Round 13 of the big big doily.

This is round 13 of my never ending Jan Stawasz doily. Only 2 more rounds to go. I'm about half way through this round.

His diagrams are a bit hard for me to read so each round I rewrite in my own notation along with when I finish each round, how long a repeat takes and how long the round takes. I finished round 12 back in July and it took about 32 hrs. Set it aside for about 9 months. It shares a train case/cosmetics bag with what ever other WIP I have going on. Oddly I never felt guilty for ignoring it as I dug around it looking for an empty shuttle or crochet hook.

Right now I'm also working on a doily for the state fair. And when I'm not in a perfectionist mood I work on my JS doily. There is something about the size of it that takes the stress of being correct away. Because it's 24" at last measurement, the mistakes seem to disappear in the crowd.

Jan Stawasz doily in progress

Completed round 12. There are 3 more rounds to go! From Tatting Theory and Patterns by Jan Stawasz. It's about 24" across at this point.

JS doily round 10

This has not been pressed or blocked so please look past the twists and ruffles.
According to my notes, I started on this doily Sept. 14, 2014. I work on it in bursts and complete several rounds at time. Then I'll set it aside for awhile to work on something smaller that can be completed quickly or I take time to ponder what color(s) the next round should be.
At this point you're looking at 101.3 hrs that are completed. There were 11 hrs of work total that I had to cut out. Six and a half of those hours were from misreading the pattern on round 3. The rest of the time is from false starts on other rounds due to trouble I had reading his pattern and my work not looking right.
I'm thinking of doing the next round of a single row of split rings in a dark brown. The points that come next I want to do in the same ecru, sea green and dusty lavender that I've already done and worried the thin round of brown will be distracting or create an odd visual barrier that breaks up the doily into two parts. But at the same time the brown could add interest and a bit of contrast.
Now I'm wondering if introducing a new color in the outer points will look weird, like I ran out of a color and had to throw in brown to complete the project.
Now I'm wondering if I'm over thinking this.
Five more rounds to go.

Medallion round

Still continuing on with the cover doily from Jan Stawaz's Tatting Theory and Patterns. Each of the medallions takes me 1 1/2 hour to do. I also spent about 2 hours trying to figure the pattern out and cutting a lot of false starts out because I joined them wrong.

Once this round is done, it may become the largest doily I've ever done. I'm at the point were I'm worried I have the correct number of rings on the previous round so I can get in the correct number of medallions. I have always wanted to do a larger doiley but the fear of miscounting on the larger rounds has held me back.

I have enough violet thread to finish the medallions and not sure if I'll buy more or move on to different colors. I've bought a dark brown and a seafoam green to incorporated in this at some point.

JS Doily I

This is the cover doily from Jan Stawaz's Tatting Theory and Patterns.

I'm just now starting the medallions for this round. Well, actually I started a while ago, I can't seem to make them right and have cut off 2 of them already so I could start over. His doilys require a lot of attention and patience as the notation on the graphic isn't always so easy to follow. I have both of his books and his work is beautiful, but not always for the faint of heart.

So far these rounds are made with DMC Cebelia in ecru and Lizbeth #640, Antique Violet Medium in size 20.

For the first time I'm keeping track of my time in a larger project. So far I've logged at least 34.5 hrs on this. And 8.5 of those hours were cut off because I misread the pattern for the violet petals and was over half way around before I realized I wasn't supposed to join those petals like I did in the first round. It was frustrating, but at the same time a bit of a relief to finally realize that my mistake was the reason it was cupping.

A new doiley

This is Doily 8 from Tatting Patterns and Theory by Jan Stawasz.  The center is made up of 19 of these little motifs joined together. Each one takes about an hour to hour and 15 to make, depending on how coordinated I am at the moment.

I'm using size 40 Lizabeth in Latte Foam.