You may get there

But it may be a different place than you thought when you started. 

Don't know if you saw the crocheted doily pattern I found that I think started out as a bobbin lace pattern (on right). 

I'm in the process of making the crocheted version and am then planning on working out the bobbin lace version. Some of the elements I wasn't sure how to do them until I found this little doily that has the same sort of element along the outside (on left).  

I thought that would be good practice and got it all worked, tied off and off the pillow. 

And then I noticed something. 

For one pair of tallies, I attached them to the wrong center point and for 3, count them - 3 - of the talley pairs I somehow managed to completely miss the join altogether. I don't even know how you do that. 

There are only 8 middle joins in the whole dang thing and I managed to screw up 4 of them?!  Half of them. I messed up half of them!!

But I'm not worried because what I got out of it were 2 things. 

1.  The experience of learning how to do the outside portion - the original goal. 

and 

2.  A great display piece for teaching. People can so easily be intimidated but this is proof that even after 3 years of learning, I can still make mistakes a student never would have begun to make. 

So not where I thought I was going with this project bit I'll take it.