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.

Melbourne Frocktails and another Vogue 8904

Ever since 2016 when I made Vogue 8904 (aka the shingle dress) for the first time (blog post here), I'd been keeping my eye out for the right fabrics to make the sleeveless multicoloured version.

Sometime in the middle of this year I found myself at a Fibresmith open warehouse sale and there they were; five different colours of knit fabric, all of the exact same weight and make and the same stripe width. It was finally going to happen.

I squirrelled the fabrics away to wait for summer, and then, as Melbourne Frocktails was fast approaching I thought, why not? A raw edged, easy to sew and easy to wear, singlet dress is exactly what this busy party organiser needs.

Secure in the knowledge that I'd already sewn the dress pattern once before and it would be barely a day's work, I decided that Melbourne's untrustworthy weather might require something warm and I started panic knitting a cardigan. I finished it about 5 days before Frocktails and just as a heatwave hit the city. C'est la vie. Needless to say, it didn't get worn and will have to be photographed and written about another day.

Of course that left me with a few evenings spare leading up to Frocktails so I zoomed around to some beadshops and bought 11/0 Mizuki Delica beads that exactly matched my fabrics and made this little bracelet.

Having just come back from a holiday to Fiji, the banded stripes remind me a little too much of sea snakes! I'll have to remember to write a blogpost about the sea kayaking trip and the sewing that I did to prep for it. It was amazing. The holiday that is.

Having the pattern pieces already traced from the previous dress, it really was quite a quick and easy sew. This time, being a bit smaller than in 2016 I sewed exactly as per the pattern sizing and used the 5/8" seam allowance as directed.

Here I am with my Melbourne Frocktails co-host Lisa. Her dress is all kinds of amazing with handpainted silk and a laser cut leather belt and necklace that references lyrics to a song her husband wrote. I truly don't mind being outshone and I was happy in my comfy singlet that left plenty of room for cocktails and canapes! Play to your strengths kids. :)

Super exciting news is that we had the Guardian Australia come along and here's a link to their write up of our not-so-little-anymore cocktail party! Click on the picture below for the link

The perfect, ruined, somewhat salvaged hat

Do you ever make something really amazing and then completely ruin it with one last little step? A step that turns out to have been completely unnecessary anyway.

Well I do. Surprisingly frequently.

Here's the only in-progress photo I have of my LUCCA hat. The pattern is by Susanne Muller, here, on Ravelry. I had, I thought, just enough of the lovely tan Modofil paper raffia in my stash.

I made the larger size and it was coming along really well. The instructions for steam shaping are great, I was getting excited.....

And then I got to the point photographed above and realised I didn't have enough raffia*. I spent a few nights scouring the internet and the only place I could find it available for sale was in the states and a $25 cone of raffia was going to cost me another $40 to post. Despair.

* to be fair, the pattern does state that for the larger size you'd need more than one 100g cone of raffia.

So I sent a begging email to Cass at String Harvest and, HOORAY, she did have a cone in her own stash that was not on the shop's website. Glee! She posted it to me, it arrived and was even the same colour batch number, and I was off and crocheting again.

The brim is supported by some plastic hat wire that I got from The Millinery Hub along with some Petersham ribbon to sew a band.

It fit perfectly. Securely enough not to blow off in a wind, but comfortable enough not to stretch or distort when worn. I am so awesome. My hat is so great.

Then came that "extra bit"....

I decided it needed to be stiffer and so I carelessly started slapping hat stiffener onto it. It instantly stained a horrible dark, uneven colour. Aaarrrgh.

Nothing to do but keep going and give it enough coverage to be at least a somewhat even, horrible dark stained colour.

Now it was perfectly stiff, and thus completely inflexible and too small. Real tears.

I set it aside for a few weeks and wallowed in my self pity. 

Eventually I decided to try washing it. Theoretically the hat stiffener shouldn't wash out with water, but it kind of did. At least all the stiffness part of it did. The uneven staining remained.

It's never quite gone back to the sizing it was pre-ruining and washing and so it needs a hefty bit of steam ironing to achieve the shape in these photos.

The tendency is for it to be a bit small and so it looks rounded where it sits around my head and then the top part appears like a shrunken souffle hovering above the crown.

Can you tell I'm still a bit sad? I mean I'm laughing at myself as well, and I'll definitely have another go at it one day.

But meanwhile, this one is still perfectly wearable and at least I won't be too precious about it getting dirty or stained.

And it can be scrunched up and shoved into a bag and then it (sort of) pops back into shape. At least the shape that it now chooses to be.

It's all about knowing when to stop.

Trophy Hare

Ever since I made the trophy head swan, A and I were in agreement that there should be more trophy head animals in her room.

We agreed that the next one should be the hare, and I couldn't love it more!

 

The wool is a really lovely, and very reasonably priced alpaca. It had just the right amount of fuzz to give the hare a bit of a furry look.

it's Cloudborn Alpaca worsted, from LoveCrafts I think. The pattern is from Vanessa Mooncie's book: Trophy Heads to Crochet

The eyes were done by blending some strands of embroidery floss in gold and brown together, and then the whiskers are the same heavy duty fishing line used way back here for my mice.

As well as the backing plate, the ears have some curved mount board in them to keep their shape. I was really happy with the hook size and yarn for this project as it has good density, unlike the recent lobster where the stitches are a bit too open.

I can see myself making more of these as I love pretty much every pattern in the book! Maybe a fox next?

Catching up on 2021

Once upon a time, back when I was a more diligent blog updater, I would have had my little mosaic images of everything I'd made in the preceding year ready by now.

Now I just have a backlog of little projects that I do want to document before I forget them altogether. Maybe I'll start with a post about those items that were Christmas gifts:

First up, I stencilled another T-shirt for my nephew. 

I don't expect anyone recalls all my various stencilled T-shirts, but the penguin has been done before: Back in 2018 I made T-shirts for his band: The Flying Penguins (blog post here)

My brother and his family have spent the last year in Australia, so my nephew's band have been separated, with the only other band member still being in Germany! I figured a memento of his solo tour down under might be alright, although, like many of us, it might be a year he'd rather not remember.

I borrowed the x-ray light box from work and hand cut the stencil using freezer paper. I just wish I'd thought to place it a bit higher up. It's easy to forget, when you just have the T-shirt front pattern piece in your hands, how high up an emblem or image should be to look right. 

The pattern is the Jalie 3669 Nico in size P (12 years) using stashed cotton lycra fabric.

For my sister in law I decided I would gift her the raw ingredients and a pledge to work like a fiend and create her Christmas gift in front of her eyes over the following week. - That's a neat way of saying, I've run out of time but now I'm on holidays...

I bought 2 skeins of the beautiful brunt terracotta coloured Aran weight merino from Fibresmith, along with one skein of the fine mohair. They came in the nice Cloud Mountain Cowl gift bag, so I scored that pattern and the stitch markers and then popped the yarn back in the bag with a picture of the cowl pattern that I knew I could crochet in a week.

I'd made the cowl pattern before for myself: here and since the whole purpose of this blog is to make notes of yardage and pattern sizes, you'd think I might have thought to look back at it. But no.

I merrily set off crocheting, and by the time I'd finished the first skein of merino it was clear that two skeins wasn't going to be long enough. Now I check my blogpost and realise I'd used 3 full skeins for my version. I ripped it all back and started over with 70% of the width as my starting chain. Thank goodness you really can make this stuff up!

The last thing I made as a surprise was a shirt for A. Years ago I turned an old shirt of mine into a little check shirt for P (he needed a check shirt for his prep grade school concert. I think he was a duck, but a country duck, so a check shirt was appropriate ?!).

After he'd outgrown that shirt it was loved by A who wore it in a much more '90s grunge way. And ever since she outgrew it she's been asking for one just like it. Every time I saw a blue check fabric online I'd show her but it was never right. It had be blue only, no other colours and it had to have the same short of plaid, and the same sort of feel as that old shirt.

I stumbled on a really nice feeling yarn-dyed linen at Rathdowne fabrics and snapped it up. Without letting her know what I was up to I had her try on P's Ottobre black shirt but she decided it was too big, and the sleeves too long (well of course!). So I went ahead with the Oliver + S Button Down shirt in straight size 12. It's the shirt of her dreams, only it doesn't quite fit (grrr). The sleeves and armscye are a bit tight. I'll see how much room there is to let the seams out to the overlocked edges.

Meanwhile, I made her a pair of shorts that fit perfectly, and a gorgeous dress that we collaborated on and did multiple muslins to get just right. Hopefully I'll bribe her for some modelled photos soon.

Another year, another crochet crustacean

It's not often that Flipper pays any attention to what I'm making, and even rarer for him to express an interest in something to be made for him...

So when he he leaned over one evening and asked if I could make him a lobster, you better believe I dropped everything and said "Yes! I can! That's how awesome I am! Thanks for asking".

Some work project of his had been given the codename "project lobster" and he felt the need for a mascot.

I already had the pattern as there's a lobster pattern in the book: Crochet Sea Creatures by Vanessa Mooncie. It's been quite well used, since I've made a hermit crab, starfish, jellyfish and a sea anemone

All I needed was the yarn. The closest match I could find online to the pattern yarn was The Fiddlsticks Finch 10ply cotton. I followed the pattern re hook size, but it does have that annoying openness that looks crappy in amigurumi. But, had I dropped a hook size or two to get a denser body I would never have been able to make the legs. All eight of those with one full hook size smaller than the body was insanely fiddly.

He is a pleasing full pot sized lobster:

And I believe has already joined  a few team meetings