Help me out here

[LisaFaginDavis]

Thanks for referencing my article! I actually suspect that the manuscript was originally bound in the "right" order (in which, as is typical for a medieval manuscript, each quire was the work of a single scribe) but that when it was rebound at a later date (possibly because of the catastrophic liquid spill in the top margins of the first few quires), some of the bifolia were bound incorrectly. This would have had to have happened before the foliation was added in the 17th century, since the ink of the folio numbers is not blurred by the stain. This is a topic on which I am currently working and on which I will publish at some point. The leaves that are now missing (e.g. f. 12) were removed at an even later date, as evidenced by their having been foliated. 

Also, it is worth remembering that we have no idea how many leaves or bifolia might have gone missing before the foliation was added. I do think that the quire numbers are roughly contemporary with the manuscript itself, likely original from the first binding, which means that the extant outer bifolia at least are in the right positions. The exception is Quire 9 (ff. 67/68) which has been shown to have been reoriented at some point such that the sewing, currently between 67v1 and 68r1, was originally in the fold between 67v2 and 67v1. This would change the order of the astronomical diagrams on 68v in a way that makes more visual sense: 68v3, 68v2, 68v1, 67r1. It also restores the quire number in the lower corner of 67r1 to its correct spot on the final verso of the quire. Stay tuned for a blogpost showing how codicology helps explain the various stages of the manuscript's history!

I'll take a took but unless Lisa has changed her opinion recently I know that she felt it may have been created in a workshop by several people working on different bits and sharing ideas. 

As for the order, if you consider Q13 to not be entirely transparent with its imagery the manuscript follows a pretty typical pattern. Ingredients > Processing (Q13) > Finished products > Recipes. "Processing" being heavily interlinked with astrology and cosmology is very typical, especially if you consider our "ingredients" are plants and our "Finished products" could then be processed plants in some way for a purpose. I think when you look at it this way it doesn't look like a jumble, more a few pages out of order and Q13 is weird. 

That's just my take on it, I'm no expert. I do recall seeing an extremely well done post about the binding of the manuscript on this forum though, it is likely in "physical material" and might be something that interests you.