Long and Short Wristers Knitting (2 Patterns)

Folk singing groups began performing in Soviet Lithuania in 1968, but it is probably not a coincidence that knitters and weavers started to reproduce traditional costumes for performances in 1986, just two years after Mikhail Gorbachev came into power and one year after Glasnost and Perestroika were initiated. Even with the increased amount of freedom, singing was used as a form of nonviolent protest against the Soviet regime, only allowed because it ostensibly had nothing to do with politics. Folk singing groups kept young people occupied. “They aren’t doing anything dangerous,” the thinking went. “What harm could there be in singing?”

Ironically, the peaceful revolution that eventually led to Lithuania’s renewed independence in 1991 is now known as “the singing revolution.”