Orenburg lace is, perhaps, the epitome of knitting intricacy. I read about it in “Gossamer Webs: The History and Techniques of Orenburg Lace Shawls” by Galina Khmeleva and Carol Noble, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see examples of it. Several weeks ago, Betty Millner of Bangor called to ask if I would like to see vintage pieces of what she believes is Orenburg lace.

One of the pieces is square, the size of a shawl, and so delicate and finely knit with the most slender of yarn that it’s like a feather. It is said that an Orenburg shawl can be drawn easily through a wedding ring. I didn’t try that, but I’m convinced that Millner’s shawl could be fit into a space that small.

The other piece Millner showed me is a long rectangle, the size of a table runner, meant to serve as a scarf, perhaps. Both pieces are off-white, a bit yellowed from time.

“They came to me from Helen Libbey, a member of my family,” Millner said, “but I have no idea where she may have got them.”

I held the shawl in the palm of my hand and I felt the warmth the fiber generated, yet the piece was so light and airy, it was as if a spider had, indeed, spun it.

The city of Orenburg is located in the southern Ural Mountains of Russia and was for several centuries the center of the shawl-knitting craft. The origins of the region’s shawls knit of goat’s down is uncertain, but it is said that a Cossack woman knit the first shawl and sent it to Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia from 1762-1796. The craft, however, may have been around for a century before that.

Shawl knitting was, and still is to some degree, according to the “Gossamer Webs” authors, a cottage industry passed on from generation to generation. Girls between 7 and 13 learned the secrets of the craft from their mothers, grandmothers and other female relatives. The men raised the goats.

In the early 20th century, 12,470 women knit 35,880 shawls each year. This is even more amazing when one considers the fact that some shawls had as many at 1,000 tiny stitches per row. Today’s gossamer shawls are more likely to have 500-600 stitches per row.

After the revolution in 1918, Lenin decreed that folk handicrafts were a state industry and in the 1930s a Kombinat was formed, which standardized the shawl-knitting process. Knitters worked at home and were paid a monthly salary. But that ended in 1995 when the Kombinat closed.

The process of creating an Orenburg lace shawl begins when the goat is sheared. Then the down is cleaned and carded. It is spun with a drop spindle and wound onto bobbins or into loose balls. Knitting needles range in size from 0 to 000 – we’re talking tiny here. Patterns today are charted, but knitters before the days of the Kombinat memorized the traditional patterns – more than 300 rows per shawl. After the shawl is completed, it is stored in a glass canning jar until it can be washed and blocked.

Orenburg shawls are available for sale on the Internet. The site that most intrigued me is www.russian-crafts.com. Click on shawls, then Orenburg shawls and scroll down until you see the gallery of photographs.

Snippets

The Bangor Area Chapter of the American Sewing Guild is sponsoring a trip to Keepsake Quilting Shop in Center Harbor, N.H., on June 28. Call Lelo Hardy at 947-4143 for information.

Award-winning knitter, designer, teacher and former merchant navy officer Lucy Neatby, of Nova Scotia, will conduct a Sock Savvy workshop at Cityside Yarn Co. in Bangor 6-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 21. Admission is by donation and benefits Annabelle’s Caps, a cancer charity fund. For more about Lucy Neatby and her knitting, visit www.tradewindknits.com.

Poet Pat Ranzoni’s poem, “Making Maybaskets,” lines from which appeared in a recent By Hand column, is included in her book “Settling.”