Day 24 - Weaving and Reflections

​Today I was so excited as I was going to start learning how to weave on a loom, just like my great grandmother, Anette, who made many of the Estonian Rahvariide skirts in Australia in the 60’s and 70’s!!!!!!! I was practically glowing from the inside out! We made our way to craft camp, but because of the road work season, aka summer, we had to walk through the roadworks! No way in Australia would you be ever able to walk through roadworks with the machines around, this was a new experience. We got there and old the old memories of the building came back, we knew exactly where to go. We got to the staff room and started talking to Kaithlin, the lady we met in Kihnu 6 years ago who took us around Kihnu island, about the old memories and when we were there. We were talking so much, we almost missed the start of the class so we were ushered to the room to start our adventures in weaving on a big loom!
 
We got into the room and were met by Inna Raud, who would be our teacher. She remembered me from 2 years ago when she showed me how to make the leather shoes! It was so nice having the same teacher as I did two years ago but now for something new. The class started by Inna telling us all about Rahvariide and the significance of different regions. She had some amazing photos on the screen and incredible information to go with it. She showed us her Master’s work which was a published book from one parish. The one thing I noticed on the table though, as we were sitting there was different patterns printed out on the table. Once she had explained some information about the different patterns she had images on the screen which correlated with the images on the table. She asked us to select an image and use her template to choose the pattern we were going to weave. The inside of the pattern was going to be the size of the patch we would weave and make up the pocket outside face. Her stencil was 17cm on the inside. I found it challenging to choose but eventually I landed on the Ambla design, which was the same as one of my skirts. I was so excited this was an option as it was one of the first designs I did for Estonian Designs AU. After we cut out the part of the pattern we wanted, we had to go select our wool. The photo was a little dark so I used the colours I had on my website, which were a little more vibrant and bright. Once I had selected my colours I had to spin them onto the spools that we would use on the loom. I thought it was pretty cool because they had the old hand held ones where you had to turn the winder to transfer the wool, then they had made an electric one using a drill. I thought this was really clever. Once we had all the wool on the spools that we wanted, we took it and the image of the pattern we were going to create and took it to the loom.

​The loom stools were really tall, I don’t know how my great grandmother did it, she was shorter than I was! It was for sure a full body work out! Before we got started, Inna showed us what we had to do to do the waves. She made us do 4 rows of this cotton to hold it all in place then we could start our colours. We had to do it the same thickness as the one in the image so we would periodically hold the image up to the weave to see if we had done enough. When we had done a few centimetres we had to use this took with teeth on each end to push the pattern open so it did not bunch up. I had such feelings of connection to my great grandmother when I was doing this as this is what she would do for hour and hours, making skirt material for people in Australia. I have to say it was far easier to weave this than it is to weave a belt! But the equipment is a lot harder to get! After a little bit of time we headed home for lunch, because we were not that far away. We of course had to get through the road works but this time we found a better way home, still not the best way bit we were learning. We walked past the church and to our home, had some lunch then back to craft camp!!
 
After lunch we continued to weave our patches but this time I wanted dad to see what I was doing because he used to watch my great grandmother do this all the time and I wanted to see what he thought of the looms. He was very impressed and I think it was a lovely memory for him too. There was one very special moment when we were all weaving in that mum, Ingrid and Maie S all started to sing this old Estonian work song, they all knew it and the organisers said they had never heard this before. It was so lovely to sit and listen to them singing all together, and of course it was lovely, they were all in the choir. Once we had finished our patches it was time to cut them off the loom! I held my breath as they cut it off and it looked so good. We took them to the tables and had to cut off the excess thread and then tie all the knots together, 2 x 2 until each side was tied. I did not know on one side I had to take off the black thread before tying all the knots so I had to untie about 7 knots, take out the black thread, then keep going. Once we did that we had to iron it and the patch was done, ready for tomorrow. It was time to go home and have a quick dinner, then off to the walking tour!

​We met at the Grand Viljandi Hotel and were welcomed by the Mayor of Viljandi. It was really special having a private tour from the Mayor. He was fairly young, not more than 45 years old at most, seemed very forward thinking. He started off by talking about the area we were in and the small non-for-profit project that took over building and maintaining the small area we were in. it was really pretty and a nice use of space in the summer. We then headed to the Jaani church, which had some monument placed there after Soviet occupation as there was something Soviet there before. After some little stories we headed to the old castle ruins where we heard more stories and went over the suspension bridge that dad used to jump on when we were kids, to scare us. As there were about 20 of us walking over it, it naturally was a bit bouncy, not great but it was there. We walked through the ruins and when we got to the lake view we stopped to get some pictures. The Mayor was telling us there was a really beautiful hiking trail around the lake and would take several hours to do the walk. We went to the stage area and the Mayor was telling us this is the location for the Viljandi Folk Festival, which would be really amazing to see. As we were walking out of the castle he was telling us of the road just out of the castle was a debate between the culture and heratige people and the town as the town wants to renovate it but the cultural people are responsible for it so they decided it is historically accurate so they could not fix up the area, dad mentioned until someone has a fall. We continued along and the Mayor told us why there were all these cats around in the town as statues. They came from a popular children’s story that did not name the town but when they turned it into something with images they took buildings from Viljandi so they decided to own it. We had a few more stops on the tour and it was so lovely to hear some stories from him, about the town, including the reason why there were a lot of red brick homes and buildings, it was the natural resources they could get. There are a lot of stones in the foundations of the buildings as they took the stones from the castle once it was no longer a fortification for the town back in the middle ages. This was a cool story to hear too.

​Over all it was a lovely day filled with culture and memories.
Until tomorrow
Marissa xx