K5 Tog!!!

My colleague Tamara (Tamaralda) had the good fortune to attend an Orenburg Lace Knitting workshop at the Textile Museum taught by THE expert on the subject, Galina Khmeleva. Lucky for me, Tamara decided to hold a group follow-up with a few of the other participants in the class. We had a lovely evening talking about lace knitting and working on an Orenburg sampler that is in the current issue of Piecework Magazine. (As an aside, the current issue of Piecework is all about samplers – one of my other obsessions).

Galina wearing one of her shawls:


Orenburg lace shawls originated in the Orenburg area of Russia about 250 years ago. The fine lace work is knitted from finely spun goat fibre similar to mohair and sometimes blended with silk. They are always knit in garter stitch and each pattern has a traditional name like: Mouse Print, Strawberry or Cat’s Paw. The shawls are also know as wedding ring shawls because even though the shawls are quite large, they are so fine, you can pass them through a ring.

Tamara and I have been working on our sampler for the past few weeks and the group is meeting again at the end of the month. I’ll post pictures of everyone’s progress!

My sampler is on the left and is made out of Diamond Luxury Alpaca Lace, Tamara's is on the right and is made of Arucania Trauco Cashmere:


In other news, Tamara and Jan (Jaqual) have both finished their Lanesplitter skirts. I have to complete the waistband on mine. I’ll get pictures of us wearing them up just as soon as I’m done. The original post was mentioned on the knitty blog! Thanks Kate!