I think when people hear the word doily, they immediately think of some small, old lady who has nothing better to do with her time than to churn out some frilly little thing to put on every available surface in the house! This is so sad to me because doilies have always been amazing pieces of art and, as crochet has evolved, some of the doilies I have seen designed are exceptionally beautiful and intricate and no longer just have to adorn a table. No, people mount them on circular hoops to display them on their walls or even use them as rugs, using a very much thicker yarn than usual, as I did with the Ulita doily designed by Alla Chikalova. I saw examples of doilies people had made using this pattern and fell in love with the beautiful design, but decided to instead make it into a rug. The only problem is, I don't want to walk on it anymore - it is too beautiful.
I then decided to make Julia Hart's Arcanoweave for my dining table in our converted porch/verandah as I recognised that it had a similar look. I decided to use a thicker than normal DK 100% cotton in order to have the doily come out significantly larger than had I made it in the usual thin cotton thread used for doilies. I think it came out stunningly and, to gauge from the reactions I had when posting a picture of it to my FB wall, many others did too. I am very grateful too to whoever made the super easy to follow YT tutorial as there was one row where, due to the pattern using the word in instead of around, I got very confused. Even though I could not understand the presenter's language (Arabic, I think), I was still able to follow.
This doily has been wet blocked (by eye, so not perfect) - oh my, my finger is still a bit numb from inserting all those pins - about 368 of them, but the effort is well worth the end result.