Muffy, Can You Pass the Pate?

"Why certainly, Biff."

In my mind Muffy and Biff live in a very big house and eat mostly gross things, just because they can afford to. Muffy probably wears real pearls and cashmere everyday, and doesn't even know what a washing machine is, let alone if she has one. Maria does all that for her and Biff. Little does Muffy know, Biff and Maria have "a thing" going, but that's ok, because Muffy has been seeing Lowell, Biff's best friend. It all comes out at the dinner party Muffy and Biff are throwing, for the clients of their investment firm, in a loud wine fuelled argument. The country club will talk about this for months!

This Public Service Message is brought to you by the "Pate is Gross (but it makes a good name for a blanket) Council".

Yes my friends, Lace2K project #7 is complete! I am now 7/14 lace projects for the year. The goal is to have the "majority" of your projects contain lace. The next blanket will be the one that puts me over the "majority" line - at least for now!

Name: Pate

Pattern: "Plastic Doily" by Mary Schiffman

Yarn: Farmhouse Summer Spun, unknown colorway - 2 skeins (and a little)

Needles: size 8 Knit Picks Options

Notes: Another fast Circular blanket made form a doily pattern. This one went a little over the two skeins line. I'm glad I had a third, or else this would be a post of swear words. This one came out to 4'8", so I had to do some origami to block it.

It's kind of hard to block lace this way, but since it's a blanket, I think it will be ok. I've been consciously trying to do a bit of stash busting as I knit up these gift projects, and am feeling very smug and successful about it. Maybe all of my worsted weight leftovers will get turned into blankets.

This blanket features a crochet cast off. I'm out of crochet practice. It took a l o n g time. It probably didn't help that I talked all night during SnB, instead of crocheting. In the end, it all came out fine, but I could have had it done in two hours if I hadn't been running my yapper so much.

I have to admit, I got a little bored with Socrates towards the end, but this pattern keeps changing motifs right up to the cast off- never got bored with the sameness. As a matter of fact, I frogged a couple times because I wasn't paying close enough attention. You'd think after the first time you tinked 400 stitches you'd be more careful. HA! I laugh at your careful! I refused to learn my lesson and had to frog 600 (!) stitches near the end when I didn't bother to read my pattern. Evidently reading the pattern is an integral part of successful lace knitting. Who knew?

Overall I think this was a very successful project, given a fun name in honor of the original pattern. At the very least, the blanket is warm, soft, and just the right size for a lap. Nice.

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.