It is a piece about the space between me and my sister, born 11 months apart.
It has been one year in the making.
It is love.
Our mother dressed my sister and I in identical clothes for about 12 years until we found the voices to be different. We were born in 1963 and 1964. You did what you were told. And, we were told. Clothes say so much about the wearer, about the social history, about what people what to portray, about many things.
My nana knitted us identical cardigans – probably for the same amount of years. But my sister and I were very different people. And we are very different people today. I am not sure if differences in kids was either an accepted or a noticed thing in the 60’s. It certainly wasn’t in our house.
I will knit another piece, in the colours that my sister likes – Black, Grey, Navy, Dark Red and Mustard and place it alongside this piece, made up of over 90 colours and I will hang it beside this piece. I am interested in the Japanese concept of Ma 間 the spaces and the silences in between all things. when the 2 pieces are placed alongside each other, they will show the spaces between us.
For now, this peice will be entered into the Harley Foundation open, because I am regional, because it is art, because, it is love.
On a practical level, I will be starting a knitalong for the Fair Isle worksheet that accompanies this knitted pullover and will email everyone who has bought this pattern to ask if they/you would like to join a free 1 hours zoom session on the worksheet and how I made the pullover with a Q&A, so that they / you can join in the knitalong and use the worksheet to your advantage – to make what you want – hat, scarf, vest, pullover.
If you would like to join me, I will be starting in about a month.
I have knitted something that is recognised as a jumper but it isn’t only that. The knitted piece now sits well within the intersection between craft / skill / materiality / woo/ textiles/ conceptual art / family / heritage and cross cultural discussion. It is nearly finished and it has a name. It is named, ‘I cannot reach you.’
The garment, because it can be worn, has one slightly longer Fair Isle sleeve than necessary, reaching out, ending into a knitted cuff with a thumb. The other sleeve, knitted in Amber coloured yarn in Aran patterns, crosses and plaits the stitches. This style of knit for this sleeve was chosen because of how I sometimes plait my hair. So, the indication is now that it is not clothes but craft or art. Most people who have commented on the Aran sleeve don’t like it – they cannot work with the idea that the sleeve is different to the Fair Isle patterning of the body and other sleeve. Me, I like it.
The Pattern of Life isn’t all perfectly matching or symmetrical or neat or predictable. So, changing the length of a sleeve, adding another style of knit to the other sleeve, working with patterns and motifs for about one thousand hours, has enabled me to Knit an evolving story. First, it was a wearable vest, then I ripped the arm ribs back to start sleeves. I don’t mind if I never wear this garment at all, and yet it is wearable, it is also showable as art, it is passable to be open to a discussion about clothes, knitting, women’s work, materiality – why we knit, why we make clothes, what becomes art, a concept, a thought and why we bother at all.
In my 60th year, I am figuring out what is the stage of my creative journey, today. I have a valuable story / experience to share – having an MA in knitting when I was 58, a Fine Art Degree at the age of 35, I’ve travelled across some of the largest countries in the world by train, to get to a tiny place in China. I’ve sailed across land and sea to live in Shetland. I knit but I am not a knitter. I can crochet and sew too. I’ve taught English, I’m a coach for apprentices at Uni, I have been a PA, a Contemporary Dance tour manager, and events manager, a gallery building manager – but none of this really matters and yet it all matters greatly because it has brought me to this point in my life – to figure out exactly what is the value of my creative practice and where do I want to take it?
I am not an emerging artist, I am firmly placed in an underrepresented demographic of an older Women still making conceptual art under the guise of a knitted project.
What I would like to do is engage with other women to knit this piece, as they feel fits them. I want everyone to use their own colours choices, yarn decisions, size of the project so that we may talk about the work of women.
I am really proud of being able to knit this ‘thing’ because, let’s be honest, I have been in a privileged position to do so but I haven’t always been so. I could not have knitted it when I returned to the city from living in Shetland, without home or job, crying on the kerb stones. My creative practice was far from my priority then – I needed stability – take Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, for example. When I returned from Shetland, didn’t even have the physiological needs – without home or sleep. Since that time, I have built myself back up and for now, I am around the esteem level with a subliminal eye on Self actualisation. I’ve also been here before and know that it is not a sure thing nor is it a prolonged state and I know where it goes after – that is down.
I think, what I am writing is that my jumper is not a jumper – it is an art piece about my feelings about my beautiful Sister and I cannot always reach her – which is why I have called it ‘I cannot reach you’ And, weirdly, to this end, I am thinking of knitting a 2nd jumper, in exactly the same way as the first but in different colours because when we were children, our mother dressed us in identical clothes for about 12 years ,when we were, and still are, like chalk and cheese.
For all the lovely people who have bought my Fair Isle pullover worksheet, would you like to join me in some kind of knit along. I will not be teaching you how to do your project but I would love to see your projects and hear what you are making. I think it will be wonderful to share what we are doing. I will be slow, I am not in a rush. I have many other things on the go including finishing this piece, I also have work and workshops and a crochet piece for my daughter and somewhere along the line, I would like to live a little – go see places
I am also thinking of ways to display this piece and have been in contact with The Head of Fine Art at SHU to see if we could show the piece and she had better ideas – so there are maybe a few things being mulled over. I want to show the piece because I would like to be back in the Fine Art arena because I want to go to Japan to do an artist residency and showing work is part of that process.
Have any of you read this far 😊 ?
Would any of you like to join me in a knit along so that you can knit your own pullover or use the charts to knit something for yourselves? leave a comment or join the group.
Do you have any thoughts on this whole thing? Positive or negative.
I am sitting in the calm, welcome sunshine resting on the small patch of grass outside my flat in Sheffield, which I have surrounded with strong sunflower plants that I grew from seeds, a sea of forget me nots, beautiful jasmines in early bud, potatoes growing in bags, peonies in bud and the hydrangea taking over. I am at my laptop setting up my June post for ‘My Shetland life’, on Patreon – the month of June in Shetland.
I remember when I first moved to that beautiful croft house in Shetland and the wonders of existence that I felt every day, until I had to leave 14 months later. I wrote a book in monthly chapters of my life that year on the island, I also wrote to the woman who had lived in the house from 1976 to 1960.
If you have ever wanted to live on an island, or move to a remote place, either as a couple or a single woman – then, you may be interested in the story I have to tell. I have released each month as a chapter, that aligns with the month that we are currently in so that it will give insight into where you live and what Shetland is like. I release the chapters on the 1st of each month. I am sitting in the city calmness, rereading my June chapter before I set it up ready for release and I wanted to share an extract with you.
Extract from May
It is the first day of the fifth month. I’m excited to take a seat on the small seven-seater plane to Fair Isle. The trip is easier for me than someone not living on the island but even so, it’s not a straightforward flight, which makes it all the more unique. I’m used to the flight path from one island to another, but the close proximity of the tiny plane flying low above the land and sea coupled with the craziness of flying in something so small never ceases to amaze me. In the small building at Tingwall airstrip, I watch the flight safety video on a small tv balanced on a table, take a seat amid the two rows of six orange plastic chairs to wait. One of the guys who loads the plane plays his guitar in a room behind me – I hand my bags to the official man, whom I know by name, at the weighing scales to measure the weight of baggage going south (never on the return flight though), and smile.
Outside, where the plane rests on the tarmac, I wait to be seated inside, related to body weight and distribution of balance. We don’t want all of the bodies on one side, tipping the plane, do we. Bags are stowed in the back of the tapering metal tail, behind a net. I’m seated above the wheel and love it. My view down is obstructed by the tiny comical looking triangular metal blue leg with two fat small rubber wheels. It’s like the spindly leg of a blue metal bird.
Extract from June
At 1am, the horizon line between sea and sky is still visible. In the gloaming, the sky to the North is a pink stripe of clouds where the sunlight lingers between setting and rising, neither dusk nor twilight. Suspended half-light where everything is still visible. A magical dreamlike world twists in the atmosphere. The energy of the island atmosphere charges our weak bodies. The magnetism in the environment of this northerly world is palpable. It makes me spin. It draws me outside like a moth drawn to the light bulb.
Together, the two merging lights and the calmness of the evenings full of bird calls are recognisable as only Shetland.
Time is like a breath. It feels as if our island world held its breath so long during Winter and spring, that now, there is an opportunity for a gentle exhale.
On the 12th, I do the rarest investment of time and money, I leave the island for Edinburgh for four days, and I take a small plane from Sumburgh. On the tram into the city, I see healthy green trees for the first time in 10 months. Before my friend arrives, I drop in at the City Arts Centre and find the oil painting, La Musica Veneziana, by Charles Hodge Mackie. So beautiful is a dome of light in this painting that I sit opposite it for some time, thinking of Chinese style lanterns dancing in the breeze above the gondola at night. The grand buildings framing half of the painting draw the eye to a life I have never known. Gondolas float on the water at the forefront. But it is the dome of light that holds my attention. It may be the lights of a building, I couldn’t say and I didn’t need to know. it’s such a captivating work that it needs time. It was painted in 1909 and I thought of Susan, living in Shetland in 1909 at the age of 33 and that if I could pick any single work of art from here to show her, it would be this painting. So that she could see something of another floating sea world so different to that of her own.
What light we lose in the winter, we gain in the summer. The Simmer Dim rolls in upon us bringing days in waves and folds of calm, still light so long and rich that they stretch my mind. The bank sides on the drive home from Lerwick, are covered in long swathes and carpets of dancing white dog daisies. I’m shopping at Tesco at 10pm thinking it is day time and on the way home, at St Ninian’s at 11pm, the gloaming light astonishes me – I am home at 11:20pm feeling restless, so, I nip to Levenwick beach at midnight There are two magical lights in the calendar of the Shetland year. One, is the cracking open of the world between sea and sky in the deep winter where the sun light spears then leaks along the horizon just before the sun rise and now, this crazy time of Simmerdim, where I am out at 1:30am looking at the sky to the North where a pink line of clouds lie suspended where the sun light lingers in a place that I don’t know about. Suspended light…
I am wondering if I actually do tick things off a subliminal list – the sun sets after midnight, ducks flying overhead quacking, a beautiful boat bobbing in the bay. I don’t feel that this is ticking things off, this is just watching, listening, waiting, experiencing. My face glows in the setting sun light while I knit on the beach. My legs shiver with cold. I feel it all. Nothing is missed. I knit the sea, air, and light into this jumper of mine and I am grateful to take the risk to live here. If I squint at the setting sun, it becomes a pointed star shooting deepest red, orange rays across the sea. The red fire ball sinks into the sea but there is no boiling water as if a hot iron dipping at the iron smiths. Suddenly a few folks arrive at the beach to witness the spectacle I wait for the green flash but there is none, the sun sank into the sea at exactly 10:30pm having bored its light into my retinas.
I am hoping to go to Japan on an Artist residency and have created a Fair Isle vest worksheet in order for any pattern sales form this £5.75 pattern can go towards my savings for travel expenses (I may only get as far as Manchester 🙂 ) but it is an earnest start.
So, I have been busy today – 2 posts in one day – never before has this happened.
Every motif that I have knitted and every colour that I have used in my original vest turned pullover and every chart that I used when I added the Fair Isle sleeve is included in this Worksheet.
I first started this knitted piece whilst on holiday in Italy, last June. At that time, I had no plan or idea what it would look like or what it would become because I was ‘just knitting in the round’ starting with lilac and blue and green. I was using the motifs that I had developed in my Stash Buster neck warmer pattern, to play with design, colour and texture to make a Fair Isle Vest using only the OXO patterns from Fair Isle with a bright twist on colour.
Knitting, I have realised, is a compulsion for me. Sometimes, I try to leave it, to do other interesting things but it is not long before I am drawn back to it. Knitting is something I have to do every day – for relaxation, design, creative development or learning, for experimenting with colour but I do not knit with the aim to monetise my designs or findings. Maybe the work develops into a pattern but it is not my first aim to design patterns – knitting is my lifestyle. If I aimed to make money from the beginning – two things would happen – pure playful creativity would go out of the window and two, patterns do not earn me an income. A £4 pattern is cut to about £2.90 after Ravelry and Paypal have taken their cuts. Considering the hundreds of hours that goes into a pattern, making £2.90 isn’t really the driving reason to make it. If I only make patterns with the end user in mind, then a creative design concept just becomes a product. It has taken years to understand how I work – A Fine Art Degree, A Masters in Knitting, travelling to and from Shetland for years, living in a croft house by the sea in Levenwick, but mostly, it is my love of colour that has developed my practice and out of this was born my online colour blending workshops so that I can teach other people how to develop their own skills in how to blend colours within their Fair Isle and stranded knitting projects. If I can make a pattern, or share a story or idea, I do – so that others can also learn from the colours.
My reason for finally producing a Fair Isle Vest Worksheet , is because I have been asked so many times for a pattern and because I have decided that the earnings from this chart will go towards my savings for an Artist textile residency that I hope to do in Japan.
I have some faithful social media followers that have been with me for years – all through my Shetland move and back to the city, all through the workshops and every pattern – we have become friends and I respect them greatly. Janet, Lyn, Cheryl, Yve, Shona, Berti, to name a few.
So, what have I produced here, what am I putting out into the world?
So many people have asked me for my Fair Isle Vest pattern – I have pointed them in the direction of the Stash Buster Neck warmer where there are many motifs so that they can create a jumper, like I have but they don’t want that – they want a vest pattern. But I cannot produce a vest or pullover pattern in every size that would make everyone happy. To alter the stich count and where the motifs lie for everyone would take months. My life doesn’t have that time and I am not a pattern editor – I have done it previously with the help of a friend from America where we spent months number crunching the Dear Susan pattern to deliver it for multiple sizes. It is not an easy job and takes forever to check everything. I am but one individual person – spending 3 full months designing a full pattern, at this time of my life is not what I can do.
So, I have made a series of 2 fabulous, full colour A4 charts (body chart and sleeve chart) with all the colours listed alongside, that I used in my own knitting project – to give you the tools to make your own road map for your own vest or pullover, or scarf, or hat.
The complete charts included in this work sheet, are not a jumper pattern, nor a vest pattern. What I have produced is a worksheet including the entire range of motif bands, built into a body and a sleeve chart with a clear centre stitch line. One sleeve is Fair Isle patterns – the other is Aran, following the plaits of how I sometimes braid in my hair.
These 2 large charts include 23 motifs and colours are a treasure trove of endless possibilities for you to be creative and make your own vest or pullover by incorporating them into your own favourite vest or jumper pattern. Use any colours that you have, use any wool that you have, use 2 colours, or like me, use over 90 colours. I am giving you a recipe for you to enjoy and work with in whatever way you want. I am giving you 23 fully lined up Fair Isle charts to knit in any colour you choose to make your own design. Recently, I have been reminded of how Kaffe Fassett, in the 80’s made beautiful patterns in books and wrote, ‘ choose 9 balls of varied light colours and 9 balls of dark colours’ and people ran with that, me included. Sometimes, he would write – use double knitting yarn, sometimes he listed the yarn and the exact colours.
If you run with these charts, you can use your favourite double knitting yarn and the jumper will be how you like it to look and feel with your favourite yarn, incorporating some or all of these Fair Isle motifs.
My jumper is knitted in Jamieson’s of Shetland spindrift using over 90 colours – some small lengths, some longer – these colours I have had left over from previous projects. As the colours are not often repeated, not great lengths are required. But you can do this differently. Use your stash or buy just 4 colours or even 2. The choices and permutations are endless but this relies on you. It relies on being excited to try this, to work out your centre front (which in my case, mirrored my centre back) and making sure that your motif bands align. It is about enjoying colour, swatching to experiment for colour combinations. It is a fun package and I would love you to have a go.
It has taken me nearly one year to design and make this jumper – it has taken 3 days to map out the motif bands and make the chart used in the body and in the sleeve and another 2 days to pull it all together.
If you have done so, I want to Thank you for buying my pattern for the charts – you are supporting me with saving towards my artist textile residency.
here is where the worksheet is at – let me know your thoughts on this one year project.
My neighbour lent me a book. Because it was only on loan, it made me read it properly and within a time frame suitable for a kindly loan. The book is ‘Notes from an Island’ – Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietila. It is hard back, it is beautiful, it is illustrated both with washy paintings and words.
I have been in love with Tove Jansson ever since I read The Summer Book, which remains one of my most favourite ever reads. I have used her line on ‘moss’ with my apprenticeship students at the Uni when they built a pillow of moss and transported it to a wasteland on the edge of Sheffield. Their little film of moving the moss pillow book was gorgeous and reminded me of Tove – which, in turn, reminded me of the moss gardens in Kyoto – so revered and respected. You see, life does this, from one book to another, from a line in a book to a presentation from young women at Uni, to the Zen temples of Kyoto and it is when this juncture, almost collision of past moments happen, that I feel alive.
Here is Tove’s line on Moss – ‘Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss. What they don’t know – and it cannot be repeated too often – is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn’t rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies’
Kyoto
What I am trying to reflect on here, is that ‘Notes from an Island’ reminded me of my own brief island life on Shetland. And what the loan of the book did for me, is to read every word properly and enjoy how those words sink in.
I was interested to read that Tove and Tuulikki (Tooti) gave small island treasures away to other people on other small islands so that they could create their own island museums, and they wrote long lists for leaving the island. It reminded of when I was leaving and how I did the same. I sold stuff and gave away so many things – including my grandmothers Wilson Peck, Sheffield made, cabinet gramophone and the old 78’s to the Old folks home in Lerwick, where it was restored so that the people staying their could play 78’s and it would jog their own memories – I went to visit it in situ, just before leaving the Island, and they put on a Shetland jig 78 for me and I cried at the joy of where that gramophone was now homed. I see so many similarities in the life of Tove Jansson of that small island. The sea, the ever present sea and the changing sky. I noted that in the 200 year old house that I bought, that some things had never changed – the doors, the floors, the window framing the view and the sounds. Sounds of the winds howling, sounds of the birds, the deadening sound of fog – carried in the same was as 200 years ago.
I gave the woman who bought my house the most beautiful old Saltware jug with pewter lid belonging to Susan Halcrow, who had lived in the house from 1876 to 1960. Below is the last hour in the croft house, all packed up but the jug left in the kitchen where it had once belonged to Susan. I hoped that the new owner would love it as much as I had and that it would carry Susan into the house still but when I saw that she was selling Smola, and that she had ripped down the front wall to park her car and then ripped down the barn and byre, my heart broke. I had handed over a gem and it was altered beyond recognition. I felt that the jug had meant nothing and I should have treasured it myself.
In this reading of the borrowed book, I remembered how beautiful it was to live in Shetland, and how I was a different person when leaving – actually, a shell of myself. How I had moved through such joy and excitement to needing to leave was a quick shift. If you are interested in reading such a life on an island, or if you are a woman thinking of living on an island in isolation as I did, or, if you are interested in Shetland itself, then I have posted my Shetland life on Patreon in monthly posts which align with the month that we are in. I have just posted the May chapter. If you join now, you will also get all the previous months to read too. I loved my house in Shetland, I loved how freeing it was at the beginning and now, I can look back with love and respect of an island that shapes its people
tracey doxey 