Estonian Knitting

It's been awhile.  What with Holiday knitting and getting ready for my Hip Surgery and then house arrest while recovering,  I am finally coming out of a drug induced meditative state.  I'll talk about the hip at another time.  I did get to write 2 patterns while under the influence so it wasn't all gaga.

Last night was the first time I had been feeling up to going to Knit Knite since the surgery 6 weeks ago.  Might have been feeling up to it sooner but the weather didn't really cooperate and I hate asking Jim to drive me somewhere in bad weather when it isn't necessary.  Hopefully I get the go ahead to drive within the next week.

It was so nice to be there, relaxing and visiting with my knitting cohorts.  Alone time is wonderul but 6 weeks of it gets old.  Rosanne brought in a picture of an Estonian Lace pattern that she found on Pinterest.  We checked it out online but it only gave reference to lacebutton.com, who gave reference to the Lacis Museum in CA.  And sure enough it is shown in slides 46 & 47 of the  Estonian Lace Exhibit there in 2012.  I love Estonian knitting and have 2 books on my shelf - one for fair isle and the other for lace.  Marjasall Shawl contains several Estonian stich patterns.
This one looks like a variant on Lily of the Valley which is very popular in Estonian Lace kniting.  It's just different enough though to make it very interesting.

So this morning I became intrigued with the idea of finding out more about it. Aimee located it in a book called Haapsalu Shawls that can be had for $70+.  not or not too soon.

Eventually I checked out the Estonian Lace Forums on Ravelry.  In one there was a thread called something like ' Do you know this pattern?"  Lo and behold, the one above is the very reason that thread was started.  AND one of the forum members actually deconstructed it into a chart and line by line instructions. Estonian Scarf by Cath Ward.  I spent the better part of the afternoon working a swatch.  I used US4 needles and heavy fingering yarn so mine doesn't look as delicate but it works.
Also I have never been a fan of nupps. Found them fiddly and time consuming.  In the instructions it said to do the nupp stitches very loosely. I tried.  I really did but still needed to sl4 then purl 3tog then pass the slipped sts over.  Really wasn't thrilled with how those nupps looked.   Then I got a brainstorm.  I pulled out a cable needle that was about 2 sizes larger than my US4.  Did the 1 into 7 on the cable, then slid those sts onto the RH needle.  On the next row I was easily able to purl the 7 together.  The Nupps near the top look so much neater than the ones near the bottom that were slipped and passed.