Shetland Autumn 2023 Day 1: 2nd September 2023

After much thought we decided we were, just about up to (health wise) going  up to Shetland this September and overlapping with the beginning of wool week as we did in 2022. Michael has had problems with his mobility all year but we thought he could manage the motorhome and we would have everything with us that we needed. So on September 2nd, a Saturday, we finally left after what has seemed like checking lists for days and days. The motorhome was packed with  lots of wool and dyeing related things, including the digital microscope, electric spinner, hand dyed balls of coordinating pink/purple Shetland yarn I had dyed as well as more natural dyeing, weaving and some (possibly) Mesolithic flints from the garden and some lead spinning whorls found in the village. All part of the sharing that is part of wool week and the weeks surrounding it. 

We decided we would only drive  a short distance for the first day as we would be up early and however well organised we were, there would be last minute packing! So we booked Clumber Park, in Sherwood Forest a Caravan and Motorhome site which we really like. 

We left at 10.00 and then took a detour to our nearest town to buy Kwells from  a decent sized Pharmacy. These are my insurance in case the ferry is choppy. We couldn’t get any yesterday anywhere! We have always been fine on the boat but not having any of these with me seemed like asking for trouble! 

So by the time we reached Suffolk, Elevdon, it was time for coffee in the courtyard Farm Shop. This is the first eating place I can remember seeing a notice saying they were completely cashless. There was waitress service and the food and drink were good too. We made a purchase or two and Michael was treated to a new case for his tablets. 

The journey north up the east coast is so much easier now the A14 improvements have been done and the parking better sorted at Cambridge Services, Today we made our own lunch, one of the bonuses of travelling in the motorhome. (1) The service station was not particularly busy which was nice. 

One more stop needed before we reached Clumber Park. We usually stop at North Grantham, parking is easy and we have never found it busy. This could be because the services are limited. We decided we would go in to Costa, really to have a break away from the motorhome. As I was studying the food offering I noticed our last female Prime Minister was also in the building too! I now eat much more savoury food and yet why is it that the offering to go with tea  is predominantly cake or in this case solely cake, cake and more cake! I decided I would therefore boycott Costa for eating and instead just had a drink but we were able to sit down in a quiet place. As we left Michael confirmed what I had observed in terms of seeing ‘famous’ people as she sat behind me. She was accompanied by a couple of bodyguards and I guess like us had to stop somewhere. I do wonder why service stations on the whole are such joyless places, those that do it well are really pleasant places to stop awhile. 

We were glad to arrive at Clumber Park. We like this stop a lot, we back onto woodland and could easily stay here more than a night. It was 25 C when we arrived and it seemed incongruous that in a few days we would be wearing full winter gear. 

So lovely to be in the forest 

The bonus this year was that there was the chance to have a wood fired sourdough Pizza for supper. These were super. Many of the larger camping sites have ‘street food’ visits at weekends and our experience of these entrepreneurs has been entirely positive. Great food, lovingly cooked at a great price. 

The nearest I got to  wool and textiles was thinking about them! 

1. Some of you will know that a regular health check went badly wrong for me last summer (2022). I had a week of daily contact from the surgery as I was found to be pre- diabetic, have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. I had already joined the waiting list to take part in the Zoe Personal Nutrition Programme as an attempt to  check up on and improve my gut health which was better but not perfect following the very bad food poisoning  I suffered from in 2011. Following this programme since last November has significantly improved those 3 issues. Eating my own food is the easiest but I can still eat out and pretty much anything I like. I will be referring to eating during the journal of this trip to Shetland. 

‘Sweet pea’ fingerless gloves 2023

I first designed a pattern for these, many years ago. It was prior to 2014 which when we moved back to Norfolk, so possibly 2006! Then they were called the Alchemilla fingerless gloves as they were to match a handbag that I knitted. Sadly I no longer have the handbag, it is one of the few bags I have sold. I still have the design work and the gloves though! 

Alchemilla gloves

They are excellent when I am doing photography in cooler or even very cold conditions! 

I made the next pair (left in image below) sometime in 2016 when I spun the yarn, from Shetland fleece and naturally dyed it to knit the first wool week hat, the Swook hat by Hazel Tindall. I called it my Skaw hat as I matched the colours to seaweed in a photo I took at Skaw beach on an earlier visit to the most Northerly beach in Unst, or in fact  the UK. I wear these a lot and it a usual day of somebody, usually a stranger,  doesn’t have a conversation with me about them. It’s nice that they spark a knitting/ spinning/ dyeing conversation and I have introduced several to Shetland Wool Week through these gloves. 

I had so much dyed Shetland wool left the year I knitted the meadowsweet jumper and the hat and the notebook cover that I knitted another pair in those colours! 

….and now in 2023 I have knitted another pair using the colours in the yoke of my Shetland Wool Week jumper yoke. There is one slight variation from the yoke - I used a stronger coloured pink in the centre of the yoked jumper motifs but thought there was enough pink showing in these fingerless gloves to use the wool that I dyed and did not use in the yoke. Also this year it is the first time I have used all the colours in sequence and arranged them so that the colours run in sequence across my left hand, outer to thumb side, then across my right hand thumb to little finger with palms down.

The clips show where the stitching for the thumb slot will go 

There is an invisible graft in the picture. (I hope it is invisible) 

I have learnt the graph I used from studying videos and articles from Joni Coniglio who does, in my mind, ann excelled 2 sided lace knitting graft. It took me time and many trials to ‘get’ this but more than worth it. I have described this I detail I previous posts, such as http://imagejem.blogspot.com/2021/11/grafting-2-sided-lace.html

This shows the trial of the graft

Preparing  for the graft 

Showing the foundation rows in waste yarn 

 Graft complete

Removing the waste yarn from the left 

Each time I have knit them, since the first there has been a modification, or improvement in my mind. Perhaps now the pattern is static and perhaps I might publish it! 

My aim at first, and remains, was to run the stripes down the hand. This lengthens rather than widens my (to me) broad hands. 

You can read about the jumper and the natural dyeing using cochineal and indigo in the post of 8 Oct 2023

Shetland jumper 2023

I have got into the rhythm of knitting a new jumper or cardigan to wear in Shetland during some of wool week. I have a number of criteria for this: it will be unique to me; it will fit me well; it will be warm; it will be made of Shetland Wool; it will co-ordinate with what I will be wearing. Over the years, I have mainly dyed all or some of the yarn for it. 

I liked the two yoked jumpers I had done previously and decided another of those would be just the thing this year. The ones I had done were in yellow / green tones and this year I decided I would concentrate on the purple/ pink colour way. The previous colourways were naturally dyed and this set would also be naturally dyed.

I am very particular about ‘fit’ at the yoke as the whole point to me of a yoked jumper is that it fits well at the yoke, back and front. I would knit the front, back and sleeves on my knitting machine. I have made a custom pattern for this with the back being higher than the front and the sleeve top sections therefore  being lower at the front than the back. I have talked to several Shetland knitters of yoke jumpers, both hand and machine knit bodies. This has worked well for both the previous jumpers, even though I used different yarns and therefore different stitch numbers. 

I thought I would do a different yoke pattern this year and spent a long time, months, playing with motifs and colour variation and stitch counts. But I do love how the tree removes stitches to do the decreasing. One morning I got up and decided I would actually much prefer the yoke pattern that I normally do and just work on getting the colours and the sequence of these as good as I could. I was going to use the grey main yarn I used previously and a dark grey to act as a border for the yoke and natural white as the background. (1) 

So on to planning the colours. The plan was to dye some small samples of yarn using cochineal and indigo. This proved to be some of my most difficult natural dyeing. Usually I start with a main colour and then use additives to alter this colour to give the others. They then all ‘go’ together well. 

Getting several different shades that form a coordinating gradient from two different dye baths  was a completely different process. The indigo vat would get colder and the yarn would therefore need to be in it for longer but if it was in too long then the hue would be much bluer but I wouldn’t know how much bluer until I had let the air get to it and the yarn colour developed! 

Add to this that I like to put yarn into indigo at least twice to get a good indigo dye and the fact that wet wool is darker than dry wool and you can understand what I was grappling with. Then there was the indigo, I need 5 lots of indigo dyed yarn, should I put them all in at once? I decided this was not the most sensible idea as I might want a quicker dip for some purples. But then what would the concentration of the bath be when I put the different yarns in at different times? For the actual jumper I was going to dye 25 g of each colour. 

I already knew that it mattered which way the dipping went- cochineal then indigo is different from indigo plus cochineal. I do keep copious notes, but to be honest none of that helped much with this dyeing! This was about experience and trusting my processes. 

So after the sampling I more or less had a plan, I think MIchael went and hid and I decided I just had to get on with it. I mainly do my natural dyeing outside or in my dye/ fleece shed and I seemed to spend the whole morning wishing the wool dry on the line.

These are the wet colours about to go on the line to dry

I was pretty happy with the results, and made the yarn into balls which I rearranged until I got the gradation I liked. 

When I knitted this I could see some of the yarns needed to change places. So a second sample was needed and that was OK except for the central pink. 

That just looked too ‘weak’. So I sorted round to see what other cochineal dyed pinks I had, I had quite a few in my stash and decided on a stronger pink! 

This shows the inspiration photo I used for the colours and the first and last sample I knitted for the yoke

So at this stage I was ready to pick up the stitches, checking that the centre front and back motifs were spot on central and then all that was needed was to knit the yoke! As before I used a knitting belt, and 3 double pointed needles as I have learned to do in previous Shetland Wool Week workshops. 

Beginning the yoke knitting 

After this I kept on hand knitting, adding extra decreases and knitting a ribbed neckband that fits my neck.

I had previously washed and dressed (flat) the jumper pieces and joined the raglan sleeves on the sewing machine. (2) 

Dressing the jumper pieces 

I then finished the making up of the jumper and it had another warm wash and finish. 

I was pleased with it and glad I had gone to some trouble to get a jumper I really liked and I hope suited me. It was great to wear it to Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers  September meeting and get compliments, so much was going on that day that I had forgotten I was even wearing it. 

The crowning glory was when we visited Wilma Malcolmson - the Queen of Colour- and she told me how well the colours had worked, without then knowing I had naturally dyed them myself. 

The only pictures of me wearing in Shetland! 

I had just been admiring the work of spinning and  fine lace knitting of a beautiful shawl made by Satoko. We met at a wool week many years ago and as one does with wool week kept in touch by social media. She had brought two hand knitted ‘friends’ with her with different clothes ! 

This photo made me think I could knit a matching cardigan  for the jumper, using yet more of the dyed yarn, that would Co ordinate with the yoke of the jumper but not replicate it! More to add to my knitting list! 

I decided to use some of the remaining yarn to knit some more of my design of fingerless gloves to go with it during our time in Shetland. I will detail these in the next blog post. 

I usually name my jumpers, this one is now called ‘sweet pea’. The colours of the sweet peas still in bloom in the garden when we returned from Shetland were the colours of the yoke, these are some remaining today as I write this.

1. The main jumper was knitted in Jamieson’s Graphite and the background of the yoke was knitted in Jamieson and Smith Natural White, which was also used as the base of the dyed yarns.
2. More about how I use a sewing machine in construction is on post of 6 April 2018
3. Even getting the correct ‘grey’ to work with the naturally dyed colours took 3 samples before I hit upon the ‘right’ one. I enjoy sampling and find it is essential when doing colourwork like this. The grey on the left in the photo below has quite a bit of red in it although it does not show up well here. I selected the middle grey to use here.  
4.