My first Irish crochet doily!

Definitely labor-intensive, but also rewarding. I’ll be making more Irish crochet doilies, but not right away. (g)

Size 10.

Colors used:
Natural (Aunt Lydia’s)
Frosty Green (Aunt Lydia’s)
French Rose (Aunt Lydia’s)
Pale Lavender (America’s Best)
unknown pink (Southmaid)

I’m using a size 7 (1.65 mm) for the flowers, but I switched to a larger size 4 (2 mm) for the chain-heavy mesh section. I crocheted the first mesh round with the smaller hook, but it felt way too tight, so I ripped it back. The larger hook seems to be giving me a nicer, looser gauge without the need to struggle to crochet loosely.

For the last round of circular section, it’s a little tight getting into the top of the clusters on the round below the previous round. Not bad once you’re started, though.

Maybe I’m just not getting something, but I don’t see how you can use a fpsc to make the second or third rounds of p’s (unless you want them on top of the first round, which you don’t)… Bpsc, on the other hand, works perfectly, so that’s what I used. (Is this a pattern error? No-one else has mentioned it in their project notes.)

Made center flower in same color as 2-tier r’s (rather than 3-tier color, as per pattern). Also, chose to make the 3-tier roses the darkest color.

I was surprised (though looking back, I shouldn’t have been) that the “point rings” were much messier to crochet than the roses. The smaller a piece is, the harder it is to handle.

The first leaf felt odd to make. If I set it down, hard to tell where I left off. But by the last one, I had the system down pat.

The ends. Oh, the ends. If my calculations are correct, there are 82 of them to weave in. I didn’t do them as I went, so they were all waiting for me after securing the final stitch. Yay. ;o) Seriously, though, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, even though weaving in thread ends seems more stressful to me than weaving in yarn. On the plus side, a doily doesn’t get as much abuse as, say, an afghan or wearable, so the ends don’t have to be quite so thoroughly secured.