I had the opportunity to take a class on Orenburg Lace with Galina Khmeleva when I went to the Rhinebeck Wool & Sheep festival. It was a whole day class that covered the basics of Orenburg lace. Galina took us through a bit of the history of the lace knitting cottage industry that the region has has been famous for for a couple of hundred years.
Orenburg lace is created from 10 motifs, in endless combinations. From simple cat’s paw motifs to heart chains, fish eyes and accordions, amazingly complex shawl patterns are created. It is garter stitch based, so not a single purl stitch is used on these shawls. Since the 1940s Orenburg lace shawls have had lovely edgings incorporated in the patterns. Before that they were only finished with a fringed edge.
Nupps were apparently banned in Orenburg, because they used up too much yarn. It’s cheaper to make a shawl without nupps (=more shawl for the same amount of yarn), and while they have appeared from time to time, nupps are not traditionally part of Orenburg lace.
In the class, we got a chance to try some of the motifs, and I knit two small swatches – on the right side is a sampler with strawberries, cat’s paw, diagonals, peas, honey comb and some fish eyees.
On the left (and still on the needles) is a border with two turned corners. I really like this construction of knitting the borders with the shawl – similar to what I used on Mystic Earth. The entire shawl is enclosed in borders and there is no cast-on or bound-off edge. It makes the entire shawl nice and stretchy, with no possibility of puckered cast-on/bound-off edges.
Galina also had copies of her book on Orenburg Lace Shawls, and I bought a copy from her. She even signed it for me. It’s really a wonderful book with a lot of history and background, as well as a number of pictures of Orenburg Shawls, and a stitch and border dictionary at the end. This book is a great addition to my knitting library, and I’m glad to finally have a copy of it.
If you ever get a chance to take a class with Galina, I highly recommend it. She was a very engaging teacher, and managed to cover a lot in the day that we spent together. Thanks for a good class.
Envying you!