This is a set of doilies I knitted for my mother for her birthday. She plays bridge every week, and hosts the bridge players every few weeks. She would buy the little paper doilies to put out snacks and cakes and so on, and I decided to make her a nice knitted one. The big one knitted up so quickly that I made her two smaller ones, and then a set of eight coasters, all within a few days. Because I was using much thicker yarn than the original, I only used part of the full pattern for the largest doily, 60 rounds of the charted 102, and even fewer rows for the smaller sizes. I bound off the first doily just after an increase round, which made for an unexpected yet attractive ripple effect around the edges. I made sure, therefore, to bind off the others after increase rows as well, to match the effect. I finished them all off with the chain crochet edging suggested in the original pattern

The pattern is called “’Plastic’ Doily” because the designer wrote the directions from a plastic doily she bought which had been pressed from an actual knitted one so well that she could duplicate the stitches.

The largest doily, washed and blocked, is about 12 inches in diameter. The two medium-sized doilies are about 6 inches across, and the eight small coasters are 4 inches across.

The pictures show the doilies without any extensive blocking. I know that they would probably be quite spectacular if they were stretched and blocked, but I wanted to give my mother something that she wouldn’t have to spend hours pinning every time she time she used it. So I was careful to only wash them and dry them flat to test the final result, and I think they turned out nicely even without vigorous lace blocking.