Now, let's talk lace. For years, I have been thinking that I would never make an Orenburg-style lace shawl. But I recently changed my mind. I got some lace weight cormo yarn in Taos earlier in the month, and it wants to be a shawl. Of course, I have to change the way the shawls are traditionally made because I can never do anything following instructions. Here's what I'm changing:
My yarn is much heavier. Even though it's lace weight, it's nothing like the cobweb yarn used in real Orenburg shawls.
I want the border to be a different color. I'm making the main body of the shawl in gray, and I think the border will be black (or maybe white), so I am going to add the border afterwards instead of knitting it along at the same time as the rest of the shawl.
I think that's it. I've got my design partly worked out, but I'm not charting it all before I start knitting. In her book, Galina says that Orenburg knitters just make these things up as they go, and that's my plan. I find that less intimidating than trying to chart the whole thing out in advance. So I've decided on the stitches I want to use to frame my piece, and I'm going to cast on and get started.
Here's my main frame swatch:
I don't like the solid triangles, so I'm going to add more yarn overs in between, like this:
The second swatch is very interesting to me. See how big the YO holes are compared to those in the first swatch? They look a lot like the big double yarn over holes in this piece, don't they?
But they're not made with any double yarn overs! Check out these two charts that show how the holes are formed. They both end up with the same finished look, but one uses double yarn-overs, and one uses a two-row pattern that somehow stretches out one of the yarn overs, and swallows up the other.
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