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.