Shetland Diary - Thursday

On Thursday, we had three cars heading for Unst Heritag Centre, to see their collection of old lace items, and to see the norhern parts of Mainland Shetland, and the two northernmost islands, Yell and Unst. While waiting for everybody to arrive, we had al look at some of the fleece at Jamieson and Smith.

We arrived early for the ferry to Yell. Took some photos and luckily we had brought our knitting, it was quite windy, so we stayed in the car knitting.

Two of the cars just got on the next ferry, but not the last one.. So here is a photo from the ferry quay in Unst, where we waited for the last car. 

And so we arrived at Unst Heritage Centre. Here is a photo of the traditional cockleshell lace pattern, in a scarf. Here are some more photos of cockleshell lace.

I now realize, I did not take many photos. You can see more photos on  FrisianFrillies' blog, and on MoniqueB's blog. Monique is an amazing lace knitter!

On the way back, we stopped to see this copy of a viking ship, and a viking house. Unst has "the highest density of rural Viking sites anywhere, including Scandinavia" according to Shetland Amenity Trust.

We also stopped at Bayanne House in Sellafirth, a small gallery with textile art, kntting, embroidery, all with motifs from Shetland, and frames made from material found at the beach. The top one is my favourite.

We had a lot of fun at the Littlehamar bus stop, obviously decorated for the London Olympics 2012!

With two ferries on the way back too, obviously, I was quite tired when we got back to Lerwick. My friend was waiting for me in town, she had joined a knitting class that day. The beer and the sheep we had for dinner, tasted deliciously. 

So that was the end of our Shetland adventure, for this time. We both want to go back another time. Maybe visit in summer to see more of the islands and the birds. And definitely another wool week some time.

Thanks for following my trip and for the comments you've made. Hope you have enjoyed it. I definitely have!

En rêvant de Provence

Just released this Provence inspired pattern, En rêvant de Provence.

These fingerless mitts are worked

 in the beautiful, muted colours of J&S 2 ply jumper weight.

The pattern also includes instructions for mittens.

Both mittens and fingerless mitts feature a latvian braid on the cuff edge, the fingerless mitts also end with such edgings on hand and thumb.

The charts can be mixed and matched as you wish. There are four flower charts, sunflower, poppies, lavender and almond flower. Use charts and colours according to your taste and stash. 

 Pattern is available in Norwegian and English, for 5.00 $.

An e-book, that also includes pattern for 

a beret and a beanie, is avalable for 7.50 $.

Shetland Diary - Wednesday

Thanks to all of you who have read and commented on my Shetland posts, I'm glad you enjoy reading about my trip. 

On Wednesday we had a lace class with Gudrun Johnston that started at 10 o'clock. So we decided to go for a walk after breakfast, to have look at Lerwick, and get some photos. Lerwick is the capital of the Shetland Islands, and has appr 7500 inhabitants, according to Wikipedia. The name comes from the Norwegian "Leirvik", meaning bay of clay.

I did not know there were some many old stone buildings in Lerwick (to be honest, I knew very little about the town before arriving.) It was fun to see all the Norwegian street names in the town. Read more abou Scandinavian heritage here.

The obviously had to defend themselves. 

Lerwick Harbour

Nice decoration on the rooftop. Shetland lace?

A pretty garden in the middle of town.

The Shetland lace class took place at Jamieson & Smith. We were appr. 15 persons, and the teacher Gudrun Johnston. We started out by making a small garter stitch triangle, with yarn overs at the beginning of each row, to create stitches to be picked up later. And then started the lace part. What is special about Shetland lace knitting, is that there usually is pattern on every row. With other types of lace, you often have knit or purl every other row, where you can relax. Not so with Shetland lace. There are knit togethers and yarn overs on every row, which also makes it hard to figure out where you are if you make a mistake. And with the small sample we were making, before you began to remember the pattern, you had finished the row, and there was a different one to be started. 

We try to smile bravely in spite of the exhausting brain work.

During the lunch break, we headed for the museum shop.

There was such a beautiful light that day. 

This was just outside the museum.

A decorative weaving looking stitch pattern we saw at J&S

Outside Lerwick Town Hall

TO THE TOWN OF LERWICK
IN APPRECIATION OF HOSPITALITY RENDERED

VETERANS OF THE 30TH AND 54TH MTB FLOTILLAS
ROYAL NORWEGIAN NAVY
BASED IN LERWICK 1942 - 1945

You can read more about this here, and here, and in Nowegian here.

Shetland Diary - Tuesday

On Tuesday we hired a car and went for a ride. As mentioned, lots of events were not situated in Lerwick, as we originally thought (too lttle reasearch befor leaving..) Anyway, we had a car, and I was in the passernger seat knitting, and watching out in case the driver forgot what side of the road to drive. But as someone pointed out, many roads are so narrow, it doesn't really matter...



We saw many sheep. These sheep with their black heads, is my idea of a British sheep. Most Norwegian sheep have the same colour all over. (I'm not a sheep expert, as you might have guessed already..)

While driving, we wondered about the warnings about plants crossing the road ("Heavy plant crossing"), imagining scary, carnicorous plants crossing the road. (We later asked someone who could explain the disambiguation - plants being agricultural machinery that has to cross the road from time to time).

I love the colours and the patterns on this sweater, but the place we saw it is not worth mentioning here.

In Virkie we visited Shetland Colletcion Open Studio. There was fair isle and lace, I wrote about it here, too.

There were several drawers full of fair isle swatches!

We had a demonstration on how to knit with a belt, but she was not able to convert us to this way of knitting in the round with three long double pointed needles. But it was interesting to see.

















We also made a small stop at Nielanell Gallery. On the way back north we stopped at the beach by St. Ninians Isle

We tried to get a photo of my, my sheep heid and some sheep, but some of the models were not very cooperative.

We stopped for lunch in Scalloway. We just took this quick photo of the castle, it was starting to rain a little, and we were hungry. Next time I'd like to see more of Scalloway. The lunch was delicious, and the hotel owner (?) was vere enthusiasthic (not about us staying at the Shetland hotel in Lerwick, but about us visiting Shetland in general, and the Scalloway hotel specifically). He showed us the dining hall and some of the rooms, where all the curtains and the chairs are made from Shetland Wool Fabric.

Next stop was Weisdale, the Bonhoga Gallery at the old Weisdale mill. There was a nice little gift shop, an exhibition we really enjoyed, Text Isles – Swap Box at Bonhoga Gallery, and a cafe in the basement, with a view to the small river (we wondered how this river could have run a mill, but we're obviously no mill experts). The event calendar had called this a place to "Knit and Relax", which we of course did, having coffee and cake. 

We could not relax too long, though, since we wanted to get back to the Ravelry meet up at Jamieson & Smith at 6 o'clock. You can see photos at the J&S blog, I just noticed there is a photo of me and my friend there, talking to a fellow raveler, Amanda.

It was a nice evening. Cathy informed us about her StitchMastery chart editing software. I volunteered to be a betatester for her new colourwork version. Which reminds me, I had promised to send her an e-mail. So that was Tuesday, four weeks ago, during the Wool Week in Shetland.

ETA - here's another post from Tuesday, by frisianfrillies, with photos from the meet up, you can see both me, my friend, Cathy and Liz.

October Potholder from Solbjørg

Here's the October potholder I received from Solbjørg.

A lovely and colourful potholder made over the theme summer memories. 

You can see all the Swap potholders here.

Winter was here on a short visit

... but today it's raining

From left to right:
Sheep heid by Kate Davies
Kanagawa mittens by Kirsten Kapur
Sprig mittens by Elli Stubenrauch
Dreaming of Provence beanie by me