My incredibly talented mother/travel agent and I headed east again for our yearly field trip. We returned to Finland, Estonia and Russia this last June. This time around things were much easier because we already knew our way around the cities we visited and were familiar with the public transportation.
We flew in to Helsinki, Finland and stayed at the same hotel as last year. Our hotel was fabulous and accommodating but I don't want to post a link to it! We even told the employees that we want it to remain a well kept secret and would not be recommending or broadcasting it to any travel books. If you are planning to visit Helsinki, contact me and I will gladly put you in touch with our hotel, but until then my lips are sealed!
Our hotel had a tram stop literally a block away and our first yarn port of call was a short tram ride on line 7A to the Kauppahalli market building. It is adjacent to the Haakenemie tram stop which is a hub and easily recognizable. There we looked at all the produce/butcher/bakery/fishmonger stalls downstairs and the vendor stalls upstairs. The Marimekko stall was still there and we each bought a few items.
The
Vihrea Vyyhti Oy yarn stall was also still there as well as the same employee we met last year! We had a bit of a visit with her and I bought more of the same yarn I purchased last year but in different colorways.
We rode the trams and walked around the city to different sites and I always marvel at the cobblestones we see. How do they do that? Looking at this it is no wonder why our feet were so sore at the end of every day.
Another yarn shop we halfway looked for last year but never found was a shop called
Sypressi. We found it kind of by accident. It is at Unioninkatu 27--kind of hidden in a large building across the street from the Lutheran Cathedral in Senate Square. We'd gone into a sauna accessories shop in the same building not realizing that the building was set up kind of like a "mall". Each shop occupied different rooms and would just blend into the next. We were walking through and all of a sudden one of us said, "Look! Yarn!"
They had yarn as well as finished knitted items and a selection of finished
Oleana sweaters and accessories. We got to visiting with the employee who spoke English with us. She invited us to come back that Friday because their knitting group was having a large Knit In Public gathering in the courtyard of that building. She also explained that their location was temporary as they were renovating the various buildings surrounding the square and in time they'd be relocated to a different shop. We deduced that was why we never found it last year because we'd looked for it further up the street according to information we had at the time.
This shop stocked several Finnish-made brands of yarn. Mom bought yarn spun from Gotland wool which is a rare breed and was raised there in Finland. The shopkeeper also explained to us that any silk blends were not entirely authentic/indigenous Finnish fiber because the mulberry bush does not grow that far north in Finland and therefore silkworms could not be raised there. You learn something every day!
Many of the finished sweaters/examples had a very "Baltic" look to them. Note the geometric patterned center sweater displayed above Mom's head. They had several "Baltic" looking styles of mittens in there too.
I only bought 4 skeins of yarn there. This is from a Finnish yarn company but is a silk blend so therefore not truly indigenous. It is beautiful, shiny and has a wonderful drape to it. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it--pure stash!
We headed down to the outdoor harbor market looking for the lady who sells juniper buttons. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'd travel to Finland just to get a handful of these! We didn't see the
Riihivilla Mitten Man this year but we did find the
poppana lady and Mom got a wall hanging for my sister in law.
We hit the other indoor market building right next to the outdoor harbor market and had a cup of coffee and a pastry and also visited their bathroom before setting out again. We always eat a large breakfast every morning at our hotel and then midday stop somewhere with local charm for coffee and something light. Mother is violently allergic to seafood and we are especially cautious in seafaring countries and port cities so this little cafe was just perfect for us! I've said it before that I'm too cheap to pay $30-40 to sit for over an hour in a restaurant for each meal. I'd rather be out running around looking at things and talking to the natives and frequent a local grocery store for food.
We didn't dare go to
Menita again this year and instead visited
Priima. It was so easy to find being literally across the street from the Haapeniemi tram stop--take tram 7B. I took this photo from the tram stop shelter and you could hear the traffic signals inside the shop. The proprietor spoke English with us and gave us a flyer for the new shop location. As of August 23rd, the shop is located at Makelankatu 54 B. According to the flyer you can take tram 7B or 1A to the Makelanrinne stop.
I can't speak for the new location, but as you entered the site we visited...THIS is what you saw as you looked to your left--an entire wall of Colinette and Malabrigo! I know you can get these yarns in the US but in our case you'd have to travel some distance or order it. I had never seen this much Colinette before. It was like looking at candy!
She also stocked lots of Debbie Bliss, Noro, Jo Sharp, Lang, and Araucania to name just a few. I enjoyed thumbing through copies of different knitting books and magazines as well. She had awesome taste in yarn and I'm sure she and I could be great friends!
She also stocked various embroidery threads and needlework supplies. I bought a few different spools of threads that would work for temari balls.
Here is the stash I came away with and shame on me but it is all stuff I could have obtained in the States. I have a weakness for Colinette though!
This is one of my favorite pictures of my mother from the trip as she clutches her bag of yarn. We were exhausted on the tram after all that walking and yarn fondling! I never thought it possible to fall asleep on the subway or tram but it is.
Stockmanns is Finland's answer to Harrods and is a must-see if you are in Helsinki. This famous statue outside is of three metalworkers. The legend is that if a virgin walks by, you will hear them strike the anvil. One of the funniest things we read in
Rick Steves' travel book when he described this statue and it's legend was, "I tried it. It doesn't work." Good old Rick!
They have an impressive fabric and yarn department in Stockmanns. I picked up this Regia yarn as well as this Schachenmayr. I've knit socks out of Regia before but I'd never seen or heard of this Schachenmayr brand. They stocked a couple different lines of Finnish yarn as well as some Rowan. I was
shocked to find Red Heart yarn in there! Who travels to Finland to buy plastic yarn?!? We bought some remnants of Marimekko fabric there too. It is also worth mentioning that we saw worsted weight 100% wool yarn in 5 different colors in the
grocery store of all places! I was impressed.
We couldn't go to Stockmanns without wandering through their kitchenware department. I got myself a cheese slicer, 2 wooden pastry brushes, and this AWESOME silicone filling/piping tool made by
Lekue. I have used it once so far to fill macaroons and it is slick!
Did someone say macaroons? We saw these last year in a few of the markets and I wanted to try them this year. We picked these up in the fabulous lower level deli of Stockmanns and they were almost a euro apiece! The cookie part is made of whipped egg whites, powdered sugar, and almond flour which is then piped into rounds and baked. They're about the size of a silver dollar and 2 pieces are sandwiched together with raspberry jam. The exterior is delicate and crisp and they literally collapse and melt in your mouth. I have fooled around making these twice so far but I WILL master them!
We took a day trip to Turku by train to visit the
Handicrafts Museum. It was an awesome day but once again we were delusional thinking that we could do 5 things in one day including travel to and from each location. In the end we visited just the Handicrafts Museum and the National Cathedral of Finland. The museum was located in the only authentic historic wooden buildings that survived a city wide fire in the 1800's. We saw all kinds of crafts and demonstrators which was definitely our thing!
We'd learned earlier at
The Hotel and Restaurant Museum in Helsinki about their hard wheat bread and how back in the day they'd only bake a few times a year. We'd been wondering how they would do that and how and where they'd store it...until we saw it hung from the rafters in one of the preserved homes! Modern day rye flatbread is still baked in rounds with a large hole in the center but I found it fascinating that the hole actually served a purpose at one time!
I couldn't help but purchase a wooden carved heddle, a wooden bottom whorl drop spindle, and a darning needle made from horn. All these were made by artisans from the museum. All the employees and artisans wore Rondastakk style bunads made from material that was woven there on site. Excellent museum. To get there we rode city bus #18 and followed along on our map with our compass. The Turku guide literature was very good about listing what buses to take but not the stops where you needed to get off. We overshot our stop because the map made it look like a park since the grounds containing the buildings were quite extensive. Mom got itchy feet and wanted off the bus thinking we'd passed it and she was correct. We got off downtown near a hospital campus and ended up walking back a few blocks to the museum. I was very proud of us because we were not far off and we easily got back on track and found it without incident and without wasting much time. Who needs GPS when you have a decent map and a compass? We also paid almost 6 euros for a day pass on the bus and only took that one ride. We ended up walking to the cathedral because we didn't want to fight with the bus route and it was on on the way back to the train station. I think we thought we'd ride the bus all over town that day to see EVERYTHING when in fact a single journey ticket would have sufficed due to time constraints.
We shamelessly took the ferry to Tallinn for just a day...to SHOP! We'd been there last year and we knew exactly what we wanted and where to get it and we did very well for the limited time we had. We took the
Tallink and made a beeline on foot across town to the only ATM we knew of that did not require a chip card--only to see one in the ferry terminal on the way back. To our credit, it WAS under some steps and not in plain sight! Oh well, lesson learned! We were there in search of amber, linen, juniper wood items, babushkas, and yarn!
The streets are old, narrow and not perpendicular so they can be hard to navigate but thankfully we knew our way around and remembered where we needed to go for what we wanted.
We went to the
Kasitoo Kamber which is located near the intersection of Muurivahne and Vaike-karja in the Old Town. The proprietor's name is Ulli and Mom had been corresponding with her via email for a few months. She used to have a shop right on the market square but she let it go because the rent had become too much there. There is now a cambio/change business in the space her smaller shop occupied last year. She also has another shop in the countryside. Mom had Ulli ship her some Kauni yarn earlier in the year and the biggest headache was payment. It costs a fortune to wire money in Estonian crowns or to convert USD to EEK--it is almost easier to just send cash.
We decided to skip the middle man and just go to her shop and buy a large quantity of Kauni and have her ship it home to us. Her shop has two levels and has the most Kauni in one place that I've ever seen. She also stocked a large variety of other yarns in various weights and fiber content but I didn't recognize any of the companies and frankly I wasn't interested in anything but the Kauni. She also sold many finished knitted, crocheted, and felted items.
I thought it funny that we saw the same man from the competing yarn shop across the street. Last year he actually called out to us as we were entering the Kasitoo Kamber. We encountered him again this trip as we were leaving Ulli's shop but he did not speak to us. What are the odds of running into him again on the street? Small world.
Ulli was the consummate hostess because she showed us to the upper level of the shop, made us a cup of coffee and then handed each of us an empty garbage bag and told us to pick out what we wanted! I have never been so excited in all my life!!! We layed out yarn and matched colors and agonized over what to ultimately choose. She had both solids and variegates in 2 different weights. She graciously added everything up and calculated our shipping costs and we didn't have to carry a THING when we left! That stop alone was worth the trip!
We stopped at a sort of mall on Viru street that had yarn in the basement including some Kauni in different colorways that we hadn't seen at Ulli's. We found a few more skeins in the tourist trap shops across the street from the sweater wall too.
I can't tell you how exciting it was to get THIS in the mail a few weeks later! Thank you Ulli!
We stopped to eat at
Eat which is an internet cafe/restaurant on Sauna street. They serve pierogi-style dumplings by weight and you choose what kind of sauce you want. That day they were also selling black bread and I rounded it off with a bottle of apple pop. Num num! We were also able to use the restroom there before heading out for more shopping. People laugh when I say this, but when you travel overseas you have to constantly worry about where your next meal is coming from as well as where your next toilet is coming from!
We wanted to eat suppper at the same schnitzel restaurant we patronized last year but frankly we were too worried about catching the ferry back to Helsinki and not having enough time for a sit-down restaurant meal. Eat had styrofoam carry-out containers so we stopped in again before leaving town and loaded up. We were able to eat it on the ferry and our hotel in Helsinki had a fridge so we ate it the following day too! Mmmmmmmm, Eat! Things worked out nicely too because we were already in the neighborhood and grabbed one of the taxis that hang around by the sweater wall and rode back to the ferry terminal. The taxi ride from the terminal to the Old Town was 8 or so euros each way. The currency is Estonian crowns but the taxis accepted euros or EEK so that was handy. My garlic sauce stunk up the taxi but I didn't care after all that walking!
We traveled on by train to St. Petersburg and one of our first objectives when arriving in a new country is to obtain local currency. We went to our ATM machine from last year but the large bills you get from the machine are almost useless because nobody will accept them as payment. We stopped in to the
Yves Rocher so we could get some collapsible bags for gifts which were about $1 each but more importantly to break one of those large bills! The shop clerk basically told us in Russian that she wasn't going to break our bill for such a small purchase. I grabbed a small bottle perfume I'd wanted and put that on the counter with the bags and she proceeded to ring up our purchase and took our large bill. We also hit the
Tepemok blini stand (!!!) for lunch and
they wanted exact change. Fortunately I had some ruble coins left over from last year. I was amazed at how we were able to communicate when neither party knew the others' language. We figured out what we were trying to tell each other and it went well. Never underestimate the power of a smile and the strength of the word "Thank You" in someone else's language. We got to visit The Church on Spilled Blood again as well as tour the interior which is literally covered in wall to wall mosaics.
We visited our old stomping grounds from last year to fill time our first afternoon there. This is St. Vladimir's Church which is across the street from the metro stop. It is again a working church but during Communism it was used as an ambulance garage! Can you imagine using something this beautiful for that?!?
As thrilled as we were to be back, we again didn't have NEARLY enough time. We rode the subways all by ourselves and again were the only Westerners on the trains, but if you go by yourselves and not in a tour group, you're going to end up doing a lot of walking. You couldn't
pay us to drive there and the buses were too complicated for us to figure out. The cyrillic alphabet again didn't help. The above picture is an example of some of the buses. The easily recognizable bus on the left in the photo is obvious. The yellow van pictured is in fact a city bus and is one of the nicer ones we saw. I don't mean that at all in a disrespectful way, but some of the city buses and public transportation had to be seen to be believed.
One of the advantages of being on foot is you get to do a lot of window shopping! This is a yarn shop literally on the way to our hotel and we found it completely by accident! I believe it is called
House of Style in Russian.
Russia has a very high crime rate and in grocery stores if things are not behind the counter or in glass cases, you will have someone literally at arms length closely watching you. This yarn shop was no exception. It was kind of a funny little shop too. At first we thought she just didn't have any real inventory. There was not enough of any one type of yarn for a large project. Then we realized that she had just one of everything out for display. It reminded me of a shoe store because the inventory was in small boxes in the back. There were curtains hung up concealing that part of the store and she had different patterned knitted swatches sewn onto the curtains.
She had a selection of needles for sale as well but they were locked up in a glass case.
She stocked mainly Bouton D'Or and Anny Blatt yarns, both of which I'd never heard of. I chose 2 skeins of a mohair blend yarn in 2 different shades of blue. I also picked up a set of fine double pointed needles for lace and bead knitting. Of course we had no idea what she was saying to us in Russian and she couldn't understand what we were saying to her in English but we think she was trying to tell me that she didn't recommend that yarn with those needles. I don't plan to use them together but I couldn't convey that to her. She also seemed to be trying to tell me that I didn't have nearly enough yarn for a sweater or anything sizeable. I had no idea how to explain to her that I wanted it just for Stash purposes. How do you say "Rainy Day" in Russian? :) She was lovely and very helpful despite the language barrier.
We took a day trip to the Peter and Paul Fortress where we saw the interred remains of the Romanovs. I was absolutely fascinated by that and had to post a picture.
Speaking of Romanovs, I wanted to get some Kusmi Anastasia tea while in Russia. I didn't find any in our 2 small grocery stores we frequented, but I DID find it in the shop on the ferry to Estonia! I also wanted to get a set of
podstakannik tea glasses but they were far too expensive. In the end I just got one for myself. Mom made a good point that I will probably never use them as a set.
Another one of my favorite things we did on our last day there was an impromptu tour of different subway stations. Our travel book listed a number of stations that were built under Communism during the 1950's and the original artwork and detail is still there.
This half day activity cost just a couple bucks' worth of metro tokens. We were also very upset because we'd read in every travel book that it is absolutely verboten to take photos inside the subway for security reasons. The book said that they'd actually confiscate your camera if you were caught. St. Petersburg's metro goes under the river and has the deepest subway tunnels in the world so we thought that had something to do with the security rules--and try not thinking about THAT when you're riding the trains! We saw other people taking pictures and no one was saying a word to them.
Finally we walked up to the uniformed metro workers, pointed to our camera and asked, "Photo OK?" and they nodded yes so we started snapping away. I'm posting only a few snapshots but I loved all these examples of old Communist art. We were absolutely shameless too with our pictures. Some of the natives looked at us like we were crazy but I found it fascinating. Mom sent me a link to
4 pages of pictures of Russian metro stations.
Mother put it very well when she said that in all the different paintings and bas reliefs that we saw, "Everyone is working, everyone is well fed, and everyone is happy." So true. There is no typhus in Moscow.
This was a mural on a building outside one of the stations at the street level. I find it amazing to still see these.
This is an up close shot of Lenin outside Finlyandskiy Train Station before we left to head back to Finland. We learned last year that there are still many statues of Lenin in Russia but none of Stalin. His preserved train car is at this station too but we couldn't find it and we didn't have time to go off looking for it. While I was there taking pictures and looking at Lenin, an old man near me looked up at the statue and smiled and said something to me in Russian. I have no idea what he said but from the tone of his voice, I'd guess he said something like, "He sure was something." Whatever it was, he said it admiringly and wistfully and I could do nothing but smile and nod at him. I always find that the frustration of not being able to communicate far outweighs any fear of the unknown or culture shock. There were so many things I wanted to ask people about and I just wanted to visit with the locals about anything and everything! As Boney M says, "Oh those Russians!"
I put my Christmas tree up the other day and had to set up my little tacky Christmas tableau over in my sewing corner. A fool and her money is soon parted but I saw this real Charlie Brown Christmas tree at Hobby Lobby and couldn't leave without it! I just love it! These are licensed Rudolph finger puppets from Starbucks and a vintage Santa and doily/place mat from my Grandpa Maynerd's Christmas decorations. I just love them all together. One of these days I might post pictures of my cat and Christmas pudding garland I bought in London. I just love it and had to hang it up but my apartment is starting to look like Mr. Bean's flat in the Christmas special! Oh well, 'tis the season! ;) I think I am most thankful this year for my new nephew and my brother's safe return from Iraq. Happy Turkey Day everyone!
