Mandate

This was originally supposed to be a doily blog! What is the deal with all this sock-knitting nonsense.



Here is a doily from an old Ericas Handarbeiten leaflet that I found. (Only a piece of it though, so alas, I don't know what leaflet exactly or when it was published.) It's Zephyr knitted up on 2.75mm needles, and it ended up being about nine inches across. (My blocking job is not as shoddy as it looks; it was a perfect octagon a few hours ago, really!) I started it with Rosemarie's circular cast-on (but with a lot less ado, I just knitted a scrap of i-cord with the same yarn in a different colour, then increased at the last to accomodate the number of stitches I wanted to begin the pattern with), and ended by crocheting off stitches in clusters of three.

I haven't decided how I feel about doilies made out of wool—I still feel a bit guilty about knitting them because of that little notice at the beginning of that Marianne Kinzel book where she says that non-cotton non-linen doilies are Just Not The Done Thing, So Don't Even. In favour of non-cotton doilies: oh man, the drape, when they stick off the edges of tables and things! The sheen, when there's silk in them! The stretchiness of wool, which takes care of a lot of binding problems in e.g. Niebling doilies without my even having to do anything! Where is the downside!

The real reason I picked this yarn is because I have almost an entire cone of it sitting around, and it is a good doily colour.