Some of you might have wondered how I managed to take such a sunny picture of the Broken tweed stitch mitts for my previous post. Well, it wasn't in the darkness of Helsinki in November, but in sunny Saaremaa in Estonia. Our autumn holiday took us to Kuressaare, which is the capital of Saaremaa island. The last time I visited Saaremaa was some 20 years ago, so I had totally forgotten what a lovely place it is!


One of the testers for my Mesmeria dress is Estonian and she used Estonian Aade Long gradient yarn for the dress. I love the way it turned out, so I wanted to find some of that yarn for souvenir. Unfortunately, she didn't know of any yarn shops in Kuressaare, but as she put it "if there are yarn shops you will find them".


In a small town of 15 000 inhabitants you might not expect to find yarn shops, but Estonia is a country of knitters and there were "Käsitööpood" signs everywhere! Mostly the shops sell knitted items, but some of them also yarn. The first shop that I visited was Tiiu Tanu handicrafts shop on Lossi 1. I admired all the knitted items on sale, but I didn't find anything interesting in their yarn selection - until I looked under the table and that's where all the Aade Long yarns were!


I believe that I found exactly the yarns that my tester used in her project. Although, I have to say that I'm not totally sure: we didn't have a common language with the ladies in the shop, and either they didn't understand my question of how the colors look like once knitted or they just didn't have a sample. I'll let the yarn surprise me!