On with Orenburg!

First a note for those of you who are new to Verena or digital subscribers who would like the print copies. We're having a sale on back issues until Thursday July 1st: Only $2.95 USD per issue plus shipping. Dozens of patterns in each issue for less than the price of a single pattern! Get em while you can, supplies are limited!

Now back to the continuing adventures of Orenburg Lace...

Once the edges and the center panel have been established things get quite a bit clearer and more straightforward. I've now knit up to the beginning of pattern repeats in Chart C, through row 35, shown to the right, defined by the V.  I'm contemplating a lifeline. So far I've been very careful, counting stitches regularly because even tinking this yarn is tricky, it's fairly sticky and I don't want to overhandle it. Doing it right the first time is vastly preferable to discovering an error several rows on. I'm more likely to just keep knitting if there's a lifeline behind me, so it might be better to forgo it and scare myself into counting. On the other hand, the stitch count in Chart C will increase dramatically and counting will become more and more time consuming when I really want to keep knitting, so...the jury is still out.

We had a question in the KAL about the short rows of the edge charts, which in the picture are to the right and left of the large V shape. The instructions for both edge charts say, inscrutably, "working the short rows cont in every 5th row." Meanwhile, the repeat of the right edge chart, B1 goes from row 15 to row 30, whereas the repeat of the left edge chart, B2 goes from row 18 to row 33. This was what inspired me to go get more row counters. In fact, the edge rows don't end up being different numbered rows all that often. This is the result of the short rows:

I hope the text I added to this picture will help to make it clear what and where one is actually knitting the short rows. For example, on the right I've made a purple dotted line for "Pattern row 17" knit from the right edge of Chart B1 to the beginning of Chart C. This is a short row, so you don't knit into Chart C, you turn and knit row 18 back to the edge. Then, turn again and knit Pattern row 19, continuing into whatever the next row of Chart C is (here randomly assigned row 29) and continuing through to knit row 33 of the left edge Chart B2.

This is the end of the pattern repeat for that edge chart, so you start again with Pattern row 18, another short row, knit to the end of the edge of Chart C and turn. Chart B2 is knit with the pattern rows on the "wrong" side or even rows, whereas the Pattern rows of the other two charts are on the odd numbered "right" side rows. So after knitting Pattern row 18 you turn and knit back to the edge, row 19. Turn again and knit Pattern row 20 of Chart B2, and then continue back across Chart C knitting whatever the next row is (here randomly assigned row 30) and Chart B1 knitting row 20. The next several rows are knit from right edge to left and back across all 3 charts, with both edge charts sharing row numbers.

Deep breath. Lifeline or no lifeline? What would you do?