This pattern is translated and adapted from the pattern “Fancy, or Nervous, Doily” in The Illuminated Ladies’ Book of Useful and Ornamental Needlework by Mrs H. Owen, published in 1845.

The yarn and needle requirements are hazy in the original, and frankly such a wide range of yarn weights (and therefore needle sizes) will render an acceptable doily that the pattern offers advice on choosing, rather than dictate to the knitter. The yarns listed in this Ravelry record are two common examples that will work.

It is, in any case, a pattern that requires relatively little yarn (about 1/4 of a skein of worsted weight) and so makes a fun experiment with odds and ends and leftovers.

I wrote about the source of the pattern, and working through it for the first time, in my “Letter from Paris” for October 2023 at Modern Daily Knitting.

After that, I published the translation of the pattern for my Patreon subscribers at all paid levels; it can be found here.