Stripes and Squiggles - part 1 Karelia

I am not sure when stripes started to get a hold of me but I realized that I LOVE stripes.
My long suffering friend Linda Turu took me to an Estonian Cultural Bash - gosh when was that?
Ages ago - but the stripe-iness from that event lives on in my mind. Hence the next couple of posts.

Here are some inspirational stripes...
These are cuffs from the Ethnographic Museum in Helsinki in 2008. The exhibit was about Karelian culture and history. There were a couple of wonderful sweaters. Well, I'll bet if you are reading this, you'll want to see those, too. I can make that happen. But first these. Wrist warmers are really important in northern climates but if I remember correctly, there were a number of textiles in this exhibit that were made with such care with the yarn. Certain colours especially were hard to get and hardly a centimeter would go to waste.
I am trying to remember the story about the woven pieces - somehow they were scraps that were left behind. The history of Karelia is a sad one, and during the Soviet era many people were forced to migrate. Over all this was a touching exhibit and had me thinking hard about how politics and power struggles mess up people's lives. But also how people keep going and persevere with resourcefulness...