Green Doily with Edging

As many of you know, my attempts at making doilies are very new. It seems with each one, there's something new to learn about the art.

At first, you'd think that it should all make perfect sense once you know the crochet stitches, but I'm still learning things about how to keep them flat as I'm working on them, how to hold the thread for the tension to be to my liking, and especially some things about spray starch and ironing them since I still don't feel like I've 'officially' blocked any of them correctly yet.

With the next doily that I made on Sunday afternoon, I did two things I was sure I'd never do... at least not until I was much more experienced as a doily-er... doily-maker... doily-ist... doily-izer... (well now I have to make up a new word for 'one that makes doilies' so that my life will be complete).

The first unbelievable experience occurred as I was getting toward the end of the pattern. I had already had a lot of trouble with this pattern because the directions just didn't seem very clear and didn't always work. (My husband might tell you that I was arguing with the sheet of paper, but there is no evidence of that...) I had to adapt the pattern on the fly to make it work. But then it was coming toward the last round and was still much smaller than I would have liked.

So I added some rounds!  

GASP!!!!

I have admired some gorgeous handiwork on doilies, but I've always been sure I would never be creative enough to make up a pattern. It's definitely not that far yet, and I'm still not creative, but man, did it feel great to come up with something all on my own!

The next new thing is that I actually changed colors for a little accent on my last round! Again, I've admired the gorgeous work of several-colored doilies, but I was always intimidated by the inability to hide the thread. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected!

So without further ado, here is my life-changing (well, at least as far as being a doily-ist) and most recent doily: