Knitting Shetland

In, ahem, 2015 I was in Shetland – not for Shetland Wool Week, but for a holiday. While there I went a bit mad in Jamiesons revamped Lerwick shop, with the intention of knitting myself a Fair Isle in colours which I thought would remind me of Shetland, and I wrote about the colour choice I had tried to make at the time.

That was then, and this is now:

It’s coming along – I’ve reached the stage where I have to decrease for the armholes at the back (I’m knitting it in pieces rather than in the round; I like the stability of seams… sorry about that). The pattern is Marie Wallin’s Orkney, from Rowan 52; the charts are some of the most confusing I have ever come across and I’ve knitted a lot of Fair Isle, but then there are thirteen colours involved. Thirteen…

And, and, one section has three colours in a row. In traditional FI, that is frowned upon, but this isn’t a traditional Fair Isle. It is, however, not being knitted in the wool for which it was designed – naturally, why make life easy for yourself – but in Jamieson’s DK, from their fab shop (sigh), which has to be a contender for most tempting yarn shop in the known universe.

This is slightly thicker than the Rowan Felted Tweed used in the original. So not only have I had to allow for the difference in the size I’m knitting (gauge was carefully measured), it also means that a three-colour section is just too bulky. Plus – of course – this row will fall right over the boobs. Hm. So that’s been redrawn.

Still, I am loving the texture and colour of the wool:

and its natural stick-with-it-ness means I am getting away with a float across five stitches, as it will felt in enough. Excellent!

I’ve been diving into some of my photographs from Shetland, seeing if my colour choices have indeed worked, and I think they have. Sort of.

The bright green of the seaweed below (and to some extent the grass above, at Eshaness lighthouse) – Jamiesons colour ‘Leprechaun’ – hasn’t been used yet, but it will be. Just a flash.

The previous time I was in Shetland it was all about sunsets. On balance, I am happy I went with the more subdued colours from the latest trip. Eighteen months ago. Must be time for another expedition!

The Fair Isle, finalised.

(I originally entitled this post ‘the final Fair Isle’, and then I realised that made it sound as though I was never, ever going to knit another; who knows, that may well be the case, but let’s not make any rash assumptions.)

So, having been through all my Shetland shots and all the wool I bought in Jamieson’s wonderfully refurbished shop in Lerwick,

that’s this lot, I have made some decisions. At last… I know, I know, that doesn’t look much like wool but bear with me.

It’s been fiddly. For one thing, I  could have chose to approximate the colours in the original pattern (Orkney, by Rowan), but I didn’t because I didn’t particularly like them, and I wanted to echo Shetland colours anyway.

I sorted my colours into earthy, leafy, land-based tones:

and the sometimes astonishing colours of the coast:

and, finally, the monochromes:

And I have managed to use all the colours I bought (happily the pattern uses 13 different ones, though I was prepared to rework that), and I’m pleased with what I’ve got. And I could have chosen a more trad pattern, one which used the same colour repeat on arms and body. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to play with tradition instead.

So the first step was to work out from the original pattern charts which colours were placed together in Rowan’s colour way (no image here, but boring lists do not an interesting photo make). Then I began sketching to see how my colours worked with each other – and that’s the chart at the start of the post. Then I got the actual wool out to check that they worked in reality in much the same way as they had on paper, and they did.

My work on listing all the colours had thrown up one break with tradition that I wasn’t happy with, however. It’s an accepted convention that there are only two colours to a row in Fair Isle knitting, and I think that’s ‘accepted’ for a reason: more colours mean much more bulk. There was one band of pattern which used three, and which also carried the colours across a large number of stitches (another complication I felt I could live with out – yes, I’d be weaving them in, but that would just add even more bulk to something already bulkier than the rest). So I decided to find an alternative pattern.

The pencil sketch on the left-hand page is the original, the others are possibilities:

I went into my stitch library – various old books on Fair Isles – and found several compatible and comparable patterns which also ran across 9 rows and 16 stitches. The middle one on the right-hand page above was quite like the one I was replacing, and because it runs over the same number of rows and stitches, it will be quite straightforward to substitute. I won’t need to mess with the shaping provided I start it in the same position.

Then came the really fun bit – working out the colours for the new panel:

That’s them, done. Due to the rather funky variation in colour between sleeves and body I had to do this twice, but I am happy with what I’ve finally got. The sleeve pattern, in the original, is brighter and so will mine be; plus, I love the Jamieson’s colour ‘ruby’, and my new pattern will give it extra prominence on the body. And I won’t have that extra bulk just where I don’t need it – I forgot to add that this thicker panel would have come right across the boobage.

Now I can knit my tension square – and I’m going to do it using the new pattern. Just to see if I’ve got it right…

(You’re probably thinking that I’ve lost my mind, and wondering why I can’t just knit a pattern as given. I don’t know, but I’m not good at doing that; it’s part of the reason why I knit. And I know that this will be truly original – there’ll never be another. Possibly because no-one else would be so daft. Which reminds me, one of my fellow attendees at a Fibre and Fabric Fair this weekend just posted a comment – that adding ‘and shit’ to a phrase like ‘I do crochet’ makes it sound so much more, er, street. So I do Fair Isle and shit, right?)

Shetland highlights, 2 – the sea

Sorry about the delay. Root canal part 2 followed by hefty antibiotics and an asthma flare-up left me feeling a bit crappy. That’s what you get for travelling. Should have stayed at home. Hm. I don’t think so.

This is why: OK, the view from my house is pretty good and I can see the sea, but not like this, not this sea. The island is Mousa, famous for its Iron Age broch, which can just be seen at the extreme(ish) right. It’s that thing that looks like a cooling tower. The only intact broch, it’s also famous for the Manx Shearwaters who use it as a roost.

(I’m not going to drone on about brochs; the Wikipedia entry is quite good and I can – and do – go on and on and on about what their function might have been. I’ve been broch hunting since I was about 12, a pastime which led to several family rows, lots of falling in interesting bogs, and an early encounter with someone who much later became a very good friend.)

Ahem.

Back to inspiration, particularly colour inspiration. I knew I wanted to knit a Fair Isle, something which I haven’t done for ages and ages and ages. But I’ve done lots of traditional ones and, quite frankly, I think I’m trad-Fair-Isled out, even still. So I wanted to do something a bit different. I decided to let the landscape work on me. And after about a day in Shetland, I began to feel the need to knit something in blues: Can’t think why, really. That, by the way, is Dore Holm. Well, the island with the arch is; the foreground is part of Eshaness. That’s as far north as we got on this trip; Yell and Unst will have to wait for next time. But we did do a fair bit of exploring.

And as I did more and more, I became more and more convinced that a fundamentally blue Fair Isle would just have to be knitted. Though perhaps green would have to put in an appearance (the lump is Dore Holm again, from a bit further round at Stenness).

But we had stopped for cake at the wonderful Braewick Cafe, and when I looked at my shots later I began to think about adding silvery greys… So beautiful, and the pointy things at the right are the Drongs. Oh yes they are. They are spectacular granite stacks – the ‘main Drong’ is 60m high – and they have been climbed. This just confirms my opinion, formed with the help of not a few acquaintances, that almost all climbers are mad (says the woman living in Snowdonia). Heavy weather can cause problems (really?) and they’re surrounded by submerged rocks. Obviously you need to hire a boat as – and I’m quoting here – ‘there’s nothing to tie your kayak to’. Plus the rock is described as ‘quite friable’. They are rated as severe to hard/very severe. Oh, come now, surely not.

Maybe I need a bit more colour, because now I’m feeling slightly ill at the thought of climbing the Drongs. I just know it wouldn’t be so much climbing as hanging off with one fingernail while trying to take scary pictures. Eek. Ok, colour. Colour and knitting possibilities. Maybe I need some licheny yellows in my Fair Isle? And maybe a hint of lobster pot.

Fairly recently somebody said to me that she couldn’t see the point in travelling. I didn’t quite know how to respond, and I’m afraid I just goggled at her instead of leaping to a passionate defence of broadening your whole outlook on the world and counterattacking narrowness and provinciality. I suppose that’s what happens if you never leave your village and have a lot of first-cousin marriage over many generations (six fingers are also a possibility). Maybe my family – seafarers for generations – are unusual. Doubt it. Really, really doubt it. People have always got up and moved about, going right back to the very few (it could have been as few as seven individuals, some researchers have speculated) who left Africa in the deepest prehistory, and to whom we owe our existence. We’re just fidgety. You’ve got to see what’s over the horizon… er, unless it’s the Drongs and a kayaking lunatic hung about with ropes. If it is, run away. There’s another horizon in the opposite direction, that’s what I say….