Another small finish this week...

I've actually made this little doily before.  Twice in fact, and they've been given away.  Always wanting one for myself in this pretty green color, I made a third one.

I've been asked from time to time about blocking doilies, so I'm going to discuss the process, with before and after pictures.

Admittedly, this isn't the most wrinkly doily I've made, but you can see how the corners curl up and some of the picots are a bit stunted. It just isn't as nice in this unblocked state as it will be blocked:

I soak the doily in running tap water, and then saturate it with spray starch, crumpling and squeezing the sopping wet doily to work starch into the fibers.  Then I roll it up in a towel, and squeeze most of the water (and probably starch) out of it.  The above is actually how it looked after going through that process.  

I'm trying to use up this very old can of spray starch that I brought home from my mother-in-law's home five years ago:

I can't quite decipher the code, but I'm curious if anyone wants to take a guess as to how old this can of starch is: 

After all that, the doily gets pinned on a foam mat to dry overnight:

Yes, that is a lot of pins.  And this is just a 5 1/2" doily. You  can imagine how many more pins a large doily takes.  

The way to block a doily is to begin in the center, working one's way out.  Generally, (and especially as I get further out from the center), I try to pin on opposite sides of the doily to achieve as even a shape as possible.  I'll try explaining like this:  I pin one point of a leaf, then turn the whole thing around and pulling the doily taut, I pin the pointed leaf on the opposite side.  Then I'll pin another point a quarter of the way around, and the next pin will go into the point opposite of that.  Each little picot around the outside edge has a pin dedicated to it.

Once it's dry, all those pins come out, and the result is a prettily formed doily.  In case you're wondering, this doily isn't stiff (even using "heavy" starch), but it does have body and will hold its shape until it's washed, or gets wet again for some reason.

If it were to get crumpled up or creased somehow, I would put it flat in a folded towel and using a steam iron press it flat again.  If you ever bring home a musty old doily from a flea market, or grandma's attic, I recommend washing it by hand, then using my steps above, block it.  Or you might try pressing it in a towel like I explained above.  Picots may not come out perky, but I'd think the doily would at least lay flat.

Doily # 8 from the book, 99 Little Doilies.  

I've dubbed this one "Elm Leaves".

Some colors are just weird...

While I'm working on some projects in the background that I won't be able to show for a while, I decided to give myself a break from a somewhat complicated pattern and crochet another small, quick doily.  This may be how it goes for a little while.  And Marsha, I'm not working on a Hiddleston doily.  I'm still not quite confident enough to tackle one of those.

All I have to show today is a humble 5 1/2" doily named #29. 

But first, here is a picture of how #29 was presented in the book, 99 Little Doilies:

It's okay... Very unassuming.  Honestly, I had written "meh" beside the doily number on the record I'm keeping of this long-term project, with the intention that I'd probably never make it.

But I decided to look on Ravelry for what other people have done with Doily #29.  I thought I was just looking for pretty colors, but someone decided to take a different approach to blocking it, and I didn't have to think twice before following suit:

Are we all in agreement that this is so much better than the original?

Now for a little experiment with trying to photograph it...

The crochet thread I'm using is Artiste in the color, Antique. It's not a particularly pretty color.  A kind of dutsy mauve is the most generous way I can come up with in describing it.

A picture I pulled from Hobby Lobby's website:

This is it at home outside in the natural light:

Pulling the camera back, this is it (top center) next to three neutrals:

Honestly, it's not nearly as pretty, or pink as it appears in any of the pictures here. Truth be told, I only bought it because 1) it was inexpensive and being discontinued, and 2) I kind of felt sorry for it.  Along with feeling sorry for it, I imagined it might crochet up prettier than it spools up.

What I didn't quite bargain for is that in person, the color totally depends on the lighting, and the surface it's laying on.

So, like I did with another doily a few weeks ago, I photographed the same doily in the same room, next to the same windows, just minutes apart, on different table tops.  The difference in how my phone camera picked up the color is crazy.

Neither one of these is bad.  But neither one is true, either. The first picture (just above) is truer in its coloring, but it's not quite that pretty of a pink.  Clearly, this color is going to do whatever it likes, whenever it likes. I can only imagine how long the designer looked at the color before giving up and simply called it Antique.  Antique is a hard name to argue with for such an odd color that in person looks old and dusty.

Not sure what I'll ever use it for again, but for now it goes into the bin of other threads!