Chopped Liver

Pate sounds much more gross when you call it what it is. Why, then, did I choose to name my newest lace project "Pate"? Very simple. In a Costumechick kind of way.

This blanket is based on another doily pattern that I found in the book, "The Lacy Knitting of Mary Schiffman". The book is very cute, and appears to be a printed form of a woman's knitting diary. She wrote down lace patterns - especially unusual ones - and made swatches of the patterns. She figured out patters from old pieces of lace and old texts and preserved them for the next generation. In the book you get all her little observances about the patterns as well as notes about where she found the lace she was copying. The doily pattern I am following was from a 5 and Dime store.

In the store she came across plastic doilies. The doilies had been pressed using real lace pieces, and were so well pressed that she could copy the lace from the plastic. She bought one and copied it that night. In her writing she notes that the plastic doily "felt like raw liver" and that it and a Japanese Christmas card were all she ever bought there. In the book the doily is named "plastic doily". I couldn't call a blanket "plastic doily", so I had to come up with a better moniker. "Raw Liver" wasn't making the cut either. SO, I settled on "Pate". It pays homage to the original, but in a "fancy" kind of way. **

I'm moving along quite quickly on this one as well. The last 15, or so, rows get really long. I have 7 pattern rows of *k2tog, yo* to slog through right now. Not my kind of lace fun, but after I finish it I have more patterning to look forward to. Only 15 more pattern rows left! Sweet!

The green Summer Spun is hard to photograph. It either comes out grey looking, or really dark. I'll have to hope for a Sunny Day to take pics of the FO on this one...

**For what it's worth, I don't eat pate, or condone the practice of force feeding geese to make it.