Chunky crochet doiley mat

My latest crochet effort is this floor mat.  It's almost 1 metre in diameter. I've noticed a few photos of these big crochet doiley style mats in my favourtie magazine Real Living over the last 12 months or so.  I thought with the small amount of crochet experience I have I could have another go at crocheting the Heidi pattern from the jug cover book I have.  I don't have many crochet books to choose from!  I know the mats I've seen in the magazines have been made of very thick cotton cord but I don't think I'd find that anywhere here, maybe the hardware store but I haven't tried there.  I came across a jumbo 400g ball of 100% acrylic 12ply yarn at Kmart recently so thought this would get me started into the world of chunky crochet.  I used a 6.5mm hook and got hooking.  I worked my way to the end of the jug cover with only 7 pineapple designs rather than 8 because I thought it might be rippley if I had that many.  I've added a plain border with the remaining yarn and increased as I thought and it lays fairly flat.  Need to give it a soak and block it and it might be a bit better then.............or maybe not.  Here is a great chunky doiley mat made by another blogger Creative Jewish Mom last year.

This week I found a crochet book at a local charity store and it is a great text for me, so many things to learn about crochet.  The book was published in 1972 when crochet was enjoying it's hippy revival days. I like this book because it is English style crochet rather than USA, I have been confused too many times trying to work from patterns that give different names for the same crochet stitches, I need to stick to one and then I think I'll be able to understand the other eventually I hope.