lace knitting

So this morning, I jumped out of bed and landed at my LYS for a lace knitting workshop with Galena Skaska. I was really nervous because I missed the first day of the two day workshop, she is Russian so a little difficult to understand and a little gruff, and everyone has a head start on me. This workshop was for knitting russian lace warm shawls - which to the rest of us is a scarf knit out of lace weight cashmere. These shawls are knit in one piece - start with the bottom border, turn the corners, add the body and continue the border as you are knitting the shawl - no grafting borders and pieces. Everything was also done on double pointed needles - no circulars for this class, kinda scary - who wants to drop a stitch or two while knitting 55-63 stitchs on a size three dpn. While we practiced for a warm shawl, everything was related to gossimer shawls - which are also knit in one piece. Then I learned that Orenberg shawls are the ones knit in 5 seperate pieces and assembled. It was a wonderful and inspiring class. As it turned out, my previous lace experience worked to my advantage and I was able to pick up the technique and even demonstrate the knitting of the third and fourth corners of my square. While I came away with a not very exciting looking square with lace teeth, I was really glad that I took the class. It was so interesting to hear about russian lace knitting, look at some of the beautiful examples that she had brought with her, learn about the techniques -- especially lace blocking (who knew that nylon twine was the key!) -- of course get some good lace shawl patterns; warm, gossimer and orenberg and inspiration. As soon as the holiday knitting is done, more lace, more lace, more lace. Maybe tomorrow I will post my swatch . . .