Doilies in a foreign tongue

On my way to go camping back in June, I stopped in at Rosewood Yarns in Boerne. I had been there once before, with some friends, but we were on a timeline, so I didn’t really get to see much of the shop.

This time, I had all day and could stay as long as I wished. I surveyed the yarn, fondled some fiber, gazed longingly at a Russian supported spindle, and glanced skeptically at a lace flyer that would fit my spinning wheel… maybe not. For $160, I can treadle faster. Where I got sucked in at was the books. Not the largest book selection I’ve seen, not by any means, but I was impressed by the variety – the shop has many books which I had not seen before. There were fewer beginning knitting books, and many more volumes about advanced lace and colorwork. There were books on tatting! And thread crochet! I hadn’t learned to tat yet (an omission which I have since remedied) but a Japanese book full of thread crochet doily patterns soon found itself going camping with me.

Now, I don’t read the first word of Japanese. However, I’ve always heard wonderful things about the virtues of Japanese charts. Crochet has a standardized international chart system. Believe it or not, this book, which is entirely in Japanese (I’m not even sure what the title is) is easier to work out of than most patterns which are written out longhand in English.

I finished up my first doily from the new book this week. The pattern I chose was really a centerpiece, but I got a little bored with it, so I picked a good stopping point, added a simple picot border, and called it a doily. It is about 14″ or 15″ across. Hunching up over the ironing board to pin out every single little picot wasn’t so fun (as my back likes to remind me, I’m not 18 anymore!) but it came out looking quite good. After it was all dry, I gave it a very light coat of starch, wrapped it gently in tissue paper, encased it in some strong cardboard, taped it up, and took it to the post office on the back of my bicycle. Now it’s on its way to Wisconsin, to live with someone who’s always been very nice to me!