Did I intimate that unless I’d made a doily I couldn’t consider myself a real crocheter?  I suspect that I did.  So I made one.  In fact, I made two.

The first is made with size 20 crochet thread, using a 1.25mm hook.  I found it bloody difficult.  The pattern was straightforward enough (when I followed it properly – I had to pull out three rows of the outer lace because I’d assumed what would happen next instead of actually reading it and I was wrong) but keeping adequate tension on that stiff cotton thread was hard work.  I did a better job of it once I got to the outside part.  The inside is much too loose and the definition of the pattern is lost in all the loops.  So I tried again in a thicker yarn.

This one is in 4 ply cotton, with a 3.5mm hook.  The tension is much more consistent and the lace pattern more clearly defined.  You can really see the difference between the two here.

The 4 ply doily ended up being almost 11 inches in diameter.  The thread one is around 7.5 inches in diameter.

The pattern is a free one, Winter’s First Snow, available here.  It was interesting to make these two but I doubt that I’ll become a regular thread crocheter.  My crochet technique makes it hard to get the right tension.  Possibly it’s partly due to my arthritic hands (I have rheumatoid arthritis in remission) but I think it’s likely to be the way I hold the yarn and hook (not the way that ANY of the books teach you).  No matter!  I enjoyed my foray into doilies.