In Shetland day 2: Friday 9 Sept 2022

We had decided yesterday that the weather looked settled and we would be able to book the ferry to Whalsay. I had enjoyed exhibitions of knitting in Whalsay Heritage and Community  Centre in previous years and was very much looking forward to seeing this one. This was situated in part of the Georgian Symbister House complex and was open Wed to Sat between 2 to 5 (1). Going on a Friday suited us well. The only downside was that Shoard the community charity shop was not open that day. 

We booked the 11.00am ferry over and would be returning about 16.00. More than once we had experienced choppy conditions on this ferry before, but  today looked calm, for the present! 

Driving to the ferry, looking in the direction of Whalsay. 

The journey is longer than other inter island ferries we use, it takes 25 minutes, but well worth it. 

This is the ferry that we will travel on.

We wanted to see more of the island so did a bit of a drive so drove north towards Brough and had worked out a circular tour! We set about looking for a good spot with a scenic spot for lunch. 

This was where we choose, it was very restful. 

We left so that we were back at the hall for the opening time. We were the only people going in and when  Michael left me to the knitwear exhibition I was the only person. Bliss. The lady who was managing the centre that day said she knitted fair isle but ‘not like this’. I was interested in all the knitting and associated bits on show, but most interested in the lace knitting and even more interested in the knitting of Ina Irvine. I had met and talked to Ina  many times and kept in touch with her, sadly she had died a while ago. She had a broad range of knitting skills and was a superb designer. She was also a spinner as well and spun superbly fine yarn and often choose to spin this using dark fleece. So all this is ‘upping’ the level of expertise in my book. Plus another couple of attributes for Ina, she was a truly lovely lady and she knitted for royalty. So on a quick glance round the room I was delighted to see so much of her work and of course work from other talented knitters and designers from Whalsay. I concentrated on details and include just a few of the photos I took, having checked with the lady that this was OK. 

This is a replica of handspun and knitted by Ina stole for the Queen of Norway on the opening of this ‘new’ museum in 2007. 

This is another of Ina’s and very difficult to photograph, as you can see. This is very finely handspun and is beautiful and so intricate. I was particularly taken by her large areas of faggoting/ ladder/ herringbone stitches which I believe are called steeks in Shetland. This shows real confidence to knit these and showed Ina’s  skill. No room to fail and dropping a stitch would have been a nightmare. 

From other Whalsay knitters

This took my eye for a number of reasons, including the display of it which I will return to later.

Super sleeve join here

This one was knit to sell. Sisters sold goods for the Spider’s Web (no longer with us but I visited in 2000) and Scalloway Museum. The sisters sold their own designs. 

A more recent piece knitted by Joan Poleson and it started life as a half finished 1 ply christening robe. 

There were also many folders related to knitting, about fair isle and about machine knitting on the island, which seems to have started in about 1940,  initially being in a more industrial setting and then the machines got ‘smaller’ so they could be home based. Being a machine knitter I was very interested in this detail. I noted a comment saying that there was probably not a family on the island that was not involved in the knitting economy. 

During my time in the knitting exhibition the lady popped back and I think she said she had Ina’s brother with her. So we talked about Ina and her visits to East Anglia, she and a sister (I believe) had been Herring Girls and visited Gt Yarmouth, bringing their knitting with them. He was keeping an eye on the fishing based exhibition next door and later in the my visit I went and talked about that with him. It was a brilliant afternoon and I hope many who attended for wool week got to see the exhibition too. 

We then visited ‘the shop’ by this I meant the main shop near the ferry  that sells everything you could possibly want and more. 

Time to join the queue to leave the island, we noted that even if it was rougher we had a works van in front of us on the ferry and would not get the spray onto the windscreen which has happened before! 

Notes

1 If you follow this link  https://www.whalsayheritage.co.uk/seasonal  as I write (Nov 22) this there are pictures of this seasonal exhibition on their  website still. 

Arriving in Shetland: Thurs 8 Sept

We had the alarm on in the cabin for 5.30 as we like to get into breakfast and sit by a window as we approach Shetland and travel up the east coast to Lerwick. We were second in to breakfast so we are not the only crazy ones. We had a nice breakfast and were able to wait in our cabin to be called to drive off. We knew we would be off early as we were blocking most of the non freight traffic on that deck in. In fact there were a few motorhomes and not much else other than the big chained containers. If I thought about it I would have been intimidated by it. 

As usual we drove to Tesco to do a decent shop for staples. Usually we are then driving up to Unst for week, but this year we were doing things differently and having a few days on mainland before driving up. This would allow us to meet with Shetland friends before it got busy for wool week. 

We were disappointed in Tesco and felt as a shop it had substantially changed over the two ‘Covid’ years and there seemed aisle upon aisle devoted to packaged and other prepared meals. When we did get to the meat and poultry section the only option was a large packet of chicken joints, fine if we were a family with about 5 children. We have a nearly normal sized fridge with a freezer section in the motorhome but we didn’t want to fill this up just with chicken. However this ‘annoyance’ turned into a positive as we then frequented the Co-op. This had a much better choice, the food looked better and the whole ambience of the shop was more welcoming. That might have been our last visit to Lerwick Tesco. 

Then it was into Lerwick and the customary journey to the wonderfully obliging tourist Information Centre. I bought the Shetland Adventures book 3 as it was focused on Fair Isle and had a section on machine knitting, a craft that is close to my heart. If I am knitting a stocking stitch item, it will be made with the use of my knitting machine unless  this is impossible! (You can knit socks with a knitting machine but I have a sock knitting machine for that, much better and it is a lovely historical item too, more about it on a post here of 10 Jan 2017)

My sock knitting machIne

There were also other articles about knitting and Fair Isle, I follow Rachel at Barkland Croft on IG and it is always interesting to see what she is up to. I already have issues 1 and 2, so now do I need to search out issue 3 ? 

Then, in my world I cannot go into Lerwick for the first time without going into the Shetland Times Bookshop and after a gap of two years this was even more essential. I like to chose a Christmas Present and then hand it over to Michael to put away. This day I was rather stumped, over the years I seem to have collected all the ones I am really interested in that are on the shelves. How can that be? ( I do have over 1000 textile books in my library! ) 

A small part of my Textile Library

I was interested in Susan Crawford’s  Evolution, the book she has written with extra patterns from some of her other books. I particular liked one jacket pattern, but on looking it started at size 38” so that was going to swamp me! So my   head decided I would be better using my jumper/ cardigan knitting block and working out a pattern myself like I usually do. However I knew this would not be my last trip to The Shetland Times Bookshop. 

Then it was back to The Peerie Cafe as it was now nearly coffee time, there was a quick stop to take a photo of Jamieson’s window always such a delight.

Jamieson’s  window

When we went up to Unst this was changed for wool week, so I got to see 2 delightful window displays but it appears I did not photograph the second. 

The Peerie cafe had a new system, one ordered at the door and were then given a table, and the food was delivered. This seemed to work well but I did wonder how it would work in Wool Week and how big the queue might be outside. We both had Bakewell slice and decided we would be going back for more of this, it was very nice indeed. 

We decided we would treat ourselves to a meal at the Dowry tonight, no cooking two nights in a row sounded good. 

We had decided that we could visit the Crofthouse Museum in the afternoon and we booked this before we left Norfolk. In all our visits to Shetland we had never been to this one and were looking forward to it. We had checked exactly where it was at Tourist Information and been told which was the best of 3 roads to take off the main road. 

We met the custodian who like us drove there, he unlocked the museum  and we were the only two being shown around. This was great and we were able to concentrate on things we were interested in. We used to live in a thatched cottage, outside Diss, dated as built during the 1600s. This museum, a traditional 19th century Crofthouse reminded us very much of that, although it was newer than our cottage and had a roof of turf. There were lots of knitting bits in the Museum and all in all it was a great thing to do on our first day. I would recommend it as a visit.

From the Crofthouse museum 

This shows the fireplace, peat was burning and was much appreciated for the smell and warmth 

…and a close up of the boards

Good to see Shetland weaving, even if recreated as well as spinning and knitting items

The meal at the Dowry as always was a quality meal which we very much enjoyed. As we drove home we heard that the Queen had died at Balmoral aged 96 and after reigning for 70 years. It was so good that she had seen how much she was appreciated during the Platinum Jubilee, for so many these kind words are left for the funeral and are not heard by the one person who should hear them. 

The journey to Shetland Sept 2022

During the early summer we decided that we would go to Shetland in the Autumn. We had missed not going there for Wool Week in either 2020 or 2021. Previous to that we always went before wool week and had time to ourselves and actually wanted more of this again. So I decided I would attend some of wool week but with some provisos because of covid. We were fortunate as neither of us had succumbed to Covid, we were still wearing masks when mixing inside and in general just meeting people outside. I was very uncertain about meeting large numbers in an indoor setting and decided I would not go to any evening lectures, much as I really enjoyed them. We did want to meet friends we had made in Shetland and also friends from around the world. Michael  had an additional booster in 2022 but I did not qualify for this due to my younger (?) age. 

(Those that know me well, are aware that this worked until nearly the end of our time away, when I went down with covid and this is partially why I am so late starting to post this journal. I like many others feel fortunate in that I have only suffered from exhaustion, I am much better but still look forward to the day when I can say I am fully recovered. In my book, life is too short to feel tired from even slight ‘overdoing it’! ) 

As always we would take the motorhome and live in that. So we planned to be away for virtually all of September, a longer trip then we had taken before but we were very much looking forward to it and we made arrangements to meet several friends there  before we left. 

We had put in place watering arrangements for the parched garden and crossed our fingers for rain here when  we were away as everything was parched and we didn’t want watering to be too big a task for our team of 3 who were to keep an eye on things. We had bought labels to put in the ground for plants to be watered but the ground was too hard for them to be used. 

So we left home on September 3rd. This was a Saturday and we had especially chosen to do the main travelling at the weekend when we hoped we would miss most of the lorry traffic! We packed up for a month, the first time we were going to be away for that long. It was our first trip to Shetland since 2019 too, so this had meant many lists! The day of leaving East Anglia was about checking the final list and we were pleased to be off for 10.00. It was very hot and even when we got to our stop for the night just off the A1 by Tuxford it was still 26 outside. 

This was a new campsite to us, convenient for the A1 but tired and a bit dated.  It did have some wonderful large colourful flower pots that I thought I had taken a photo of, but it seems I didn’t. We were going to have some hard landscaping done in the garden when we were back with some more shingle and pots but perhaps these are a little too big. They came up to my armpits! (1)

So on Sunday we got up and hoped our hunch that the A1 and A66 going across the top of the Pennines would be quiet. We knew the trick was to get off early and we managed that. The drive was enjoyable but we noted that everywhere, even up north was brown and dry just as at home. It wasn’t until we got beyond Penrith that fields looked green. Then as we drove into Scotland we saw our first rain for what seemed like an age. We drove on to Hoddam Castle by Ecclesfechan where we like to stay. A very spacious and quiet site. We planned to have a complete rest the next day. We were pacing ourselves and wanted to enjoy the journey as much as we could. 

On our day off we had decided to not drive anywhere, the point was to rest. Getting ready for such a big trip always has some stress! I still needed to finish Michael’s modified Wool Week hat so I hoped for time to do that. What we hadn’t envisaged was that we would have extremely heavy rain in the night. This was the first we had seen. We had remarked on how lush everywhere looked and that the summer here north of the border must have been very different from East Anglia, However, the rain cleared up first thing and we had a lovely pottery day and I learnt a new skill, taking a selfie and flipping it so that you can read any writing in the photo! 

So, a quick shot of us, we don’t usually take selfies! 

Michael’s hat is basically a shortened 2022 Wool Week hat designed by this year’s patron Linda Shearer from Whalsay. Michael likes  a hat to be close fitting, I also altered the anchor so I could knit the ‘around the head bit’ on the knitting machine. (2) He likes a plain brim….the actual hat had a very attractive chain in the rib. The colours are to match Michael’s padded gilet which is lime green and royal blue and is usually worn daily in Shetland. In the planning I thought there would be too much black so imported some wave type motifs  from a hat designed by Wilma Malcolmson when she was Wool Week patron for the ‘not in person’ Wool Weeks of  2020 and 2021. I have spared you the many photos of the wool wrapping and the sampling before we got to this stage! 

So after Hoddam Castle  there was one more stop and we had chosen to stay at Scone Palace which is actually at Perth Racecourse. We have found it one of  the best kept campsites we know and it did not disappoint this year. Eg there is no grass in the gravel of the hard standing and  everywhere is immaculate, flowers adorn public areas and the staff are very helpful  and friendly. Scotland is always much quieter on the roads and it was a joy to drive the route again. 

The next  day would be a much shorter drive to Aberdeen. As usual we stopped at Glenfiddick garden centre for coffee in the morning. Covid had changed the system for the better and it is now Waitress service. We then drive on to Crathes Castle to get the van ready for the ferry and check we have everything we need in an overnight bag. This we did and I managed to finish Michael’s modified hat. 

However, now being into Sept Crathes Castle was only open at weekends so no tea in the tea shop as usual (3). The  grounds however are beautiful. 

I took this photo a few years ago but it looked just the same this year, such a wonderful reflection. I struggle to find the water level! 

I managed to finish Michael’s hat there (and thus before we got to Shetland) and had to be inventive taking some photos of this. The main reason being the sun was so bright! I have to look hard to remind myself where the water level is. I just love the colours! 

The finished hat

The crown 

…and wearing it 

I suspect the expression is saying, ‘do I have to try this on again’ and a little advert for our much loved motorhome brand! 

Now I could work on the design that is in my head for another fine lace cowl in cobweb yarn or knit more socks. With me, I had enough yarn to knit a pair from Kate Davies’ book ‘Bluestockings’ for myself and Michael. We both liked the first pattern so these will be pair 3 and 4 from this book and I am using the yarn she recommended (4) 

I usually find someone from Wool Week to talk to in the lounge on the ferry but I was pretty sure I would not know anyone on the ferry this year as we were much earlier in Sept than usual. 

We waited literally hours to get on the boat as more and more freight was loaded, apparently no freight boat was running, not because of the bad weather fortunately. Hence as much freight as possible was being loaded, we were squeezed in and one of the last vehicles on. This would be good news as we would be one of  the first off the next day. 

Unusually I took some photos, I had to buy a new iPad just before we left as my previous one would not hold any charge. I was trying out the improved camera and pleased with the results. We had a nice meal in the lounge and I, for the first time, took some photos of Aberdeen beach from the ferry. Views from the lounge as we had dinner.

All was very calm crossing as we boarded but we were warned it would get fresh and more fresh during the night! 

I was completely wrong about not meeting anyone on the boat, as I sat enjoying my dinner I heard a familiar voice and it was a Wool Week friend, Suzanne from California with her friend! So for us the Shetland Wool Week experience had truly began. 

We slept through any ‘freshness’ ! 

Notes

1.I have now found a firm selling these. Rather out of my price range I think as we would like a few. 

https://bigplantpots.co.uk/products/biggie

2. I mainly use a punchcard machine (I had this from new in about 1976) and it works with a width repeat of 24 sts)

3. We usually cross on the ferry on a Friday night not on Wednesday as this year and see it is only open Thursday to Sunday in winter.

4. Kate Davies website.  https://kddandco.com/  Her books are delightful and far more than just books of patterns.