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.
No comments:
Post a Comment