrop flower" pattern that's been published in Burda and elsewhere. It consists of catkins (similar to the snowdrops) on stalks, all on a hex mesh background. The motifs seem to swirl and flow in a typical Niebling manner, no rigid separation like we see in the 085/15 pattern.

This pattern is also related to a group of other patterns, most around 72 rounds, that have berries or flowers on stalks. A few of them go by the name of Thistle. Most of the patterns don't have the motifs strictly separated into panels the way this one does. Of course, now that I've drifted onto this subject, I can't find any links to photos to share with y'all. Rats. Maybe next time.

Ramblings on Various In-Process Projects

I don't want to leave my poor blog neglected. Therefore, in addition to the above doily photo, I shall post a bit about current progress on various projects. I don't usually post that kind of stuff to mailing lists because it's too boring. I actually do like having a record of what I was working on, the issues I was considering, and so on. So here is this week's progress report...

The sweater I posted about last week is still teetering between a staghorn cable on the front and Something Else. The cable is fine. I like working it and I like the way it looks. However, I might simply want to knit plain stockinette for a while. I'm not sure if the cable detracts from the beauty of the yarn and thus the overall sweater fabric. I've been doing a couple of cable repeats while I dither.

If I ditch the cable, my next decision point will come at the underarm area. Then I can decide if I want to do a gansey or drop-shoulder style, and if so, if I should pattern the chest area or not. I'd pattern the shoulder/neck area for sure if it's a gansey. If I don't decide to do a gansey, then what? I can still add a color pattern to the yoke. Or I could do another EZ-style sweater, choosing something different from last time. I've also been toying with the idea of a V-neck sweater for this yarn. Anyway, there are plenty of things to contemplate as the yarn slides through my fingers and the sweater goes 'round and 'round.

My diagonal garter stitch scarf is nearing the end. This is good. I am getting very tired of doing diagonal garter stitch. The scarf is roughly 5 feet long with maybe another foot to go, give or take a bit. I still like the way the scarf looks. It's an effective way to use this particular variegated yarn. I think the colors are cheerful, but a certain person who shall remain nameless implied that it looked like clown barf. Hmmph.

The Marianne Kinzel Azalea doily is sitting. I have finished the third iteration of the leaf pattern. I am trying to decide if I have the fortitude to do the fourth and final iteration. I am thinking seriously of casting off now. There are only 12 rounds to do for the full-size doily, but it turns out to be something like 5000 incredibly tedious stitches. I can think of more interesting ways to spend 5000 stitches of my knitting life.

The Frosted Ferns doily is sitting. I think it's waiting for me to get the Azalea off the needles. I'm not inspired.

I did start a new project this weekend. It's a generic 64-stitch toe-up sock. I think I was inspired by the sight of all my other handknit socks. We've had cold weather lately. It's time for my first sock-washing session of the season. The sight of all those socks, ready to wash, always fills me with a sense of satisfaction. One can never have too many socks, so it's time to start another pair.

Yes, I always do have some sock yarn in my stash; why do you ask? Sock yarn is no different from any other household staple such as flour or soap.

I'm trying Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' short-row heel for this sock. It's the one where you use yarnovers instead of wraps (or neither) as you work your way down and up. The yarnovers get knit or purled together with neighboring stitches as the sock heel grows. One ends up doing k3tog's and sssp's as each heel stitch is joined together with two yarnovers. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I will reserve judgment. It seems rather fiddly. I'm not sure the results will justify the efforts.

After all the doilies I've been doing, a 64-stitch sock seems to go quite quickly. I'm more than half done with the first sock already.

My spinning wheel project is going slowly. I'm almost done with another bobbin of singles and thus will soon be plying several hundred yards. Every time I sit down to spin, a cat promptly comes over to sit on my lap. I don't mind that too much, except that the cat will occasionally, and quite surreptitiously (he thinks), lean over to grab the roving and take a small nibble. This does not lead to harmony, tranquility, and good yarn.

What else can I bore everyone with? I don't have other fiber projects that I feel like writing about. I'm thinking about posting a generic k2p2 ribbed hat pattern, but that will be at some future unspecified time.

I have been doing some hiking. With every snowfall, I've been retreating to lower elevations. It's interesting to see some areas in late fall that looked so much different in spring or summer. The world seems monochromatic, a million shades of gray and brown. And yet those shades are so beautiful -- purplish grays, rosy browns, sage greens, the russet-tinged gold of dried grass, the pale blue glitter of ice crystals. It makes me want to drag out the paints or bring along my camera. Hiking always makes me think and reflect as my body moves along the trail. With winter hiking, there's enough beauty for appreciation and reflection without the distractions of summer's gaudy riot of colors and sights.

I like winter hiking. When the snow gets deep enough, I like snowshoeing, too. Skiing is OK but requires too much interfacing with the equipment, rather like biking. It's a different kind of experience.

There's something very satisfying about wearing proper clothing while out in the cold. Of course, I especially enjoy those items I made myself. Which, of course, is part of why I do it, both the making stuff and the wearing while hiking.

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.

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.

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.

Adonis

This is the Adonis doily. I did it before I did the one you see in my previous post. It is another pattern that is almost certainly a Herbert Niebling design.

The Adonis doily pattern is pretty much identical to the Adonieroschen patten from Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures booklet. The only difference is that Adonis calls for 6 pattern repeats, while Adonieroschen calls for 8. Since I have a short attention span, I prefer the 6 PR version. Some of the outer rounds have a lot of stitches per pattern repeat!

You can see a photo of the Adonieroschen version of the pattern at Michael Kaprelian's website. The direct link to the photo is:

http://www.angelfire.com/on2/fwlaceknitter/images/adon.jpg

The pattern is very straightforward to knit. The inner flower is slightly fiddly. The texture of the inner flower is made up of alternating twisted knits and purls (*k-tbl, p*). I continued that pattern on the intermediate rounds. I think it really defines those petals nicely.

One ball of DMC Cebelia #20 cotton thread was sufficient for two doilies in the 70-80-round range. I could probably manage one more small doily from the same ball of thread, maybe up to 40 rounds or so. But I'll probably throw the remnants into my stash instead. I use the remnants for small crocheted items such as snowflakes. Or I use them for weaving and braiding.

I like the patterns in Old World Treasures. Lille Meitler is the featured designer. Her designs are quite pleasant. The booklet includes about a half dozen patterns by an unknown designer. I think the unknown designer is Herbert Niebling. Except for Elfreida, which is pretty clearly by Meitler, the unattributed patterns feature many of his typical design flourishes.

A Doily Affair

The camera went traveling with another family member yesterday, so no photos of the blocking process this time. The above photo is what my doily looks like after blocking. The color is off; the actual doily is ecru.

I'm pleased with it. I'm almost always pleased with my latest doily.

I didn't do the second round of crocheting. I like it just fine with one round. I didn't block it quite in the same way as the pattern showed, either. I didn't pull the little outer fans into the high, sharp triangles. I like the softer, more circular fans.

There are a couple of interesting things about this doily that I thought I'd mention.

The first thing is about the innermost motif, the flower. Notice the slight asymmetry in the petals? That's because the petals are outlined with crossed stitches. They cross in one direction only. So one side looks smoother and more natural than the other. It's possible that the pattern can be changed to make the two halves symmetric. However, it didn't really work with the way the pattern was charted.

The second thing is the background stitch in the middle part of the doily, surrounding the leaves. There are a lot of double decreases in this section. I did them the Japanese way, using the centered double decrease (slip 2 together as if to knit, knit 1, pass the 2 stitches over). I think the vertical lines are a little too prominent. I'm going to go back to using the traditional (slip 1, k2tog, psso) or k3tog double decrease for this particular pattern stitch.

I enjoyed this doily so much that I'm very likely to do more in the same style in the future.

What doily will be next? Dunno. A mailing list is gearing up for a KAL based on another Niebling pattern. It's called Frosted Ferns in this online text-only version of the pattern. I have it in a charted form in another source, where it's called Eiche (oak). It looks like little acorns amidst oak leaves, all on a hex-mesh lace background. So, that one might well be next if I don't get seduced by something else before then.

Casting On

I keep telling everyone that my next doily is going to be the Maiglockenflor doily from Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures booklet.

I keep getting distracted by other patterns. In case you don't have Old World Treasures, the photo on the left is not Maiglockenflor.

It's a routine by now. Dithering is part of the process. I look through my patterns, trying to decide what to knit next. I come up with a couple of candidates and make working copies of the charts. I decide what I'm going to knit, and perhaps which one will be next after that.

And then, just before I begin, some other pattern catches my eye. How have I never noticed it before? It's so cute! And here's some thread in a suitable color, about the right amount for the doily.

Grab the needles. Cast on. And I'm off, on some totally unplanned adventure.

I had planned to pause here a moment for a dissertation on doily cast-ons. However, I'm probably the only person who is reading this blog at the moment. I'll wait until some future doily post. If you, my imaginary reader(s), are here now and really care, you can no doubt find some great stuff in the archives of any mailing list that deals with lace knitting.

Anyway. Back to my current adventure.

As you can tell from the photo at the top of this post, it's a smaller version of the doily on the cover of the blue Japanese doily book that Lacis just reprinted (Knitted Lace Designs of the Modern Mode, Bk 1, by Kazuko Ichida). The doily has no name as far as I can tell. I feel fairly comfortable in attributing this pattern to Herbert Niebling and/or his design house. It has a leaf motif that shows up in many of his patterns. The inner flower is also typical of his style, with crossed stitches outlining the petals.

The doily is circular, with 8 pattern repeats per round. It has 72 rounds plus a couple of rounds of crocheting to finish off. The knitting is very soothing and easy. The stitch count is not tediously excessive. It runs fairly close to the standard 4 stitches/round. The only tricky part is all the crossed stitches in the early rounds of the pattern. They were finished while the doily was still on the dpn's. The rest of the pattern uses only basic maneuvers -- knit, twisted knit, yarnover, right-leaning decrease, left-leaning decrease, and double decrease. The intermediate rounds are plain knitting, no twisted knits or double yarnovers or anything like that.

The charting style is Burda/Beyer, which I find very easy to knit from. The text is in German. It's the standard doily construction, no deep understanding necessary.

I had planned that this doily would last me for at least a week. I'm trying very hard to get a sweater knitted for myself before the weather turns too cold. This doily was supposed to be for odd intervals when I was in the mood.

This doily is so quick and fun that it has distracted me from my other projects. I've finished the knitting and will do the cast-off in the next session. It's taken me only a few days.

The cast-off consists of two rounds of crocheting. The first round is pretty standard -- group some stitches into a single crochet, and chain a loop between each group. The second round calls for putting a single crochet into two loops, and chaining some stitches between. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do the second round of crocheting.

This doily will be a good test of my ability to maintain a blog. I want to take before, during, and after photos of the blocking. Will it happen? We shall see!

Even though I'm distracted, I am making progress on my other projects. I do my self-assigned quota on the sweater, then go do some more doily knitting. I'm also keeping up with my self-assigned quota on my shawl between bouts of doily progress.

I am no longer claiming that Maiglockenflor will be my next doily project. Someday I'll fall madly in lust with it while preparing to cast on a different project. Then it will be on the needles and started before I know it. But for now, I do not think that it will be the next project. I'm not even going to jinx myself by making any plans at all.

I do like my other projects. The shawl is fun. The sweater will be useful. The scarf is pretty. I'll introduce them more fully in later posts.