Habetrot

Happy New Year

Happy Holidays and my best wishes to you all for a very Happy New Year

It has been a fine year here at Habetrot, and I thank you all for coming by.

Click for some sheepish seasonal music.

With thanks to http://www.golakes.co.uk/ .

How To Be Warm

(click for big)

With thanks to Pooch Cafe.

I Love Latvia

A year ago this week I blogged about the 9,000 Latvia NATO mittens here.  I was made dizzy by all these mittens then, and I still am.  For the last year I have been using the images from the mitten archive as my screen saver, and they delight me just as much now as they did a year ago.

So, to re-affirm my love of Latvia and its mittens, I give you Latvian mitten stamps. 

(do click for bigness)

Each stamp is a small work of art.  The stamps were issued between 2002 and 2005, and each bears both mittens and costumes from a different region of the nation.  Can you imagine a country that values its handcraft traditions so highly that it puts them out for all the world to see in such a way?

And, yes, yes, before you say anything, I do know that the US has issued knitting stamps.  And I give them to you here.

Oy.  Well, ok.  It is knitting of a sort.  I'll give you that.

Does anyone else mind that the images appear to have been knitted upside down?  Or is that just me?

Can you imagine a country that values its handcraft traditions so poorly that it puts them out for all the world to see in such a way?

Reeling Silk

(click for gigundo)

This photograph was taken in Turkestan in 1862.  The men are reeling silk.  The older man on the right is boiling the silk cocoons and feeding the silk strands up over the wooden frame leaning over the pot.  The younger man is guiding the strands (if you biggify and look closely, you can just make out the thread running through his had) onto the charkha for winding.

Alfred, is that you?