I took two classes at Unravel over the weekend on Baltic knitting techniques, both taught by Aleks Byrd, a knitwear designer and illustrator with family roots in Estonia.
The first was on Saturday on Baltic Braid techniques from Estonia and Latvia. I’d heard of Latvian braids before, and even did one on the socks I knit for my aunt earlier this year. But I was interested in learning some more varieties and better understanding how they work.
The second was on Sunday on Roosimine. While I’d heard of Latvian braids before, I had never heard of Roosimine before, but the images on the class description were gorgeous so I was intrigued. Roosimine is, as I learned, an Estonian technique. Specifically, it’s from a particular island, Muhu, in Estonia.
Both the classes were a lot of fun, and they built nicely on each other, as I continued my same little braid sampler in the Roosimine class. I found the braids fairly easy to do following the little chart in our handout, but Aleks also added explanation of how they work, and why the differences in the charts between the braids create the different results. So now if I want to add my own braids to things, I’ll understand how to choose them based on the effect I want (and I kind want to add them to everything). They do take a little bit of effort, even if not hard, and are a little fussy with all the twisting they introduce in the strands of yarn.
The Roosimine is just freaking clever – it’s a technique that feels like it adds a lot of bang for your buck. The general idea (lay a double thickness of yarn across the front of your project as visible floats, and lock it in as you knit across) is wickedly simple. If you can’t take one of her classes, she has some tutorials on her website, which I’m sure would get you going. As with the braids, I came out of the workshop thinking “I’m going to put this on everything“.
Of course, I’m also going to knit the Shetland Muse hat. And I may have seen some other patterns I liked over the weekend… bought some Beyul yak from Kettle Yarn Co to knit the Sunehra shawl designed with it… This is the “problem” with fiber festivals, I come out of them with more ideas than I have time for and a bad case of startitis.
With regards to the Roosimine, I decided the wisest course of action was to buy one of Aleks’ smaller patterns so I wouldn’t commit myself to another sweater (I only have like three planned right now?). I have some Undercover Otter I think will make a striking pair of Hilja mitts. I’m going to use the orange/pink/purple colorway Blood Freak for the main mitt color, and do the Roosimine in the Uncle Fester deep gray colorway. For the 2nd color in the inlay, I’ll use some of the leftover yarn from my Fireworks Festival shawl – but I haven’t decided whether to use the blue or the orange yet.
I didn’t spend all weekend dreaming up new projects. I did make more progress on my spinning, and on my Nithya sweater, which I’ll show you later.
Pretty!
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