Me? Knit a Doily? I Don't Think So....

I have completed the second set of lace patterns on the Mermaid Shawl which I intend to photograph and post this week. This only leaves the finished edging to do and a second shawl is complete. This one is beautiful, too, but very different from the original. The yarn I used this time, K1C2's Angora Soft, is much smoother and finer than the Suri Dream Alpaca I used for the first one. Consequently the pattern is more obvious — there is much better stitch definition — and, because I am knitting on smaller needles, there are a lot more stitches overall. But I love it.

One of the things I particularly like about it is the adaptability to size. I realize not everyone would want one quite as voluminous as the shawls I prefer. I love being able to wrap up totally in a shawl. But there are enough places in the shawl that you can make adjustments that a moderately experienced knitter can change the pattern to suit her preferences.

I am also on the last few rows of the beautiful, lacy rainbow shawl I am knitting from Knit Pick’s Shimmer, a rich, lace-weight alpaca and silk blend that has such richness of color it looks like jewels. This will be a nice, light, summer-weight shawl and I intend to put deep fringe on it for added panache.

All of which means that I only have one shawl in the works — the Lady Eleanor — which is about 1/3 finished and is coming along nicely. Believe it or not it does seem that summer may come after all and I am thinking about what I want to knit when it is warm. I have quite a bit of yarn to choose from (what a shock!) There are 6 or 7 skeins of Knit Pick’s beautiful Alpaca Cloud, a big bag of their shine in a beautiful color called Sky, and an equally big bag of their Crayon Pima Cotton in a deep pink that will all make happy summer knitting. Plus I still have two large hanks of Lorna’s Laces silk-wool blend laceweight begging to be used.

So last night I spent a couple hours with a stack of lace knitting books from my collection looking for inspiration. I’ve never made a doily and think it is safe to say I never will but I love the patterns that lace knitters have devised to create them. When I look at books like Marianne Kinzel’s I can’t imagine the hundreds of hours it took to create those lovely things — and yet, at the same time, I think about doing them on a much larger scale to make a shawl.

A few years back I copied the stitch patterns in her “Lilac Time” doily and used them to make a triangle scarf. I made it in Ironstone’s beautiful mohair in a deep violet. It now belongs to my friend Terry. I have been looking at the popular "Frost Flowers and Leaves Shawl" in A Gathering of Lace and wondering if I could adapt the same principles Eugen Beugler used in creating it and wondering if I could do a similar thing using the motifs in “Lilac Time”.

As I was thinking about this I wondered what it is that would compel me to do that? Certainly Beugler’s Frost Flower shawl is sufficiently beautiful and intricate to be made in one of the lovely laceweights I’ve been hoarding. But noooo. I want to make something of my own. And I think that is just how knitters are, we want to create something just a little different than what has been done before. I have to get out my copy of A Gathering of Lace and look through it. I recall there are some interesting interpretations of Kinzel’s Tudor Rose doily in there, too. Maybe that is the inspiration I’m looking for.

Maybe that is why women have created all those doilies — so they can try out new stitch combinations without committing themselves to something as large as a shawl. I’d give it a go if I knew anyone who used doilies anymore. But the planning and the dreaming and the thinking about it is half the fun. I feel another new shawl pattern coming on.

Thanks for reading.