Do you ever get a bug under your skin, and suddenly, you can’t imagine anything you want to do less than work on the projects you’ve already got on your needles?

It’s not just me, right? (Please tell me it’s not just me!)

Well, this weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was anything to do with knitting.  And I certainly didn’t want to steam block my husband’s sweater.  (I’m definitely not procrastinating or anything… Ha!)

I got it into my head that I wanted to do something utterly useless, and totally pretty and silly.  So, I thought about the supplies I had on hand, and it came to me:  a doily.

I have never made a doily.  Because I’m not an 80-year-old grandma.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  But I poked around on Ravelry, and found this beautiful pattern, published in 1969, that was (amazingly) available online:

Brocade #A-792 by Coats & ClarkI pulled out a size 10 steel crochet hook (it’s super tiny!) that used to belong to my great-grandmother, and a big spool of crochet cotton that I inherited from a friend of a friend.And I went to work!  Three days and a small callus later, My doily is finished!It’s huge (about 15″ across)!  I ran out of thread, so I  couldn’t finish the last three or four rows of the pattern, but I am still pleased with how it turned out.  I even got to learn how to use starch, which was a kind of fun old-fashioned skill to gain. (And I’m all about old-fashioned skills.)

Now the question is what to do with the finished doily.  I’m not really a “doily” kind of person, and my house isn’t really a “doily” kind of house.  Right now, it’s hanging out on a little end table in my knitting studio, but I’m open to other suggestions!

What projects have you done while avoiding stuff you “should” be doing?

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