For the next two days, we ate breakfast and slept at Hotel Ammande, in Parnu. But every morning, we drove 50 minutes westward, along winding country roads, to a tiny town called Tostamaa. Population: 450. (473 on the days we were there!)

Tostamaa, though tiny, is home to a craft collective that at one time was teaching people to make Estonian National Costumes. I believe the courses have been discontinued. But the town remains a gathering point for a number of skilled artisans, researchers and traditional makers. Our days were made up of knitting tutorials, lectures and demonstrations. Plus amazing food.

First, the knitting.

Remember those tiny metal skewers to which I made reference in earlier posts? Well here’s where we learned to knit with them. I’m STILL not quite sure how we did it. Our instructors, Anu, Heidy, Yulia and (Oh darn it, I cannot remember the fourth ladies name. And she was so lovely! Aurgh!!!!) worked on communicating a technique to us that involves (sorry for this, non-knitters… just ignore) knitting in the round while simultaneously carrying an alternate color yarn in front of the stitch work, similar to a float, in a way that implies embroidery. Carry those floats in a specific, charted sequence and you get a recognizable pattern. I know. Crazy. And then we learned an alternative cast on called an “ethnographic cast on”. And also how to make this crazy looping fringe. I did it. All of it. But my brain hurt much of the time.

Surprisingly, my hands did NOT hurt, which is confusing considering the size of the needles. For those of you in the know, these were size 1.25 or 1.5 mm knitting needles. That’s a US size 0000. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. In fact, the Estonian knitters are having trouble sourcing needles because no one wants to manufacture such small ones — there’s really no market for them. This is a huge startup opportunity for someone. Anybody out there interested in creating a tiny knitting needle company? A fortune could be made in Estonia!

It’s worth mentioning that our instructors spoke limited to no English, so much of our instruction was conveyed via example.

It’s also worth mentioning that this was a group of pretty accomplished knitters. I’m not sure people with any less experience could have taken on this challenge.

Some visuals…

At the end of two days, we had learned the skills (though didn’t have sufficient time) to produce these mitts. All stitch work shown is knitting. I, for one, have never seen anything as intricate and delicate in knitted construction.

In between knitting tutorial sessions, we enjoyed some other educational presentations. First, a history and introduction to all the garment pieces that make up a full National Costume.

And we were treated to a full dress out of a costume, piece by piece. All garments were made by the model during her time taking the course – and were constructed, by hand, during a period of two years!

We also enjoyed a presentation by a local artisan/dyer/conservator/researcher who has been investigating the means by which Estonians traditionally colored their textiles. Think: take a tiny piece of thread or yarn from a garment, chemically evaluate the plant compounds adhered to it, identify those compounds in local or imported dyestuffs, experiment with dye recipes until you get a reasonable facsimile. Ta da! Looks like they were dyeing with <insert dye plant> and possibly mordanting or shifting the color with <insert element or chemical> and so far I’ve been able to reproduce it in this garment, made last month. So we can be reasonably sure that <insert dye plant> was able to grow here. Or it was obtained from far away, at great cost — like this indigo.

We visited a nearby farm for dinner, had a sleigh ride (whoops — no snow, so it was more of a wagon ride), a glimpse into the old farm buildings and a traditional sauna (no pics for you though).

We spent time in the Tostamaa craft shop, then knitted some more…

Ate some stuff…

Wandered the town and found some folk dancers…

Ate some more stuff (here, fresh red deer steaks prepared by the hunter’s wife).

We were gifted a collection of knitting and sewing patterns from one of the staff at Hotel Ammende when she learned why we were visiting Estonia all the way from America…

(We later donated the collection of patterns to the Tostamaa craft collective.)

So many wonderful moments. And then each night we drove back to Parnu, where the merry holiday lights welcomed us for a good night’s sleep.

And with that, I’ll say good night as well… and pick up from there with tomorrow’s continued writing.

Sleep well, all.