To doily or not to doily

My earliest adventures in crochet were due to a kind gift from an elderly neighbour of my gran's. She presented me with an ancient chocolate box filled with mercerised cottons and a tiny steel hook. What a thrill!

My gran's house was adorned with doilies, complete with 3D flowers, which cushioned many family photographs. Most of these were created by my aunt, who was a definitely a dab hand with a hook and although she wasn't involved in my lessons her work was always around to inspire. My gran could do the basic stitches and so taught me what she could and set me on my way.

I spent many hours with this magical box, thinking of what wonders I would create.

The reality is that I bore quickly with shop-bought patterns – preferring to work things out as I go – and doilies with #40 crochet cotton, multi-coloured pansies and a 1mm hook were just never going to happen. I did manage a couple of doilies before I moved on to wool and hooks I don't have to strain my eyes to see but I still have the box and I still love looking through it. Good memories I guess.

And so to my current dilemma . . .

I want to create an open, lacy, crochet scarf (doily-ish). I have a pattern (Patons Crochet Booklet 3244)  but although it's not quite what I want it makes me think a lacy scarf will not be too difficult.

I was thinking loose and lacy and flowery all at the same time so played around with hook sizes, flower sizes and lengths of chain.

First attempts

There are a few niggling problems so, to help me figure out where I was going wrong, I decided to make up a sample from the pattern in the book.

The Patons lacy wrap

The Patons pattern worked out surprisingly solid so I'll definitely persevere with my own version but it was a pretty informative exercise all the same.

Seeing the samples together confirmed that I want this to be loose and lacy

The pretty box lid