Norwich Shawls, Shetland Fine Lace Shawls and the Shetland Wool Week Annual 2024

What a lovely surprise to get the 2024 Shetland Wool Week annual fall through the letterbox on a very wet and windy day yesterday. 

Usually we are in Shetland to pick this up from the hub, and last year I was the first to get my copy. 

However earlier this year I had some medical issues and we took the decision to not go to Shetland for Wool Week this year. In fact I had my second appointment in cardiology just last week and got some very positive help  with my problems. (It turns out the problem is not with the heart muscle but the nervous control. Reading between the lines it is another aging problem! )

September here has been very busy. Norfolk has Heritage Open Days with special events and I have been able to go to ones related to Norwich Costume and Textiles that I can’t ever attend. These have been great and I have been able to study further the ‘Norwich Shawl’ trade and just on Saturday see, unexpectedly, up close, a very rare example. (1) 

If you have never seen a Norwich Shawl, this is a small piece of one I have had the pleasure of studying. 

There is much more information about them here, on the costume and textile association website  

But, back to the Shetland Wool Week Annual. This is the 10th edition and I am so glad I have all 10. 

I think they get better each year (this one has more pages than last year). This one is really great, it does contain knitting patterns by local Shetland knitters, 10 being represented. It contains fair isle as well as lace patterns ranging from Helen Robertson’s  flying flock (with lace coats) to the Laebrack Hap by Elizabeth Johnston which can be knit as a square or triangle. I was taught to spin many years back by Elizabeth and have since benefitted from her expertise in several workshops. There are two other patterns I particularly want to mention, Skalva Socks by Freya Hutcheson who learned her knitting by being a member of Shetland Peerie Makkers and is just 16, a name to watch for the future. The other is a lace knitting pattern by Betsy Williamson, called Winyadepla , so good to see a lovely pattern of Betsy’s. She has been knitting since she was 4 (like me!) and as anyone who has visited Shetland Wool Week at Ollaberry will know she is a lovely lady with lace knitting in her blood! 

But this is only about one part of the annual which this year looks back over the 10 years of its existence and is very much a heritage issue. The introduction by Hayley Anderson ‘celebrates the creativity , heritage and community that knit together the pages of her beloved annual’. But to me it is more than knitting together the beloved annual, this is what Shetland knitting, whether it be fair isle or lace, is all about - the creativity, the heritage and the community that make up Shetland Knitting. In the second half of the annual there are always interesting articles and this year this section includes more about the lace knitting traditions that form the new ‘Bible’ of Shetland Lace Knitting, Carol Christiansen’s book ‘Shetland Fine Lace Knitting’ using the lace knitting collection in the Shetland Museum and Archives collection as well as associated research. (2)

Later in the day I was fortunate to hear some local Shetland people speak. Hazel Sutherland, the Chief Executive of Shetland Amenity Trust that ‘does’ (her word) Shetland Wool Week. It was very good to hear that the two main focus points this year for wool week are Natural Colours and the Shetland Lace following the Publication of Carol’s book following concern that Shetland Lace in a traditional does not become endangered and that the skills are not lost. Elizabeth Williamson, the Chair of Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers, during a long interview also referred to the Shetland way of knitting a lace shawl as being part of what is Shetland Lace Knitting. 

Another wet day here today so a day of knitting Shetland Fine Lace (currently on the 4th board of Betsy Williamson’s daughter Elizabeth Williamson’s Firth pattern ) and in the intervals getting lost in Shetland amongst the pages of this annual. 

Notes

1. Norwich Shawls were at the height of their production between about 1750 and 1840. They are magnificent large woven pieces that were exported around the world and many of them contained ‘Norwich Red’, a scarlet colour for which Norwich was famous. 
2. Shetland Fine Lace Knitting recreating patterns from the past Carol Christiansen is available online from Shetlandheritageshop.com and all good bookshops. 

Shetland Autumn 2023: Day 25-28; 25-28 Sept; the journey hime and unexpected Lake District Art Exhibition

We were glad when morning arrived on the ferry. The night was  an experience which we escaped with no more than lack of sleep.

I did manage to look at the complimentary Shetland Times and it was good to see 3 pages devoted to wool week …and that was before it started! 

We still needed to hold on to walk even when docked. We decided to forgo our complimentary breakfast. 

Aberdeen from the cabin window, plenty of spray there 

 

For the first time I drove the motorhome off the ferry and we took the decision to park up for a spell at the terminal rather than drive on. This was sensible as we got our legs back and made some decisions. We would just drive onto Perth, a campsite that we liked at the racecourse and would thus have a restful day. We would then drive onto Hoddam Castle for another night and go back down the west side of the country staying a further night in Cheshire before arriving home on Thursday. Fortunately, little did we know that the journey was still to be our most challenging drive home! 

So on Monday morning we drove along leisurely to Stonehaven and made tea and had a bite to eat. 

The sea was still rough here, but it was a lovely morning.

Next stop Stathco where we had  a lovely egg roll and we were beginning to feel human. The day turned into a series of stops as we got tired! The next was at Sterling Services. Usually we don’t stop here, the parking is tiny! However even the car park was virtually empty. Costa Cappuccino coffee was over £4.00 which seemed even more ludicrous as we got a couple of meat lasagne meals for £6.00 (not our usual way of eating but we didn’t much feel like cooking currently !) We made another stop at Glendoik garden centre  for an early lunch and buying of bulbs for the garden. 

Spring squill, these did grow but were tiny! Looking at this picture again I wonder if other people knew this.

 

We arrived at Perth (about 60 miles of the journey home  completed) early afternoon and slept. It had been  much better day than we had envisaged during those long hours in the night ! The weather was back to warm and we began to wonder if the ferry journey had just been a bad dream. 

On the Tuesday we drove over to Hoddam Castle, and by the time we reached Happenden, our favourite stopping place for this part of the journey, we had heavy rain, making driving difficult. But it brightened up as we got to Hoddam. 

Always a lovely spot to stay the night 

Hoddam Castle

Wednesday would get us back into England. We drove to Penrith and decided to go into Rheged for breakfast. There was a lovely exhibition on, a retrospective of a Lake District artist , Libby Edmondson ‘A life full of colour’. I really liked her work and we spent more time there than we planned. 

Herdwick inspired

Although not the sort of weaving I do but I loved this weaving.

I drove from there and we decided we would not stop at Killington Lake. This turned out to be a bad decision! I thought we could stop at Lancaster Services but that was very busy and being in there was not a pleasure, so we decided to drive on to Charnock Richard. That felt worse when a small works van drove in next to us and we could not get out of the left hand side, even with the sliding door. These north western service stations need more parking. It felt dangerous. But as we were in Michael’s home territory he thought he could navigate us to a spot in Standish, but that has changed beyond all recognition and all the quiet spots are no more. What was a fairly small village felt like a big town. But we still had the option of Wigan, the approach from the north had big houses set back and wide roads. However, these now all had yellow lines, cycle lanes or bus lanes. We were needing lunch by now and eventually M found us a lay by on a side road out west where we made a sandwich lunch. 

We now only needed to drive down to Cheshire and this should have been easy but we got caught up in the remnants of storm Agnes. It got very windy and very very wet, worse than it had been yesterday. We were hoping to stop at a favourite campsite beyond Nantwich towards Shropshire but abandoned that for one much close to the M6. As we arrived we noticed the temperature was about 20, which was high for late September. It is a super site surrounded by trees, but as soon as we parked the van there was an all mighty  thud as a branch came off a tree and hit the ground, some slight adjustment to the parking spot was needed. One of the good things  about being there was the good reception, but this told us the wind was going to get up in the night…this was feeling like being in Shetland.  We decided the van was as safe as it could be and in fact the highest winds were about 22.00 before we went to sleep. 

The following day should see us home! It should have been a straightforward journey, one we had done many times before when we lived in Cheshire and visited family in Norfolk. We hadn’t gone many miles, only to the Stoke turn off when there was an accident at the roundabout feeding back for many miles, so virtually not moving for some time. Once through this we hoped it would be easier as we were going to use the Toll Road. We stopped at Norton Canes for coffee and picked up messages that the M6 was closed lower down and that traffic would be at a standstill for many hours due to a police incident. Initially we had no worries as we thought we were missing the problem by using the Toll Road, but the problem was just past where the toll road fed back onto the M6. So we made a plan to leave the toll earlier and divert round this, along with everyone on the toll and much of the traffic on the M6 going south! There were few cars and lots of lorries  on roads not build for such a heavy volume! So I used my phone to navigate and Michael drove, the relief being that we were taken around small roads through the outskirts of Nuneaton unsuitable for lorries. At last we reached the A14 which seemed quiet by comparison. One last stop for refreshment and we would, we hope be home. We walked in at 16.30, very, very glad to be home. 

Was it all worth it, absolutely without any doubt!