The winter-spring season at VEMU was once again been filled with events. The amount of topics expanded, to include interesting subjects like handicrafts and culinary traditions.
On May 5, the first event of the series “Cooking with Susi Holmberg” took place at Tartu College. The topic was “Learning Vanaema’s Recipes”. Under the guidance of Estonian-born chef Susi Holmberg, participants learned how to prepare salted salmon, fresh pickles, mincemeat sauce, and semolina cream. Susi spoke and Ellen Valter moderated the evening. This pair is already known from a similar series on OMNI TV. Participants could view the demo table from a camera showing what was cooking on the stove. Afterwards, everyone was able to taste the food as well. The next cooking evening will take place this year in November.
A few days before, a room of women gathered on one inspiring Sunday at Tartu College to hear and see local handicraft enthusiast and master weaver Anu Sepp in her lecture/workshop “My Creation in Handicraft and Knitting”. Anu spoke about how her fantasy and image-rich fabrics have taken shape. She also demonstrated how to make a wrist warmer, something that has recently gained popularity in Estonia.
Estonia’s only filigree jewellery master, Keiu Kulles visited Toronto in the middle of March. Keiu gave many lectures and workshops at Tartu College, as well as at the Ehatare retirement home. He also spoke about the filigree traditions in Estonian folk jewellery. He asked participants to bring along Estonian family jewellery and photos of how and where they are worn. We were also shown Keiu’s creations. Many lucky participants of the upcoming song festival in Estonia were able to buy Keiu’s jewellery to be worn with their folk costumes. Everyone learned something new about how to wear their traditional jewellery correctly.
Piret Noorhani