Arcanoweave: A really f'ing big doily

This one is going to take a bit of explaining.... 

Back in 2022 I took a little bit of yarn and crochet hook with me on a family holiday and made a doily. It was the perfect holiday project; small, portable, light, easy to stop and start. 

Only problem is... I don't really care for doilies.

I posted a picture of the completed doily on Instagram and posed the question of what to do with it (albeit after my MIL had said she'd quite like it for her hall table) 

"Send it to me" said Inder, "I love doilies."*

And therein began the idea of making a doily for Inder...

If Inder wanted a doily, if Inder could handle a doily, I was going to maker her the biggest f'ing doily she'd ever seen.

I'd already spied the pattern I'd like to make: the Arcanoweave doily by Julia Hart. It looked like exactly the kind of making challenge I like, I just hadn't had any idea of what to do with the finished project until Inder's love of doilies** became known to me.

And then, in a most serendipitous turn of events, my daughter came home from a walk around the shops with two enormous, solid balls of very fine yarn that were in a Free Stuff box outside a shop. I now had the pattern inspiration, the free yarn, and the recipient. This project was ON!

I started on it in January of 2023 while on holiday in Bright (image above) then continued working on it at home - The image below makes me look like a doily liker after all. Ha. I made that orange one a while back and it has found a place where it's tolerable on the coffee table. 

I've no idea what the yarn is. It's very fine, a bit uneven, and breaks quite easily. Going by smell alone I think it's wool. I was thinking it was finer than the intended yarn for the pattern so I sized down from the recommended 1.75mm hook to a 1.5mm. 

Each round and each section would change and the pattern was very engaging. 

Other projects would get started, and finished, and then I'd go back to the doily for another couple of rounds. All the while I was amusing myself with the idea that it was a surprise gift for Inder, who, let's remember, really likes doilies**

By the spring of 2023 we had a holiday coming up and so the doily flew with the family to Fiji. I didn't take it on the sea kayaking trip, but it saw plenty of action on the plane flights and while lazing around at the divine Toberua island resort.

At this point I had decided that not only did the doily have a final destination at Inder's house, but that it was a holiday project - only to be worked on during holidays, weekends away or maybe public holidays at home. It now had a schedule as well as a purpose.

Back in bright in January 2024 a year after it was begun there...

And then back home I gave it its first gentle steam iron to see if the tension was even enough, and to reveal how enormous it was already becoming.

In the middle of 2024 we got the opportunity to go and stay in the south of France and look after a very agreeable and self-reliant teenager while her parents worked abroad. Easy gig. We shopped, cooked, ate, rode bikes up the surrounding mountains, and on the rainier days, I crocheted the enormous doily.

By now, it was quite the conversation starter. If I pulled it out on a train or plane to work on, invariably someone would ask about it, and what I was going to do with it, or why I was making it.

No-one seemed prepared for, or satisfied by, the answer that I was going to gift it to someone who once said they liked doilies. But what will she do with it, they'd ask. I didn't know and that's what amused me so much.

Bright again in January of 2025 and it now covered one of those outside tables.

Over a long easter weekend at my mum's place it was almost finished. Just a couple more rounds of the final seventh section of the pattern and  it would be complete.

The original giant ball of yarn was now down to mandarin sized and oddly seemed to have what looked like coffee drip stains on some sections of the ball. I figured they'd probably wash out when I inevitably blocked it - spoiler alert, they didn't. But I figure that adds to its charm and hopefully makes a future doily loving owner less precious about using and abusing it.

And then, in a cruelly ironic joke back on me, the designer released an eighth section of the pattern, emailed free to those who'd already purchased the previous 7 sections.

Evidently I wasn't stopping anytime soon after all. Inder's f'ing enormous doily was going to get even bigger.

And so in early January 2026 the doily came on the boat to Tasmania with me. Although I didn't carry it while we hiked the Overland track - its still super light but by now quite bulky.

Section 8 was busting my balls a bit to be honest. It involved creating all these individual doilies and then attaching each one to the main round, and the one before it, before beginning another mini doily.

I was making lots of mistakes and needing to rip back and I was fast running out of yarn.

It came to Bright for the fourth time in late January 2026 where I made as much backwards as forwards progress and eventually ran out of yarn. I put it aside and planned to get that second enormous ball out of storage when we got home.

But I discovered it was a completely different, much brighter, white colour. The enormous doily had reached it's end. 

One section shy of the actual finish line. That this really irked me was almost as funny as making the damn thing in the first place.

time to block it...

Snap some photos and post it off...

And Inder's response?

Exactly the mix of baffled amusement, gratitude, wonder and mild annoyance that I'd been dreaming of. She has fully appreciated the thought and craftmanship but has also rued that I have now created an "old lady situation" that she may not be able to explain to her husband.

And I find that absolutely funking hilarious.

*Inder has no recollection of saying "send me a doily" but has conceded it sounds like the kind of thing she might have said.

**possibly factually incorrect.