Lace and more lace!

Afternoon, Readers!

Look what I finished:

Pattern found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pineapple-lace-parasol-wedding-stick-umbrella-crochet-pattern-in-pdf

I've been wanting to make a crochet lace parasol ever since I saw these patterns pop up on Ravelry. I think this is the largest piece of lace that I've ever made!

The pattern itself is fairly simple (pineapple lace is quite easy, just single crochets and chains, mostly), but the actual crochet/construct process was a bit of an adventure:

I had to find a cheap stick umbrella to sacrifice to the cause, and I ended up finding a cheap one for sale at Daiso Japan. Cost me all of $1.99!

And because the umbrella base cost me all of $1.99, getting the lace on the umbrella skeleton was...interesting.

The instructions included in the crochet pattern gave some simple instructions for breaking down the sacrificial umbrella: according to the designer, just cutting away the fabric and saving the tips from the ribs would do the trick.

My umbrella would not give up its fabric without a fight.

There was a circle of tightly folded blue nylon underneath my umbrellas' ferrule that simply would. not. budge. I must have spent about a week fretting over how to get the fabric out without completely destroying the umbrella base; but about an hour and half of constantly cutting and picking at it with my pinking shears and tweezers eventually got it to slide off.

Now that I know that I CAN make this fabulous thing...I'm going to make it again! As happy as I am with the parasol, I want to make another one to enter into the state fair in September!

Parasol 2.0 is going to be classed up a bit! Can't wait to show the results!

Until next time!