Over the weekend we took a bit of a trip and went to Gimli where they were having there annual Icelandic Fest. Now, I'm not really sure why, but I am entirely too taken with Iceland. Over the past few years I've learned a bit about it here and there and I'm just in love with their culture and their heritage. It helps as well that I love Icelandic knitting and Icelandic sheep are certainly the prettiest and cutest looking sheep I've ever seen and would love to have a whole flock of them if I only had a good sized plot of land.
When we got there in the morning the "Village" that they set up was still closed, so we went to the coffee shop in town to kill some time and get some much needed caffeination.
It was getting close to 30 degrees celsius outside, so we all opted for Iced drinks, but I'm curious what an "Icelandic Fog" is and think I will have to give it a try the next time we are visiting that town.
After getting some coffee we went one of their larger shops that has really nice clothes and books and gift type things and I discovered they also have a whole wall of Icelandic Yarn!
I've never tried Istex's Einband yarn, which is there light fingering weight yarn, so I decided to grab a couple natural looking colours to try out.
I'm thinking this will be my new winter hat for this year. I'm really excited to work with their Einband yarn as I love the Alafoss and Lett Lopi already.
Finally the Village was open and we got to go in and look around! They have many different tents that are set up to look like what a house would have looked like back in the Viking days.
I am so in love with the blanket on this bed! It really makes me want to get into embroidery.
Next we saw some chairs covered in furs and some wooden shields.
Some women in costume who were cooking some traditional looking food.
More women in costume who were cooking fish on one side of the fire, and naturally dying Icelandic yarn on the other side!
Some beautiful Icelandic Yarn. I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm thinking that they maybe spun and dyed this themselves.
We also saw a woman doing a type of weaving I'd never seen before. This is called Tablet Weaving, and instead of using the kind of loom I'm used to seeing, they have yarn threaded through holes in the corners of square tablets that they can flip and change which yarn is on top to create a pattern in their weaving. Because the projects on this type of weaving can only be an inch or two across it seems, they use it to make beautiful wool woven ribbons that are used to decorate tunics. I was quite excited about this and while I was hoping to try weaving one day, this makes me want to get a loom as soon as possible.
It was just a really incredible day, and we had such a fun time getting to look around and see all of the traditional looking displays. And now I have a new project in my line up, so hopefully I'll have a new hat to show you soon.
