Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Dormant Work in Progress - Maimu's Mittens

This mitten has been untouched for about five years, even though I think that it looks pretty good, and I don't seem to have dropped any stitches from the very small (probably US1) needles that I used. The pattern is Maimu's Mittens from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia. I think that this book might be out of print now, I don't see it on Amazon. There are some great patterns in it as well as a ton of info about, well, folk knitting in Estonia.

When I went to grad school in Austria, I didn't take any knitting supplies with me. I don't think I took any other craft supplies either, which seems unbelievable given that I took about 150 pounds of other crap.

I was in Turkey during the week of Sept. 11, and then back in Vienna and off school during the next week. Most of my class was travelling, so I spent a lot of time watching CNN and thought that having a knitting project would keep me a little more occupied. I found a yarn store, and although the woman working there didn't speak English and I had no knitting-related German vocabulary, I bought a book in English (448 schillings, or about $30), needles, and yarn. The woman in the shop thought that it was a little expensive, but since I could actually read it, it seemed like a good choice. At least that's how I think the conversation went, my German wasn't very good. Once school started back up, I put it away and I haven't picked it up again. The furniture in my room was not the curl-up-and-knit type, as S____ M____ and E____ G_____ can testify, and there wasn't much extra time.

Here's proof of when this mitten was started--September 17, 2001. I find it hard to believe that I still have the book, the notebook, the yarn, and all of the needled. I think that I need to start this one up again.




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1 comment:

Sheryl said...

wow! I say go for it. It has quite the history.