Spitting Yarn

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This weekend, DB and I took a trip to Estonia and Finland. Ostensibly, we were travelling to spend Vappu with a Finnish friend of DB’s. However, when we found out how easy it was to hop between Estonia and Finland (an hour and a half on a catamaran), we thought we’d fly into Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday and then make our way to Helsinki on the Sunday for Vappu.

What is “Vappu”, you might say? Well, that’s for my next post. This post is going to focus on the crafty aspects of my short break.

I was keen to make it to Tallinn, because that is where my spoilee, Liia, from Secret Pal 7 lives (you can see her blog, Käsitöö, here). When I told Liia we were heading her way, she kindly offered to meet DB and I at our hotel on our arrival, and to take us for coffee and give us a tour of the Old Town, where we were staying.

We met Liia at lunch time on Saturday and she promptly presented me with great gifts.

This, if I recall correctly, is Estonian lambswool.

The yarn is still greasy with lanolin and will need a wash. I guess it is around a fingering weight (somewhere between laceweight and DK), and there’s loads of it! I don’t know whether to dye it, or to use it in its lovely, unadulterated form. I guess I’ll have a think about what I might want to knit with it, and then decide.

Liia also presented me with a book of charted Estonian mitten designs.

I had spotted this on her blog and I’m so pleased to have a copy of my own. Mitten designs are regional and often specific to a particular town or village in Estonia. I just need to get hold of a suitable generic Estonian mitten pattern, so I can try a design out (this assumes that I am up to this level of colourwork, but I won’t know unless I try!).

I also got some Estonian chocolate made by Kalev, including some dark, cherry chocolate. Liia clearly has a deep insight into my psyche, as this is my favourite.

Present-giving over, and with DB and I in need to sustenance, Liia led the way to Chocolaterie, a lovely cafe with 19th century decor purveying delicious hot chocolate and a wildly decadent chocolate cherry truffle cake (and other things, but that’s what I had).

On the way to the cafe, I was intrigued to see lots of small shops with the word “Käsitöö”, emblazoned across their doorways. As this is the name of Liia’s blog, I happened to know that this meant “craft” in Estonian. Very exciting!

After our re-fuelling stop, Liia took us on a wonderful tour of the Old Town. She knows a lot about the history of Tallinn and of the beautiful buildings and sites we saw. It was such a delight to be able to wander the streets without a map and furrowed brow and just have someone point out and describe things of interest and note.

We made several stops on our tour at the aforementioned craft shops. Estonia is steeped in a rich tradition of crafts of all shapes and sizes. A flick through just a couple of posts on Liia’s blog will show you how many she can turn her hand to. This was very much reflected in the craft shops we visited.

There were beautiful wooden objects ranging from jewellery to chopping boards, crafted from juniper wood which has a wonderful fragrance. I purchased a necklace of chunky juniper beads, which is very much en vogue in the UK at the moment. There were great examples of felt-making, both from wool and linen, including small decorative objects for the home and impressive hats. Fabrics woven from wool and linen, often striped like the fabrics for the traditional Estonian skirts. Lace of the knitted and bobbin variety was much in evidence and I picked up a black mohair lace shawl (no pictures yet) for 270 kroons, which is not much more than GBP 10. I also bought an Estonian belt, which is made on a loom like the one shown in the righthand picture of the first two shown here. I’ll try and get a picture of that for the next post.

Then, of course, there were all the knitted garments, mainly jumpers, socks and mittens, knitted in coarse (but warm) wool displaying a mind-boggling array of traditional Estonian designs. I was delighted to find, that in addition to the knitted garments, many of the craft shops stocked the raw materials. You know what I’m referring to – yarn! And roving of the regular and pencil varieties.

I bought some of the latter on Liia’s recommendation to make felt.

The picture is quite dark and so the colours are not true. The one on the far left is actually a rich plummy colour with lighter variations. I will knit with them, and then put them through a hot wash. You have to knit very carefully with the pencil roving at times, as it is sometimes thin and can break easily.

Finally, I also bought a skein of yarn in great, springy colours.

Again, it is quite coarse and around a fingering weight. I haven’t worked out how much there is in the skein yet, but there is a lot. Any ideas what to knit with it?

I’ll post more about the non-crafty aspect of Tallinn (and Helsinki) in my next post.

For now, all there is to say is that Tallinn really is a wonderful place, particularly for the craft enthusiast and I would love to go back and to see some of the countryside.

Here is fellow knitblogger, Liia, and I. It was great to meet you, Liia!

Please ignore my double-chin and my slightly bedraggled appearance after a 4am start to the day!