Presenting : Harvest Doily a Study in Sizing.
All together I have 5 doilies. Two in sewing threads, one in tatting thread, one in worsted weight cotton dish cloth yarn and one in the crochet cotton that was actually suggested in the pattern!
Let's take them one by one.
Last week I showed you the jumbled mess that was the green sewing thread. It is 2.5 inches across and was knit on size 00000 needles (which is 1mm for those of you who use metric.) The thread is actually designed for machine embroidery and kinked like the dickens coming off the spool. I probably have about 5000 yards of it left on the spool and truth be told I suspect all 5000 yards are liable to stay there! I nearly threw that one out the window several times while knitting, the only thing that kept me going was that someone told me they didn't think I could do it.........a long time ago I read a book that stated :
"Do you know all those old folk tales where the Count tries to get rid of his only daughter's unsuitable suitor by giving him three impossible tasks?"
"Yes..."
"Don't ever try to do that with Miles. Just...don't."
Simon and Ekaterin, A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
Sometimes I am just as pig headed as Miles and can't let go of a challenge. Of course, in the stories his results are usually better than that first attempt, so I had to try again!
Version 2 was knit with thread that was sold in the Hand Quilting rack. This time the materials used to make the thread lent themselves a little better to becoming a doily, nothing like good old fashioned cotton! This time I went with a slightly bigger needle and crept up to a 000 or 1.5mm for the metric speaking people in the world. My double points still found the thread super slippery so I gave in and magic looped the entire doily, which unfortunately led to some very obvious loop points, but it is recognizable as a doily. Off the pins it shrank a bit and ended at 5 inches across.
Version 3 saw me using size 40 tatting thread. Man oh man was this stuff nice to work with! All shiny and purple so I know that the young lady in my life who feels that everything purple is hers and everything else can be dyed or painted, is going to sneak it off my desk if I so much as blink! Again I went with the 000 needles. Needle size obviously played a large part in the sizing as it is only a half inch larger than Version 2, but significantly heavier.
Version 4 was knit the way Andrea intended! Size 1 (2.25mm) needles and some Joanne's Sensations Crochet Cotton in a fabulous blue! At 7.5 inches across you would have thought I was through with my experiments in doily making, but I had one more I wanted to try.
Version 5 is a monster of a doily. Coming it at 16 inches across and knit on size 7 (4.5mm) needles in a heavy worsted weight cotton she is the prettiest dish rag on the block.
For those of you who read The Yarn Harlot's blog, or are familiar with her at all, you will know that every time she posts about a pattern it flies off the shelves, along with the accompanying yarn, the projects on Ravelry explode and knitters around the world follow her trend. Having broken into the worsted weight cotton I might have fallen into the same trap and spent some idle hours knitting away to be prepared for when the Zombies Come.
But what about The First Brother's Christmas sweater, you might ask?
Done!
What do you have on your needles?
~M
*Andrea was working on a comforting blanket, while I sent Bad Kitten off to college with the most horrifying thing I could imagine! I included some mirrored sunglasses in the Sending You Off to College Package so she could Blink!
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