Kalliope

I haven't knitted anything that's actually germane to this blog in quite a while, and was feeling guilty about it—the idea was to keep topical here at Doilies Are Stylish HQ. So here is something small:



It's "Kalliope" from Kunstricken 2007 knitted out of almost the very last bit of my ecru Colourmart laceweight silk, which ended up yielding one enormous shawl and eight doilies of various sizes. I think there's enough left for another smallish doily and that's it (which is still an outrageous amount of knitting to have come from one cone of yarn). I'd count this doily as "smallish"—it's 11-1/2" across, 61 rounds.

It isn't in the Niebling style of extreme fiddliness, which came as something of a relief after lots of fiddly doilies all in a row. I'm impressed by the fiddly doilies, of course, and I like to knit them, but sometimes you need something easy and intuitive and with no "hex mesh" to knit in between. Like a palate cleanser!

This was the only slightly fiddly part: a round with six three-over-three cable crossings. I wanted to work them without a cable needle because that's how I roll, but slippery silk covered in slippery coning oil doesn't take kindly to that type of manhandling and. Well. I had to reconstruct about six rounds of knitting underneath where one cable was supposed to be. I used an extra DPN to cable the rest of them.



There should be a quiz on the internets where you answer personality-test questions and it responds by telling you which famous doily designer you are most like.

You scored as Christine Duchrow!

Your patterns are heavily stylised and geometric. You like to combine the same small motifs in different ways to make different designs, instead of coming up with something new each time. That's okay—the simplicity you prefer means knitting is relaxing! You are organised, even though your patterns are quirky sometimes—you like to work from charts and think everyone else should, too. This way all your missteps are easy to find. You aren't fussed about which way your decreases slant, because with thread this fine it's impossible to tell either way.