Knitted doilies

I found one of these doilies by accident and then went to their web site.
http://www.yarnover.net/patterns/doi…rik/index.html
They are lovely. My questions are:

  1. What size needle would you use? Lace or Regular needle?
  2. What kind of yarn?
    Since I crochet as well, my crochet buddies and my knitting friends at the LYS regular meeting night said size 10 crochet thread. The pictures look like yarn was used. There are some really nice crochet thread out there which would be like lace weight yarn. But it doesn’t tell you how much or what to use. I am in a quandary as the favorite one of mine is the one they term as peacock feathers. It isn’t the one I found but I think I will try and make a couple but what to use???

A lace needle can be any size, they just have pointier tips is all. So you can use any needle size, usually one that’s about 3-4 sizes larger than you would use to knit in stockinette with. Yarn can also be any weight, from crochet thread to fingering weight to worsted, it just depends if you want to use it for an actual doily or for a blanket or shawl. These are shown in thread, but I know Stor Rund Dug has been knit in yarn.

Use any size needle or yarn! It really depends on the use of the finished project. For a tablecovering or doily, the smaller needles and #10 or #20 threads are perfect and provide the best detail and stitch definition. Mercerized Cotton blocks the best and has a gorgeous sheen. I use alot of Valley Cotton products from Yarn.com (WEBS).

Then, some people make them into blankets from needles anywhere from size 4(US) to 8(US) and worsted weight yarns.

My favorite yarn/thread size is 5/2 Mercerized but love the 3/2 Mercerized and 8/2 Cotton Linen as well.

I’ve done the Alita Egeblad and Stor Lyesdug

Mary, your work is beautiful!

You might find this page helpful:

http://www.yarnover.net/thisthat/beginner.html

Mary, your work is beautiful! Thank you for all the help and advice. I will have to experiment a bit because I have a couple of nice pieces of yarn and some nice thread and the choice will be interesting.

Thanks…sorry, didn’t mean to hijack the thread…

One thing I’ve found when you’re doing these…the more stockinette, the more yarn/thread you’ll use. I generally try to have no less than 1200-1400 yards when I start a circular knit. Sure hope you’ll enjoy the knit lace beauties as much as I do!

Great advice from the site that Labeelady mentions. It refers to Emily Ocker’s cast on. I tried it for the first time last week and I really recommend it, allows you to cinch up the hole in the center created when you first start a circular knit.

To see the thread used for these doilies, go to this site, http://www.kunststrik.dk/ and click on “Bo’s Garn” in the right column. (Garn= yarn) Then click on “English translation” to read about it. It’s not cotton but mulberry silk! Gorgeous!

It’s fascinating to me that these round doilies were placed under kerosene lamps to spread and intensify the light.

I have a book by Gloria Penning titled “Old World Treasures” featuring the work of Lillie Meitler that has many (21) patterns for lace doilies. One of these days I’m going to do some lace work, but this book is really good.

That cast on method in crochet is called the magic ring. I use it all the time when making doilies and when starting a project requiring a chaining of sts joined with a sl st. Yes, it does eliminate the hole.
Here is a link to a video on YouTube. Google has change their look a bit.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=magic+ring+crochet&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=tZtMSsTeJYSXtge5wqWgBA&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5#
Notice there a several different names given to it. I guess we crocheters can’t make up our minds, lol.
I guess I won’t be using silk if it will take that much yarn. It also eliminates some special yarn I have but not enough of. To bad as it has a nice sheen and is so light reflecting.

I dunno, if you’re just going to be doing a doily… sometimes 700-900 yards is plenty. I’m just an idiot about larger projects. I tend to knit the ones with at least 160 rounds or more. Alita took 945, Stor Lyesdug only took around 600. Just really depends alot on needle and thread sizes. The Egeblad, I used a slub cotton, very small…around size 20 and since it was on a cone I found at the thrift store, I have no idea how much was used.

And I know what you mean on not having enough…can’t count how many times I’ve run out and had to restart in another yarn or wait for more to arrive. I just bit the bullet and bought 2 skeins of Seasilk, gorgeous and luscious. I’ll be making payments on that purchase for awhile…LOL! Still haven’t decided what to make but it’ll be something that only uses 2 skeins!

I have been to WEBS and it is great! Where did you get Seasilk? Is it really soft?

I’m envious! Wish I could just take 3 days and loll around WEBS, feeling and drooling! I’m trying to remember on the Seasilk…Got it from Colorsongyarn.com Yes, it is soft…has a seaweed odor, not sure if that suits me but hopefully I won’t smell fishy wearing it. LOL! It’s a Handmaiden product and I was fortunate enough to get ahold of the larger skeins with 656 yards. I have it in Periwinkle…wanted the Waterfall but they didn’t have two skeins in the same dye lot but this is pretty, too. It has a luscious sheen to it. I’ve never been much of a yarn snob, can’t afford to be but this was a gift to me from me…know what I mean???

I am not a yarn snob but I did have a great time touching the yarns. I was with a group of women and it was an all day affair. We went to a fabric factory outlet which specializes in quilting fabrics but lots and lots of fabric there. I bought some nice dress weight material to make a couple of night gown which was what I wanted. Then it was off to Webs! They were celebrating an anniversary and had such bargains. I had no projects in mind so I bought some Austermann sock yarn with aloe vera and jojoba oil. I did try and get some yarn to blend with alpaca but no such luck with color matching. So much yarn and not enought time!!! I do have a goodly amount of Lion brand microspun yarn in assorted colors. The yarn is vey nice and I found it works well. I made a nectie for one of my sons with over 600 rows! His only complaint was the tip of the tie doesn’t lie the way he wants. I told him to let me block it but the only time I see it is when he wears it!
>>>> Happy Fourth of July!!!

Can you work a doily pattern backwards? I just have circ needles and bought a bk without reading it. Didn’t realize that you would need double pointed needles. Was just wondering if you started at the end of the pattern and worked back to the beginning, if it would turn out ok…thank you.

Sure, you can knit in the round by any method you choose. If the pattern is done with DPN you may need to put markers on your circular needles if any directions are specific to certain needles.

And yes you can go backwards if you want. If the pattern is the other way make sure you keep the directions straight though.

If you have a long enough cable you could try magic loop or work with 2 circular needles.

A word of caution about working doilies backwards (I assume what you mean is from the outer circle to the inside): You are very likely to have problems with fitting all the stitches in the inner rings before you run out of space. However, perhaps this just means you have to be very sure of your gauge.

At any rate, I would recommend doing a smaller doily to see if it’s going to cause you any headaches. No sense in starting out on a huge one and then finding you end up with a donut because you ran out of space.

You can start it with circulars in the middle. Use the magic loop method or 2 circs to get it started, then you just need one. If you start from the outside and work in, you’re going to decrase the stitches and still end up with a few in the middle anyway, so you might as well work it as written. Two circs might be the easiest and if you don’t have 2 the same size you can use one a little smaller just for getting started, it won’t be that different.