The Amazing Lace Challenge #1: Languishing Lyra

I gave birth to my Lyra in the Fall of 2005. It was a difficult birth, foreign and nerve-wracking, with size 20 DMC Cebelia thread, and size 0 (2.0 mm) steel dpns. Herbert Niebling, a German designer who passed in 1966, created the original pattern for this masterpiece in lace. His pattern of tiny squares and symbols is the most complex of any doily I've attempted.

We got along famously in the beginning, but soon, Lyra became a difficult child, requiring so much attention, I could no longer take her with me on my daily commute. I found that my eyes would tire of looking at her. Upon my last eye examination, the doctor informed me that I was in the early stages of presbyopia -- could Lyra have hastened the onset of this affliction?

Lyra has languished in my knitting basket for months, neglected. I feel it is now time to give her another chance. After all, she is only half-grown at Row 123, with 876 stitches on my 60" size 0 (2.0 mm) circular needle. My calculations indicate that by the time she is fully grown at Row 179, there will be 1,420 stitches on the needle. It will take 30,968 61,936* stitches to complete her from this point to the finish, on Labor Day 2006.

*(Edited: 30,968 includes only the odd rows -- 61,936 is the correct number of stitches, including the even and odd rows.)