Orenbueg lace: warm shawl construction and design e-book

Orenburg lace has rules, and many of these rules root in math and nature. It's a reflection of our world, same math rules that live inside many flowers or trees or the see live inside the lace.

How does one design this lace. How does one make the pattern math? How does one knit an Orenburg warm shawl? All these questions and more I was asked many times and then told you should write a book. Maybe I should. Maybe I am.

Following patterns will allow one to knit 12 different lace patterns in a single size, there are 3 base sizes available and the size scales from there.

Then comes the fun part. how does the base transform. and it can transform in many ways, for example

These are 120x120cm shawls or baby blankets.

And the next size

and there is more.
Construction of the lace, lace spacing, lace sizing, lace alignment.
These shawls are from Russian empire series. Well, the diamonds and pine trees are in 4 seasons series. Lelya-Lada exists in Russian empire.


There are 2 things coming: the base patterns (12 of them) with all over lace center are to be released next month as a pattern.

E-book  contains the base and the more complex lace patterns. This e-book enables one to make 12*5*3 shawls, that's a lot of lace. there are 14 base lace combinations in 3 sizes presented in the e-book.



Sweet's: 20 lucky knitters can win the pattern and e-book.
The pattern is bi-lingual English and Russian.
How can you win this? Like in a lottery. post on this blog and the rundom number generator will pick the winners.
Sign up in this ravelry group and the same applies

Shawl language and the numerical coding, follow up on royal baby lace post.

Traditional Russian lace is number coded. It has being for a long time. To do not tire the auditorium with things like Fibonacci sequences (which are all over Orenburg lace) and other math I'll get straight to the simple point. Certain numbers in Russian lace are avoided. coding on numbers like 4 and 13 (even if it's in the Fibonacci sequence the number is often enough "jumped" in the Russian lace, as well as 2 is "jumped" , and it's multiplication 4 sequential holes or 4 sequential lined).

This is the shawl holes based chart. In here the coding on 4 that exists in the lace that a vendor that used folk patterns has adopted. 

From the shawl language and the numerical coding Russian lace avoids 13 and 4. In many folk cultures and not only in Russian they do not gift 4 flowers to someone unless it's the very particular occasion. Same goes with 13 flowers or 13 of something, that many are just not given, the number is "jumped". Russian culture is not the only one where 12+1 number is "jumped" and avoided in the items. Same with 4.
It's not about the fact that the lace will mot match properly. It matches because the core of the Fibonacci sequence in the lace is present the same way it is present in nature.

So this one is the "base" used to set the diagonal lace alignment.

and the diamond in there has 4 coding and it's cut to 4 as well. In Russian lace the base of 4 is not left to stay in the actual lace. this diamond has also embedded 13 inner number. and that number is traditionally broken by the lace to 5,3,5. does it mean that in old Russian wife tales 13 is not a bellowed number? I'd say yes. My family was avoiding coding any weaving or embroidery or lace to 4 and 13. The old ways of folk patterns were transferred from one to another, These days there are even dissertations written on the numerical coding of Russian weaving and embroidery.
It is applicable to Russian lace. The core of these folk patterns is the same. Materials differ.

Commercial lace when a designer adopts it to the machine at times looses the numerical coding of the lace. Or preserves only the part of it. Or leaves it to make a particular size/gauge item. That's what is a dividing point in hand made lace and the commercial lace.
This is number coded core of the lace.

when a commercial lace is made I've seeing not once when the lace is filled or overfilled one step and so the diamonds become cut. The shawl the royal baby was wrapped into has the overstep case and becomes coded on 4. The designed so it looks an playis with the particular wool and the gauge.
The traditional item was different and having the same core of the Fibonacci sequence the coding of the lace is very different. One avoids coding to 4 and 13, the other does not.

The diamond with the same numerical coding that is the core of this shawl in my diamonds study. The diamond in the wide border is offset to match the lace scented to the particular subset of the Fibonacci sequence. Same way it comes from nature.

Royal baby shawl

It turned out the media went a bit baby crazy last couple of days or better to say many days before that.
So, today the news brought some pictures of a royal baby shawl.

the lace looks familiar. English knitting frame lace. It turns out there is a bit of history to it. At the turn of the 19-20-th century the demand for Orenburg lace in Zar's Russia was so high that some importing of the shawl from what is modern UK now has happen. Those shawl were made of wool on knitting frames. Russian folk found this automation quite interesting and has invited the English businessman to Russia. WWI has happen and there was far many a things quite far from lace at that time. Long story short frame lace from wool never made it to Russia. But the lace production existed in UK and from what I know it still does. he shawl on the picture look like a commercial shawl. and thanks to many of photographers at the event there was quite a bit of photos of the baby.
Remembering my old habits and ability to reproduce practically any Russian lace by the picture (not that rare of the skill set among Orenburg pro's when it comes to it, yep, signature lace patterns are not shown to neighbors just the same way as it was for laces made in UK).
The lace turned out to be quite simple and counts to even number of the spacing, at least if Russian lace shawl would be made that is the chart of it (reduced in size of course very much).

I looked closely at the frame shawl construction and it does look quite similar to how Orenshal makes factory made warm shawl. Of course the body is stockinette in there and the wide borders are garter stitch based. Classic Russian warm shawl is constructed differently, and the pattern does count like the classic Orenburg warm shawl lace. Made me wonder about it for quite some time and think about the lace of different regions many miles and seas apart where lace makers did not know about each others existence and yet the lace counts same and shares the same math in it's core. Shetland and Orenburg, they come from the places many miles apart. It's quite fascinating.
Yeah, baby blankets are such a nice things...

Dear Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, thank you for choosing such a nice and thoughtful (remembering 31 years ago event) baby blanket. And gifting me a nice fun evening charting. Best of luck to new parents and many wonderful days.
I did see one of my favorite pattern 'лада - леля' (the diamond with a < closer to the inner part of the shawl, 3-rd прутик) on the shawl. It does bring some memories, personal family memories, of old times of people who are no longer with us. Thank you.

PS: the shawl does have the stockinette center it s clearly visible on this photo for example

and so many others, there are plenty of the close ups taken of the little one


PS: so after someone commented that the shawl is indeed from UK and machine made. Ok, where it was made really has picked my interest. Why so? Because not I really wonder if these folk are the same or related to the English businessman that were reproducing Orenburg lace shawl from wool at the turn of the century as I've posted in this very article earlier and if these folk have anything to do with
why so? There are many notes in English about frame knitting and Russian imports specifically of ala Orenburg shawls. for example this and I fonder now if Mr. Hurt or their relatives have anything to do with Henry Rhodes imports or the technology. The name of the city where Mr Hurt's business is is mentioned in that article. Their university has the department of Slavic studies, and I already found in one of the UK museums archives an old photo made by the brother of one of the famous Shetland knitter, and that's Orenburg medallion shawl. what do you know... how interesting the lace talk turns out. I did not quite expect to find 19-th century trace in the baby blanket. I wonder if that's where the patterns come from. And that's how old these are.

Gradient retrospective (photos)

Gradient retrospective, photos in 1 post.
Here is the beginning

and here is the yarn

side by side with spun on e-spinner

Orenburg goat down

Once again. white.
it's wheel spun
the wheel set up is the same as for wool post

that's Schacht Matchless
here is the yarn and a bit of knitting

my under stair plying rig:). Schacht Reeves lives there period, I do not move that large weel

it does not look whole lot much for well over 1000m. it;s a thin 2-ply
making it relatively thick, along sewing thread thickness

it halos, so it makes it look thicker, that's what I want for the particular shawl as far as I'm putting on it some of my warm shawl patterns I want it to be a bit more volume than I do for a fine gossamer, so it will be somewhere in modern Orenburg gossamer weigh

Gradient... what about it

So what is common between fiber gradient and polymer clay gradient? They are gradients and take work to build up.
Fiber gradient already colored, so I spin it.
Градиенты, градиенты. красиво, да. мне тоже нравится. Что общего между тем как сделать пряжу и полиглиной- так градент-же :). Пряжу я пряду, и градиент уже покрашеный, а что стоит сделать градиент из поли-глины.  Прядем мы отсюда

to here 

сюда

 и сюда

and here

Now how the check do I build one of those ... clay, why not... it's th same principle as I would use to color the fiber (if I'd do that very nice Fiber Oprics Gradient, but I can buy it from that nice vendor and do not get into too big of coloring trouble), so... How much trouble is it to build a gradient out of clay... well about same as from fiber and same principle I'd use to mix the colors indeed.
so here we go. the clay (lots of work on the hands, no pasta machine was dedicated to it)
полиглина ввиде градиента в магазине не продается, ну может в спец магазине продается, и я б точно куила такое, потому как построить градиент на глине и на пряже чтоб красиво было это работы однако много. 2 часа, 3 цветочка. Однако меддленно, да. И я о том.

I had knives already :). just got 2 clay things to test and the kiddo picked the color.

 Here is out basic color layout (revere triangle, cut on diagonal before that and cut in pieces, arrange by color)
Нодики уже имелись, раскладку делаем ту же что и для покраски градиентов. Ну тут смешивать придется, а там капли отмеряла и все.

and keep mixing, well fiber works a lot faster, clay... I'm slow, took me good 2h to get to the end of 3 flowers, and I'm sow with the flowers too, because I never have done it before
короче месим вот так, глина довольно жесткая по моим рукам. И через пару часов получаем 3 цветочка, по крайней мере похожи на простые цветочки.


mixing in pictures.

 

 

 roll
месим, в ленту, сворачиваем, раскатываем.

 repeat till you get it more or less even in color, make the set of even small logs
повторяем это пока не получим вот такие полоски градиента.

arrange them by color flatten with Chinese rolling pin, $3 at the store works good, fold or roll thatinto a log, make a longer log
после чего китайской скалкой за 3 доллара (по нашим магазинам это дешево) раскатываем, сворачиваем или скатываем в колбаску и раскатываем в колбаску опять

 
looks like a fiber already, make a ribbon out of that , fold the ribbon, make a log again (the color of the gradient will turn 90 degrees)
ну это уже похоже на покрашеную ровницу. это дело раскатываем в ленту и складываем, у нас градиент повернется на 90 градусов

and here we are
вот 3 цветоска


it's not perfect, but it looks like a flower
stash it till later, time's up :)
не идеально конечно, но похоже на цветочек, прикапываем на потом, потому как все, время кончилось :)