Haapsalu and Tartu

A final round-up of the Estonia trip…

Haapsalu is the epicentre of  Estonian lace knitting – it’s a leafy seaside town with wooden houses, a castle, and a magnificent railway station. It was pretty quiet in June.

Tartu, a university town in Eastern Estonia, was deserted for Jaanipäev, but we managed to find a coffee in the very impressive central square, and a fine meal at a Georgian restaurant.

The textile items are from Tartu’s souvenir shops and a couple of small museums nearby, and include traditional men’s socks without heels – they look like they could be children’s hats.

The sketch and swatch are for the Ruff Shawl pattern – I spent a lot of time during this trip perfecting the cables.

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Old textile designs

I used to do hand-painted designs for printed textiles in Italy – these examples date back to the early nineties.
The patterns were printed for clothing and furnishing textiles, and sometimes for wrapping papers. Some were woven in multicoloured silks for neckties.

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About Fleece

I started work on this pattern last July.

The first version was a succession of large scallops in different shades of Icelandic lace weight yarn (too boring) – then I switched to the zauberball yarn and tried a patchwork of scallops with different lace patterns (too busy, but might be resurrected in a different yarn).

Then I looked at an earlier swatch with zigzags and ragged edges that looked like a section of a millipede – and thought that the zauberball natural colours and the ragged edge would combine to look like a pelt – so I went with the pelt idea, and after a few repeats changed the three 1-5 st increases to one 3-15 st increase. The result was pleasing so I kept going, and wrote up the pattern with wild animal references – which on second thoughts seemed a bit aggressive – so it became Fleece, a protective outer layer.

Amy (the editor of Knitty) requested a Winter Wonderland look for the photo shoot, to which I responded that Dublin rarely gets snow, and never before Christmas. Then it snowed in November – (reportedly a combination of the North Atlantic Oscillation and melting sea ice north of Russia… global warming will probably make Winters colder here) – so there was a big panic to get the photos before the thaw – a very big thank you to Izzie and Marianne (and Poppy and Crystal) who were willing to brave the elements!

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New Pattern: Fleece

I have a new pattern available free in the Winter edition of Knitty.

The yarn is Zauberball from Schoppel Wolle in Germany.

The model is Isabella Domville – the photos were taken in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens in November.

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Scenes from knitlab

The knitlab kitchen got a make-over last year to let some more light in – big windows and reflective units from ikea.

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Painting with my nieces

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Howth

Went to Howth today, a fishing village on a rocky peninsula just north of Dublin.

It’s popular with tourists – the attractions include throwing scraps of fish to the resident seals, cliff walking with views of Dublin Bay, a food market and plenty of restaurants.

It’s also a good place to photograph new designs and swatches as there’s a wide choice of weathered paintwork and rusty hulls to provide interesting backdrops.

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Tallinn

Some images from Tallinn’s Old Town, the City Museum, the Open Air Ethnographic Museum, and some portraits from Kadriorg Palace. I was working on swatches for the Ruff Shawl during this holiday. Click on the images for bigger versions.

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Riga

Riga was an unplanned side trip from Estonia – after Tallinn, Haapsalu, the islands, and Pärnu there was time to head further down the coast before the return via Tartu and Narva.

The top 9 photos are from Senā klēts which specialises in traditional crafts and costumes.

The other photos are from a big outdoor market which had a dedicated mitten area.

I made some purchases at Hobbywool.

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