Friday, October 13, 2006

Latvian Mittens








This is stunning......2,250 pairs of Latvian mittens prepared " as a gift for the NATO Summit guests coming to Riga for the summit in November." Here is a list of questions and answers about the project. Be sure to scroll to see the information.

"Hundreds of women and men ranging in age from 30 to 86, have been knitting throughout the summer, turning 190 kilos of Latvian wool into the first 2,250 pairs of mittens, knitting an average of three pairs per knitter. The massive knitting project will be completed by mid-October when the NATO Summit Latvia Task Force receives the remainder of the 4,500 pairs of mittens coming from the Vidzeme, Zemgale, Latgale and Kurzeme regions of Latvia.

Women from the rural association called "Akorande" will knit mittens with the ornamentation of the Kurzeme and Latgale regions, and the handiwork company “Ramid” will knit mittens from the regions of Vidzeme and Zemgale. "

Here is a book I own on Latvian Mittens that is very informative. This site has pictures of some the designs. Here are some charts.

5 comments:

Vicki Knitorious said...

Thanks for the links, Cindy! Did you know that there's a Latvian Mitten KAL? It's mostly not in English, but I don't care; here's the link:

http://latvianmittens.blogspot.com/

; )

beadlizard said...

So, what I want to know is do any of the Akorande have blogs? --Syl, drooling

Beth S. said...

It's incredible, isn't it? O, to be one of those lucky delegates!

Anonymous said...

Stunning shot! And stunning amount of knitwork.

randi K design said...

Fantastik!! Beautiful work!