Estonian lace

This blog was started two years ago when I last visited Tallinn, Estonia. Therefore it is quite fitting that I relaunch after half a year of neglect with another visit to Tallinn. A couple of weeks ago my family and some of our relatives went on a four night cruise on the Baltic Sea. One of the stops was Tallinn and of course we did some knitting related shopping. This is what my kids fell for:















Personally I prefer patterns and yarn, and this time I found a really good selection of books but no yarn that had my name on it. Since my last expedition to the book stores of Estonia several new titles on various traditional crafts had been published. One stood out from the rest and it is one of the best knitting books I have ever seen, even though I can't read the language. (The key to the charts is also given in English.) That is high praise from someone who has collected knitting books for 20 years. The book is Haapsalu sall and it is a collection of lace patterns used for making the superb Haapsalu shawls. These shawls were hand knitted in the seaside resort of Haapsalu where the elite of the Russian empire spent their holidays 100 years ago. The patterns are still very much alive and the shawls are still used as gifts to foreign dignitaries visiting Estonia. Regular turists to Tallinn, like me, will have a hard time finding any but now we can make our own.

I have started out with a sampler with some of my favourite patterns. The yarn is regular Estonian 2-ply that I bought on my last visit. The patterns should be made from much finer yarn, but this is what I had at hand. The shawl was just improvised until I ran out of yarn and then the second edging, which I had knitted earlier, was grafted on. I will post more detailed pictures on Ravelry.