Sew I See!

The third and final recently-blocked doily is "Ygritte", pattern by (you guessed it) Grace Fearon. ( Project page. ) Same hook as usual, but this time I broke out the fancy yarn-- Alize Miss Batik, with its long, slow color changes.  I think the designer herself wrote somewhere that this pattern would be good for a variegated thread, so I decided to give it a try.  I have to say, I'm happy with the results! There are quite a few tall stitches in this pattern, if I recall correctly, and I see from my project notes that I had trouble with Round 5, in particular-- but the rest of the pattern went more smoothly.  There's something autumnal about this colorway, I think.  Maybe it's the purple (well, purply pink) and orange/gold together.  Those are "Halloween colors", to me.  This makes me think of candy corn, for some reason... Oh, yeah, probably because it has orange, yellow (gold), and white.  Just like candy corn.  ;o)...

This next doily pattern is "Selah" by Grace Fearon.  (Lately, I crochet her doily patterns almost exclusively-- partly because I have a backlog of patterns to work through and partly because she designs so many beauties.) Here's my Ravelry project page , if you're interested... I used my favorite 1.75mm hook and a ball of Aunt Lydia's Classic Crochet (Size 10) in "Golden Yellow". My joking nickname for this pattern was "Must Love FPDC", because there are so many of them!  (They do make the doily plush, though.) The little bumps inside the "petals" are called "points", if I remember correctly... I can't recall now how they were made, but they look kind of like picots... When I blocked this doily, I forgot to pay attention to the "points", so some of them look a little untidy from certain angles.  Not sure if I'll care enough to block it again just to finesse them.  Lots of geometric ...

I finally went on a long over-due blocking spree, last week.  There are three Grace Fearon doilies (plus a bonus NOID doily) happily blocked and photographed.  I didn't have enough pins to block the fourth, and over the weekend I finished a fifth, so now there are two more waiting their turn. Each one gets its own blog post.  It only seems fair. Today has been a little overcast, so I had to bump up the ISO to 400.  As a result, the photos may not be perfect, but I think they'll suffice. First doily up is the one started the longest time ago. "Orion" by Grace Fearon I used my favorite hook for size 10 thread-- 1.75mm Clover Amour (the one with the pistachio green handle)-- and a ball of Aunt Lydia's Classic Crochet (Size 10) in "Orchid Pink". The center of this doily has a floral look, I think.  There are a lot  of popcorn stitches in there... Also quite a few "small special bullion stitches" (120 of them in one round!). ...