Weaving class

First of all I’d like to thank you all for your beautiful comments on the wedding gloves. It was so nice to hear from you :-). I heard that many of you think that the hairless cats are …hmmm… “interesting”. I have to say that my mom topped everyones cat-comments in the email I got from her today. When she first looked at the picture, she honestly thought that they were baby pigs! I’m still laughing about it from time to time. When my friends bought the first cat, Pörrö (“furry”) I thought they were crazy. Why on earth would you pay money for a freak of nature like that? After a short while they kind of grew on me and now I just think they’re real cute. In a way they’re also comfortable to pet since it’s almost just like stroking a human. Almost. Their skin is much fattier.

Onto other things. There’s this “worker’s institute” here in Helsinki which organizes classes on almost anything you can dream of, and since it’s subsidized by the city (I think), the classes are very cheap. To be more accurate, there are actually two of those institutes, one Finnish-speaking and another Swedish-speaking. For those who don’t know, Swedish is also an official language in Finland due to the ~8% Swedish-speaking minority. I have many times been deeply grateful for that!

This autumn I signed up for a weaving class at the Swedish institute and today was the first class. Now, in theory I don’t really speak Swedish, but I do speak Danish and there isn’t a huge difference. Fortunately for me, Finnish-Swedish is much easier to understand than “real” Swedish, because it’s spoken with a clear Finnish accent which is rather similar to the way us Icelanders would prefer to speak. My two problems with Swedish is that I do an awful immitation by speaking Danish which a heavy Icelandic accent, which makes me feel like I’m speaking the most horrible Danish and I’m never quite sure which words are not common to Danish and Swedish, and it makes me nervous. When I’m nervous and afraid I might make mistakes I prefer to stay silent. This is a big problem – it’s the reason why I never speak Finnish here, even though I know a bit by now and could get by with that. My intellect of course knows that I would learn much faster if I just started speaking, but this is a deep-rooted psychological fear which no amount of rational thinking can cure.

I know how I work by now. When I lived in Copenhagen for example, I spoke English for the first three months and didn’t utter a word of Danish although I easily could have. We spend about 8 painful years learning it in school in Iceland. Then after three months I had absorbed enough to (unconsciously) figure out how the language was supposed to be spoken and voilá! One fine day I just spoke, and never used English again. This process I go through didn’t become clear to me until years later.

Anyhoo, I’m losing the thread here. Yeah, the weaving class. Well, it was funny. I sat for the most part silent. I did understand the important stuff and I’m excited about it. We’ll begin by weaving a rug – you know, those types you can make out of ripped up sheets (or buy really cheap in Ikea). Just to practice. I’ve already got an idea for colors, I wonder if you can buy variegated rug-thread-thingies? (Gawd it’s going to be funny to learn all those weaving words in Swedish.)

That reminds me. When I lived in Copenhagen I took a class at a similar institute. I don’t actually know the English word, but it was about learning to draw those models that you then use to cut out fabric to sew clothes (sniðteikning). Well, all of my vocabulary on that is in Danish and when I draw these, I write everything up in Danish! Oh gawd, then I’ll be weaving in Swedish. And I usually knit in English. My brain’s gonna get fried one of these days.

Sorry for this most incoherent post. My brain’s a bit fried.

Updated a little bit later: I forgot the most embarrasing thing. At the class we were given a picture of a loom (vefstóll) with numbered parts and the teacher would say the names of each part and we were supposed to write them down on our paper. Well, as I said, I don’t speak Swedish and I have very little idea of how to write it. So what did I do? I tried in the most inconspicous manner to roll my eyes to get a look at my neighbors paper, who I think noticed. They must all think I’m a complete idiot!