Hello again! I hope your January has been a good one. Mine has!
In preparation for doing research and writing an article and pattern on Estonian Lace, I’ve ordered a few books directly from Estonia. The first one arrived earlier this week: Pitsilised Koekirjad by Leili Reimann (2nd edition 1986). (As near as I can figure out – the title means Lace Knitting. But I do not speak or read Estonian, so that is just a guess!)
This is an Estonian Lace stitch dictionary. I found this second edition from a seller in Estonia on Etsy. It was reasonably priced for such a hard-to-find book, even with shipping!
Although the beginning pages are all in Estonian (it is a book for Estonians after all) – the rest of the book is simply pictures of swatches and charts. The pictures are mostly in black and white – the first few are in color – which is fine for showing stitches. Some of the pictures are of a pretty low quality, which makes seeing the actual stitch pattern difficult, but that is the exception. The charts use a different set of symbols than we here in the States are used to, but thankfully there is a pdf translation of the symbols available online.
I’m excited to start swatching from the book and trying some stitch patterns out! After discovering that the first edition has some different stitch patterns in it, I’ve ordered a copy of the 1st edition off ebay as well. 🙂 (I’m a sucker for a good stitch dictionary, especially lace!) I’ll post about it when it gets here! I do have a couple more Estonian books headed my way (and some yarn as well) – I’ll post about those when they get here as well- hopefully they will arrive soon. I’m really excited to delve deeper into this topic for my article!
Happy Knitting!