oh, i forgot

[dragonlady7]

I was actually going to blog this. It's been open in tabs all weekend.
Latvian mittens.
Apparently Latvia is the home of the oldest mitten in the archaeological record.
And even in modern times, the mittens have ceremonial meanings.

Whoa. I have got to slot those in somehow to my WIP.


Also, I just got an email from a friend that says, and I am not making this up, "OK, I just ordered the llama this morning, so we're all set."
Yeah.
I wish my life was just all dorkiness like these things. That'd be great.

Oy. Day is not getting any easier.

Sadly I can't find any more info online about the 1000 year old Latvian mitten, because I'm really curious.

Comments

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

What do you want to know about the mittens? I think one of my knitting magazines may have an article about them, I'll take a look...

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I'm just curious-- it's hard to get a sense of something from a government-sponsored website about it.

I'd seen complex and cool patterns like that on Nordic sweaters, but I'd never seen Latvian mittens!! I've seen those patterns, too-- we carved them on Easter eggs, and I remarked then on how they were always composed of straight lines, but I hadn't realized it was because the main form of expression of Baltic art is in woven and knitted goods. Of course they'd be straight lines. (As opposed to Nordic carved art or Celtic illumination, which is all curvy.)

A lot of the patterns mean things, I knew that from the Easter eggs. I found the article because Z sent it to me-- he was looking for a picture of the sun-pattern, because someone asked him about Latvia. It's just neat, is all.