A Textile Journey In Shetland 2012

Well, back to the blog after an absence. This is the first in a series about my recent return visit (June - July 2012) to Shetland. It was packed with great experiences and lots of them textile. These were beyond all expectations – which were pretty high. It is the textile experiences that I will concentrate on in this retrospective journal. We were travelling in our recently acquired beautiful T5 Campervan – the aim of the first day was to get to Perth Caravan and Camping Club site where we would spend 2 nights - it was a great place to stay and we look forward to going there again. We decided to leave the customary visit to Linton Tweeds in Carlisle until the way back (more later. By coincidence(!?) Staying at Perth enabled me to visit my friend Jeannette Sendler in her inspirational shop called Hat in the Cat Studio in Perth. Do take a look at what she does – textile art, millinery and felt making at the shop and at her Big Cat Textiles workspace in Newburgh.

The photo is of a machine knit wool and merino felt cape that I made with Jeanette at one of her great workshops some time ago. www.sendler.co.uk (The photo is of the cape on my stand at the Guild of Machine Knitters AGM where I was promoting the Campaign for Wool in June earlier in the year.) It was great to see Jeanette again and to be inspired by her work – and add another visit to a workshop to my ‘must do list’. If you get to Perth then www.reidscafe.com produced a superb lunch, more than coping with my non dairy, non gluten and non wheat needs. Besides wonderful food, great service and highly recommended. The only slight downside to Perth was our visit to Scone Palace; I was underwhelmed by the contents of the Palace – very little ‘needlework’! However, the shop had a great range of lovely textile items, including waffle merino/cashmere/silk scarves woven on Mull by Shirley … I think it must be Shirley Pinder – this is her website: www.shirleypinder.co.uk ..and so on to Aberdeen for the ferry.