Well, not really, but it does look a lot like an eye! (Now I shall get lots of LOTR fan visitors.) This is the finished doily whose chart I had a problem with last week. Sorry for the horrible photograph! Specifications:

Thread: Red Heart thread, 50 gm ball, probably size 10 (the big balls don’t have a size written on them). I was stashbusting as usual and thought I had enough, but apparently I didn’t. My favourite local craft store didn’t have the exact shade of pink, so a lighter shade and an interesting twiny thread came home with me. I forayed to another craft store and picked up two 20gm balls of the right shade, but the wrong thickness. Now, these smaller balls have #20 on them, so I know the size, but held together they ended up thicker than my original thread, so I just shrugged and used a single strand. Apparently 20+20≠10 (wowie, I just used WordPress’ new advanced editing to put in that not-equal sign). This has happened to me before and I used a strand of sewing thread held with the size 20 to finish my Crochetville Doily Swap doily in September 2005. Somehow it didn’t occur to me and in any case I didn’t want to do that this time. Why didn’t I remember that simple equation (or un-equation, if you will)?

Hook: Started off with the plain Pony 1.75mm and when in the middle of the project I received the handle ones from Jaishree, I swapped for one of those. These Pony hooks with handles look identical to the Profi hooks, except they aren’t gold-tipped and obviously aren’t made in Germany. They are light and I think I might exclusively work with these for all my thread projects, unless of course I need a size they aren’t available in. I shall do a separate post showing off all the hooks she sent. Why don’t the company behind the Profis have a website? Maybe they do in German, but not, it appears, in English. You’d think at least Western companies would be well-established online.

Pattern: From Burda Handicraft Series Vol 1 No 3, Crochet Lace, E 227. Lovely patterns, lovely photography, and all patterns are charted, of course. Despite the hype about Magic Crochet, I find some of their photos are really sloppy. Although well-lit, the doilies look unblocked and even unfinished sometimes. There should be a difference between how I, an amateur, present my work and how a magazine showcases its designs.

Time: About a week, not including delays for thread emergencies and chart puzzling.

Size: About 33.5″ long and 19″ wide. Bigger than the specified size, since I used a larger hook.

Extra: #1 This is for my mom, whose birthday is coming up later this month.

#2 This is a pattern I’d love to redo, which makes it a very rare thing indeed (other than winging-it stuff like funfur bags for visiting small girls). And use the right size hook this time. And avoid the booboos I made in this one.

#3 That part of the chart I didn’t understand taught me a new technique, that of turning in the middle of the row to end up with loops that look as though they’re hanging in the air. Nice challenge, even if I didn’t solve it myself.

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On the book front, I finished Martha Grimes’ Lamorna Wink. Good read. I’ve now gone back to Pico Iyer (Falling off the Map). I find he doesn’t particularly make me want to visit any of the places he’s written about, but perhaps that holds true for most of the travelogues I read. Perhaps that is why I read them, to savour the experience without the effort.