Large Pineapple Doily

So, I have this really nice table I was given by my grandmother. It is hardwood of some kind. About 32 inches round, pedestal base with three legs at the bottom. The top also has a mechanism so that it can turn around like a giant lazy susan. I personally dislike it for the few facts that it does not go with my decor, by being much nicer than everything else, and that it takes up a fair amount of space. In my last move it got a bit scuffed on top from the lousy movers I hired.

In an effort to be able to use it and put stuff on it without feeling guilty, or damage it further, I decided to use my skills to make a doily for the top of it. Perhaps then I could at least use it to hold some books or something.

I looked around the internet for some free patterns. Most are of a style that date themselves to the 1940s when they were written and popular, however the "pineapple" shapes of a few were modern enough looking that I thought they would do nicely. I settled on this pattern: Large Pineapple Doily. It's repeating pattern looked intricate but not necessarily too complicated for a first time doily.

I had a large ball of white cotton thread. I think it was something like this. I also have a ton of hooks including very small ones. So I think my thread is a 10 weight and my smallest hook is a 2.25mm B/1. I figured that would do fine. The pattern, on the other hand, says to use a 30 weight (much thinner, go figure...) and a 12 stainless steel hook. I had to look it up and learned that stainless steel hooks have different classifications than the aluminum ones I have. A 12 is supposed to be 1.00mm.

Basically this means both my hook and my thread are too large. That means that my doily will probably be much larger than the 18 inches that the pattern says it should be when done. This is ok since, like I said, my table is 32 inches. I also decided to keep going since doing it in a larger size means that I can see what I am doing for this first time making a doily, which I understand can be very difficult to do right.

After only three rounds my doily was already almost 4 inches across and there are 34 rounds... I started to think maybe I should get smaller thread like recommended. However, since I am lazy and had already gotten several rounds into the pattern I decided I would keep going till it was the size I needed and then stop.

About half way though first pineapple shapes

Two things happened as I worked. I began to realize that since I only had that one skein of the white thread, that I should try to use it all up. I also realized that I would not be finishing the full pattern. I got up to round 18 and had what looked like only a small amount of thread left, so I stopped there.

After that I decided to close all my points, as I was one row into a new set of pineapple shapes. So after Round 18, I did the following:

Round 19: 3 sc in cluster chain space, ch 1, sc 5 in next space, ch2, *ch2, sc in top of loop*,*repeat across pineapple, ch 2, sc 5 across space, ch 1, 3 sc in top of next cluster, ch1, 6sc in large space, ch 2 over the joint from the row before, sc 6 in next large chain space, repeat from the start, join to first with slip stitch.

After my round 19, I still had a bit of thread, so I thought I would try to get around the outside once more to give the edge a thickness to keep it in shape.

Round 20: sc in each sc, 2sc in the chain spaces, join to first with slip stitch

At this point I did not have enough thread to do a third edger row so I bound it off. 

Finished to my standards.

I laid it out on my table... I would say that there is about 5 inches of space between the edge of my doily and the edge of the table, so that makes it about 27 inches across. I think if I properly stretch it out and stiffen it, I could probably get it to 30 inches as it has a lot of give. I do like the size, but think I will try to find a round glass top for this table, too.

It doesn't look anything like the patterns picture since I didn't even get two pineapples into the doily, but I am happy with it. Maybe in the future I will try it with the right thread and hook, but no wonder old ladies have bad eyesight and arthritis...

Time to complete this: Worked on and off over about a month... can't see completing something like this in one sitting, let alone one week. Perhaps maybe 30 hours total; 3 hours a night for something like 10 days... sounds about right.