My Friday morning view is no longer a sunrise cracking open the horizon line between where the sea meets the sky, it isn’t even a window with a view but the sight of two faithful, calm cats that have been two years and 12 different places of living, sleeping calmly, nose tucked into tail or paws in pockets. This may seem small and normal but for the three of us, it marks that we have come home. Even if my book is accidently placed upon Alfie, he does not flinch except to wrap his arm over his face, he is calm. All three of us have been like sprung cats for so long that I see their relaxed bodies and know that we have found a safe place and a place of our own to come and go as we please. They have their little door built into my door and we are settling into our own patterns. I have no idea where they go when they leave the flat, but they always return and they return to me.
What an honour.
This home is far from perfect – not in structure nor function, form or where I thought I would ever be but it is a place to build upon, a platform from which to go and return to, it will be a creative space when everything that is broken will be mended. It’s just a ground floor flat, in a block of three built in the 80’s with bad plumbing that will never be entirely fixed and a view of a waving silver birch and a brick wall over the road. The outside will always be communal and there is noise and quiet. After Shetland, this may appear a shocking decision but it was a very considered decision that was in my price range in these crippling house prices. I chose it for its location and that I know it because it is in the same set of flats that I lived in and sold to move to Shetland.
Irony or fate to return to the place of leaving? I reread The Alchemist, to try to understand this more. That the real treasure is under our feet.
I am back on the doorstep of The Peak District whilst having access to city stuff. Yesterday, the brokenness of all of this became overwhelming but today is a new day.
I look at my faithful cats to take a leaf out of their books. Find comfort, lie down, rest, sleep. I have forgotten how to rest, if ever I did in the first instance.
My Friday morning view is of simple things that mark a journey of my life
Freshly painted walls
A natural, thick, heavy, old French linen bed sheet on a Victorian iron bed.
A memory filled, long loved, favourite silk ruffled dress that has been repaired hanging on the wall.
Original B/W photographs of Sheffield’s Park Hill flats taken in the 60’s, made for an exhibition in the 80’s by Roger Mayne
Ink drawings bought in the old lanes of Shanghai when I lived in China.
2 calm, sleeping cats
A glass bottle jar from Shetland waiting to be a garden
A lovingly made crochet blanket with over 1,000 tiny squares.
The books I am reading litter the bed.
Sea urchin shells from Shetland, all in a row
A beautiful painting of my knitting sent to me by French artist Françoise Delot-Rolando when I was low.
An etching copy of Hokusai’s The Great Wave bought from the studio at Monet’s Garden in Giverny over 20 years ago.
A dried flower ring of roses and peonies that I made in an attic room in Sheffield this summer.
I’m coming to terms with things. Challenges and changes. My view is a room that is finally a home, broken or not.
Two years ago, I was chasing a dream. I made that dream a reality and will now begin to write its story. Here is an overview of what happened to make the dream happen, seemingly so long ago. It feels as if a life time has passed but I have a story to tell and here is the beginning.
At the beginning of March 2020, I began to receive multiple messages from friends on different platforms with a link to a tiny old house which faced the sea and was for sale in Levenwick in Shetland.
The house was called Smola.
At that time, I should have been in Lerwick anyway but I wasn’t because the hostel had finally understood the magnitude of Corona Virus and realised that having 12 people sleeping in each dorm was not the best idea in a pandemic. They finally closed on 16th March, informing me with a telephone call, I was already booked on to the train and ferry on the 17th March and was due for an interview on 19th at the Shetland College. All this changed and cancellation happened overnight because of the Virus which we are all now well familiar with but then had no idea of. I’d called both the hostel and the college repeatedly the week before to check they were still open – travelling 850 miles was a risk for me during COVID too but the hostel had said they were still open and the college receptionist said that they were waiting for hand sanitiser to arrive but the college was open. Waves of knowledge of a pandemic take longer to reach an island 60 degrees north.
I was temping part time in the Sheffield Children’s hospital as medical secretary in Neurology and knew the panic of the virus in Yorkshire. So, on the 18th March, 2020, I was still in Sheffield and what appeared to be the house of my dreams was in Shetland – where I was supposed to be but wasn’t.
I’d been half-heartedly looking for a little house in Shetland for some time purely because I thought the idea seemed a good one as I had been going back and forth for the last 5 years. I’d looked at a small house myself, in the old lanes in Lerwick, in November 2019 but it seemed dark and hemmed in and the thought of not being able to have chickens made me think it wasn’t the place for me. I had a vague idea to have a B&B with a chicken or two and sunshine and this didn’t fit the vague idea. Then, in the new year, a Shetland friend went to look at another house for me that was for sale – he reported back that it was damp and wrong. My budget was low and was reflected in what I could afford. Then in March, a sunshine-flooded image of an old house for sale named Smola, didn’t just speak to me, it shouted my name which appeared to be written all over it. I called the agent who had an open viewing day, on Saturday 21st March, the last of any physical viewings of properties before lock down.
As I couldn’t attend the viewings of the tiny house in Levenwick, I was sent the house report and two small videos the week following the open day – one video of inside the property and one of the outside of the house, the back yard and the byre – which is below.
Outside view of Smola
Although the tiny house in Levenwick was basic, it was perfectly formed and without question, it seemed ideal for me and the dream I thought I had of living in Shetland began to firmly take hold of me. No one was allowed to go to see it for me on the island, due to COVID restrictions. Everywhere had finally closed down, as in England. I pondered, repeatedly looked at the videos sent by the agent which, internally, were mostly of the floors, out of the windows and of himself caught in the mirrors but I did nothing else. Then, on the Monday 23rd March, the agent called to say that one of the Saturday viewers had put an offer in on the tiny house and I lost hope and duly whined about it on Facebook. It appeared to me that this was not just a house, it had become a dream filled with ideas of sharing it, offering artist exchanges to exchange and share skills with each other artists and the wider community, artist retreats, workshops, air B&B to friends and people who have connected with me on Instagram, but most importantly, it would be a home where my (art) work / and life would become without borders – indistinguishable. This dream like state of rose-tinted glasses took over every thought.
I continued to work at the NHS typing consultant letters about very ill children while the heat wave and the pandemic raged on in Yorkshire and I dreamed of a 60 degrees north life where, in the Shetland March, I knew that it was sleeting.
I was screaming inside, it should have been me buying that house because during the preceding seven days, I had been booked to be in Shetland and could have been there, seen it, felt it, put the offer in but instead, I was in my tiny flat in Sheffield forced in to city lockdown, whilst still working, feeling helpless. Then a friend of mine messaged and said, just put an offer in. It was the most practical and real advice I had been given, so I spoke to people I knew in Shetland, who in turn, put me in touch with Chris, who had rented the little house for 3 years. He told me about the house. It wasn’t damp (except the porch), the bedroom was warm because it was over the fire, you could park your car in the grass by the house (what car) the man who owned it was a builder and could help with any issues, he’d really liked living there and the neighbours were lovely. I mean, what more did I need to know? My glasses became rosier as the house became more verbally known to me as some questions were answered.
Someone else messaged to say the roof was sound but it had been derelict in the 90’s and had had a lot of grants and an architect had altered it. In any case, I had already fallen in love with the village in August 2019, when I came across it on the bus route when I was flying to Norway and spent one glistering hour on the beach.
That weekend, I thought about nothing other than the tiny Shetland house and artist exchanges and workshops on knitting and design whilst all the time mentally composing a letter, in parts, to the owners, in order to compete with the unknown offer already on the table. Without seeing, smelling or touching the house, the letter flowed. I was honest, direct, clear and shot from the hip on the financial offer, which was 10% over the asking price.
On Monday 30th March, I emailed my letter to the agents with my ideas of what I wanted to do with the house and ended with the financial offer (which was 10% above asking price), then promptly let it go. I went to work in the searing heat of March and April at the Children’s hospital and through the real harsh uncertain beginnings of the Virus. I got on with my week. The pandemic gathered steam and I started knitting.
On Thursday, 2nd April, I was sitting on my procrastination my bench in scorching heat, outside the flat after work. It was at 5:20pm – a call came from the Shetland estate agent. I assumed it would be a rejection call. But it wasn’t. The sellers had accepted my offer on the proviso of a non-refundable deposit to take it off the market and that they would wait for me to sell my Sheffield flat (which wasn’t on the market and we were in complete lockdown other than anything essential) and finalise Scottish missives within 6 months.
Under offer – my offer and a hidden non refundable deposit
Between 2nd April until 7th May, two Shetland solicitors were involved in writing the agreement for this non-refundable deposit, which I signed, in a wood in Sheffield on 8th May, honoured by my friend Deborah witnessing and co-signing the document. So, just over 8 weeks after seeing an image, both moving and still of a little house in Levenwick, I signed a document to say that I would pay the non-refundable deposit, deductible from the cost of the house, if I finalised the Scottish missives and all the papers to purchase within 3 months – an IMPOSSIBLE task. If, after the initial 3 months, I hadn’t made the sale agreement, I would be offered a further 3 months agreement with the same terms but the first non-refundable deposit wasn’t to be carried over – that became lost and I was to pay a second deposit.
It just seemed the right thing to do and somehow, I naively felt that although my flat in Sheffield wasn’t on the market and everything was shut down, and I hadn’t even seen the house in Shetland – that somehow, it would all work out.
I was asked by a friend, – ‘what did I get for my non-refundable deposit?’ and I said TIME but my wise friend Deb added, security. No one else could buy the house either but maybe no one else wanted it and I had paid way over the odds – it was a risk I took because something is worth its value in many different ways.
Anyway, from 14th May 2020, I had 6 months to turn everything around, still in lock down, during a pandemic and a recession to sell my flat and to purchase a house I had then begun to label – my dream.
My dream was to truly live a life fully, without borders between creative thought process and daily life, with my 2 cats, to go swimming with the Selkie swimming group in the sea, to write a book of knitting patterns and the homes the knitters lived in, to make site-specific art, to offer air b&b to friends and artist whom I have come to know over the years through my artistic practice – was my rose-tinted dream – just words and thoughts…
But, in truth, I achieved the dream and moved into Smola on 10th September 2020 – I lasted just over one year – the house never dropping from being the love of my life and the most beautiful house I have ever owned – a house that drew me to accept a challenge to change every part of my existence to make happen.
I still love that house, I still love how that house made me feel because so many stories unfolded. It was a place of creativity, a place of sunrises so magnificent that the world stopped to watch, a place of history and tangible beauty. But, it was also a lonely house.
Two years exactly to the date of moving into Smola in Levenwick in September 2020, I will be returning to Shetland to stay with my friend Mati on Fair Isle. I need to think and go over what has happened in the last two years, to understand what I achieved in Shetland and to be proud of that. to share it, to shout about it, to not hide it.
I aim to write a book on my year in Shetland and going back to the location will help re set my Shetland barometer.
Whilst on Fair Isle, I will be carrying out my online Colour blending workshops for Fair Isle Knitters. The workshops and I, have been successful in teaching over 200 participants how to develop an eye for colour blending in Fair Isle knitting projects and to get it right so that they can choose their own colours successfully for their own projects. If you would like to join me on any of the workshop dates in Fair Isle, please take a look at this page and get in touch via the form, or message me directly.
In November 2020, whilst I was living in Shetland, I made a new hat design called Good Wishes for the New Year – the story of its making is here
If you have been following my story, you will know that the hat pattern was entirely inspired by a beautiful woman called Susan Halcrow, who lived in the same croft house that I had bought in Shetland, from 1876 to 1960. This was the beginning of a love story, not only with the house but with finding Susan then knitting designs inspired by her life that I uncovered at the Shetland Museum Archives. I had the honour of connecting to her life, by living in the same house – her house, as she had so many years before. I treasured the memory of this woman through the return of her artifacts to the house (jugs, bowls, plates and glasses) and by being handed photographs of her. The first design that was inspired by Susan was Good Wishes for the new year. It is a hat designed and named after a note she wrote on the bottom of her Christmas cards one year. Below is the note on the card – just look at her serene beauty.
I sat in that croft house and opened that same door as she would have done, and looked out of the same window as she did and I connected to what I knew would be the colours around her when she lived in the house. I went on to knit 3 more designs based around Susan and my life in the house that she had also lived in – Dear Susan has an 11 page story along with the design and that is here. It is a story I am particularly proud of.
I have just designed a little pair of mitts that will match the Good Wishes for the New Year hat and the Good Wishes beret and, although this is a very small pattern, of no great consequence, it has suited me to make them whilst I have been searching for a home back to Sheffield, after returning from living in Shetland.
After 8 full months of living in 8 differnt places and the cats in 6 places, I have finally secured a place to call home. It is broken and a little ugly. nothing is nice except the area, the light that streams in and the neighbours, whom I do know because ironically, the flat is in the same set of flats where I sold one to go live in Shetland in 2020, yes really, but the one I sold was lovely, wheras this is a shell and I will be starting again, again.
But, I am happy to be back in the city, with a box flat and little else. It is where I belong, where I can be me – I don’t really belong anywhere and have realised that I have been searching for a long time – but living in Shetland was too isolating and lonely for me as well as other things that I found difficult – the constant wind, for one. I will explain this when I write the book because, In September, I hope to return to Shetland to write about my year in Smola, Levenwick. I will stay with my good friend Mati Ventrillon on Fair Isle and I will catch up with good friends in Shetland but I will not go to see my beautiful house. It will feel a little painful to have let it go and no one could love it as much as I did. And maybe Susan did.
but I have no regrets because – what a year I had and I went for my dream – both feet and I did it – I achieved what I wanted to do though I didn’t think I would be coming back.
A friend of mine came down south a couple of weeks ago. When she was sailing into Lerwick from Aberdeen to go home, she said that she looked over at Levenwick and though of my Shetland Self. I thought that was rather beautiful and I miss her. I miss the sun rises and sun sets, the beaches and the whales and my friday fun days with Emma and swimming in the sea with Lyn and I have decided to write about it now that there has been distance between leaving and returning.
So, I will be in Shetland in September and if you would like to support that travel, then, you could buy a knitting pattern that I have designed. They are here. the small income from each pattern sold, will go towards my travel to Fair Isle.
when I started unpacking the boxes from Shetland, I found precious sea urchin shells and heart shaped stones and glass and tiny perfect shells. Treasure.
and I would appreciate any pattern purchase to help me with my travel costs for the long trip north.
there is a photo tutorial in the pattern on how to knit your ‘after thought thumb’.
and if you would like me to report on anything from Fair Isle let me know. Mati and I might do some live instagram sessions. I will also be doing a couple of online colour blending workshops whilst there so let me know if you are interested by signing up here
Releasing this little mitts pattern in a heatwave seems silly but I wanted to share it with you. It is a bargain price of £3 – the cost of a cup of coffee in a local cafe but you will have this for ever.
Stanage Edge, Peak District, and 5 miles from my flat.
tracey doxey 