Skull Doily and a Fabulous Dublin Weekend!

It's safe to say that you don't see a lot of skulls on this here blog of mine!  But when Alex (The Interior DIYer) and Kimberly (of Swoonworthy) and I made plans for a weekend in Dublin, I knew I wanted to make a little something for Alex to say thanks for putting us up.  A crocheted skull doily seemed just the ticket.

I first saw this crochet skull motif in my friend Anna's beautiful shawl here.  There was no way I was ever going to manage to crochet a whole shawl of fiddly skulls, but when I had the thought of a skull doily, I knew it was the perfect start.

I was going to study the pattern to try to figure out how to separate it into a single skull square, but luckily found this pattern which had done it for me.  (Although, looking at it, the original shawl patterns seem to be from different places, so there may be a few floating around and they may be slightly different...)

Regardless, I got to work and made a black skull square.  Interspersed with lots of comments from the Lumberjack... "What are you making?  That looks a bit racy!", "Sorry, am I interrupting your lingerie making?"... it went on.

I wanted the border to be a pretty juxtaposition against the edginess of the skull, so went for something very lacy.  After some Pinterest searching, I decided on this pattern, and it gave exactly the look I was hoping for.

I was determined it should be in Alex's favourite berry hue, so frantically searched my stash until I found some yarn in the right colour.  Things got dicey towards the end of the border...

That was all the yarn left after I made my final stitch!!!  I was actually wimpering out loud as I crocheted the final edge of the doily - I was so nervous I'd run out and have to rip it all back and start again with something different.

But all was well, and it just needed to be blocked (I obviously wove that end in too)...

One skull doily was ready to be given!

We've just had our amazing weekend in Dublin, and Alex seemed pretty pleased with the doily.

She met Kimberly and myself at the airport with these signs (and got a few odd looks while holding them)...

Brilliant!  We had such a fantastic weekend, full of constant chatter and laughter, talking nonsense about everything under the sun.  Alex's traumatised husband had to put up with a coven of giggling, screeching women for three days - that poor dear man!

Alex and I had met before, but it was the first time we had met Kimberly in person - it was safe to say we all got on like a house on fire.  In fact, we have become unhealthily dependent on each other - we'd barely separated at the airport before we started messaging each other with more nonsense!  Thanks to you both for a fantastic weekend - and to our chauffeur for ferrying us about without a word of complaint!