The lure of thread is powerful. For those who feel its call, there is nothing like it. You are the master of the tiny hook and the delicate thread; you can carry around a month’s worth of crochet in the palm of your hand (unlike, say, an afghan junkie); you can use your crochet to beautify yourself and your home. And you will never be bored with your work because thread projects have endless stitch and pattern variations. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a threadie. I need my Finished Object (FO) gratification way quicker than a thread project can provide me with my limited threadie skills. What I don’t quite get is the proliferation of doilies. Some of us, my friends, have what I might call a doily problem.
I think there is something inherently beautiful about the contrast of a delicate piece of crocheted lace against a polished wood surface. A doily centerpiece on a dark wood table? I am so there. The problem, for me, comes when the doilies proliferate—now there are two on the sideboard, one on each shelf of the glass-fronted china cabinet, and a few more on the table. Next thing you know, the doilies have marched into the living room—tacked with pins onto the backs and arms of all of the upholstered furniture.
At least this practice is rooted in purpose. In the olden days, fashionable men used a gooey substance called Macassar oil in their hair to give it gloss and sheen. It also gave the furniture a big old grease stain should someone so anointed lean back in his chair. So the chair doily, called antimacassar by the Victorians for just that reason, protected the furniture—it could be washed and freshened up much more easily than the upholstery could be.
The doilies-on-furniture craze lasted well past the era of Macassar oil, and I have noticed the look is sneaking back into the public eye. It is a very pretty, vintage/retro sort of look. But beware, you will be chasing those doilies all over the house because by and large your guests are not sitting in your chairs sipping tea and nibbling cucumber sandwiches—they are acting the way people in the new millennium act. The Victorian hostess didn’t have to deal with folks throwing things at the television during an election year or the Super Bowl, kids running through the room to check in, or Cheetos dust. Unless you are planning on hot-gluing those lacy bad boys down, they are going to migrate.
Doilies can be very pretty in the bathroom, too—edging a shelf or under a soap dish. And heck, if you are doily crazed, pretty soon you are going to run out of flat surfaces to cover in the main rooms; you’ll have to expand your search for an area that could benefit from a bit of lace. Just be on the lookout for those heathens in your household who might dry their hands or wipe off their makeup with the closest thing available, even if that thing is not a towel or a tissue. Until you nip that little issue in the bud, you will spend more time washing and blocking your doilies than crocheting new ones. However, if you have a doily addiction, this may be a good thing.
When all horizontal flat surfaces have been ornamented to the doily maker’s satisfaction, it’s time to cover the vertical flat surfaces, the walls. Intricate doilies can be framed in such a way that each and every perfectly executed stitch can be seen and admired, yet since they are framed you neither have to chase them around nor worry that someone will damage them. On the wall, the doily looks like what it is—a cunningly wrought piece of artwork. In fact, I often prefer doilies on the wall to ones hidden under other objets d’art. I get that doilies serve a useful purpose by protecting that highly polished wood from some object that might scratch it. But what makes me nuts is that if you place something like a candlestick on top of a six-inch doily, you can’t see the pretty pattern in the center anymore. You spent many happy hours making a gorgeous lace circle, and all anyone can see is the scalloped border. I won’t say that’s a waste of time, because I know you had a good time making it. But if a piece of crochet is displayed, I want to see it, darn it!
When the wall space too becomes crowded, it might be time for a bigger house. If that is not an option, it might be time to switch to a bigger project that will take more time to complete. I hear that king-size thread bedspreads will soon be all the rage…