Doily baby afghan

Thursday night I was looking for a new idea for a baby afghan/shawl for the shawl ministry. We give a white shawl/blanket to each baby baptized in the church. I've been thinking about trying the idea of using a doily pattern & yarn to create a shawl, so I started flipping through the folders of doily patterns that I've printed off the Internet, and purchased. I tried the "Pineapple Lavender Lace" from "Crochet Memories". I've used this pattern several times and absolutely love it. Like all the patterns I've gotten from this site, it's superbly written, no errors and easy to understand, even on complicated designs. This doily different from the typical round doily, it's octagonal. Then it's quite "dense" it doesn't have a lot of large holes. I tried it with a fingering yarn and an F hook, but it was going to be too small. The finished doily with #10 thread is less than 9'. Then I selected two from the North Dakota State University history culture and textiles & clothing site. "Crochet" They have preserved a lot of old patterns and photographs from a variety of places. The doily I selected is called "Star in a Snowflake" and was designed by Karoline Kirschenmann, who was born in South Russia in 1887! I am so glad that this University saw the value in preserving an important part of our culture and history. I'll be looking around to see if other Universities might have similar programs.
I tried this pattern with Caron Simply Soft yarn and an I hook. Special note - I used one of my Sonshapes wooden hooks, it's a soft green wood, with a white bead that has pink flowers & green leaves, then lots of silver trims. The pattern was super easy to follow, I was able to catch mistakes and correct them very quickly. It was impossible to get several rows past a mistake before catching it, thereby having a lot of ripping back. As you when through a row you knew if you were right on the previous row. It also worked up very fast. I finished the entire project in a 24 hour period! And it was a meditative project, because I didn't need to have my mind on the stitches and stitch pattern. I've started to look at other patterns in my collection to see what might become a future baby shawl.