Earlier this year I put out the idea of a Colour Swatch group on Instagram. I was inundated with people wanting more information. Finally, a group of knitters joined me at the beginning of March for a monthly Colour Swatch Journal Club – lasting for 6 months.
I hoped people would become more adventurous with colour and even after 3 sessions, I am so excited by their results. What I didn’t expect was the extraordinary level of creativity, experimentation and personal interpretation that began appearing week after week.
I am so proud of my Colour Swatch Journal Group’s development. Here is a peep inside the Colour Swatch Journal Club private FaceBook Group where participants share their swatches and colour development.
I am so proud of them – I’m watching their confidence grow through Colour and swatch experimentation.
My swatch journal club is developmental learning – this group is develops month on month, over 6 months with a sessional newsletter pdf emailed on the 1st of each month, including step by step exercises, inspiration, and charts, research and photo tutorials – which encourage understanding of value of colour, tone, contrast, colour blending and then confidence to run free with all their knowledge – it is a group who love to learn The Joy of Slow Colour Exploration There is also a private Facebook group to share their work and I meet online via zoom at the end of every month.
Each month, I send participants tiny experiments and developmental learning exercises – the outcomes of which I am sharing here today.
Developing A Small Swatch Can Change Everything in your practice.
Their notebooks and journals are filling up with unexpected colour combinations and these wonderful women are developing their own visual language. They are learning to see colour differently and their swatches are becoming little artworks. Their journals will be so exciting to see at the end – we will have a show and tell.
“Some participants became fascinated by…”
contrast
The Shetland motifs
garden colours and inspiration
colour blending
unexpected palettes
historical references
even experimenting with steeking.
This is What Happens When Knitters Start Trusting me to teach them how to use Colour in their projects.
The next series of my Colour Swatch Journal group sessional newsletters and meetings will start in September – so it will be a wonderful Autumn / Winter learning. And, instead of 6 months timescale, I am going to condense the exercises and newsletters into 4 months.
If you would like to go on the wait list to be sent the new information ( Around June time) then complete the contact form below and I will be in touch in June.
Experimenting with techniques, yarn and colour has been part of my life for over 45 years. I used to knit stranded colour Work in the 80’s but I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing and that a place called Fair Isle even existed. I used to wear my crazy coloured mismatched jumpers with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren cotton culottes ,white muslin wrinkled Westwood stockings and ballet shoes even then I didn’t know that I had a passion for experimenting with knitting or colour.
This passion developed into knitting the most intricate jumpers that Patricia Roberts designed in the early 80s on the finest 2:5 mm needles with fine Shetland yarn bought from her shop in Covent Garden London
Today, I am patient with my projects and keep adding to my knowledge as I go into my mid 60s. I am always curious – thinking what if I did this or that or the other. I hardly see that kind of thinking these days but it was how we all knitted in the 80’s.
My latest design is called Kaleidoscope- It is a jumper pattern named after my blue Glass bead kaleidoscope and because the seemingly tessellating Shetland motifs repeat in the design. I have repeatedly returned to this Shetland Tree in Star Motif – starting from my very first knitted yoke cardigan knitted in 2015 which I progressed on to my Shetland Sea Urchin hat and mitts – then working to deliver a Colour Blending workshop for Rowan, I used the same motif and their yarns.
Once again I became inspired by the colour of our natural world last year with a long avenue of beautiful cherry blossom trees which inspired the colours of my latest Tree and Star hat and my first kaleidoscope jumper.
I put this pattern out into the world as a gift because I had made it for myself and many people wanted it. The motif is a 42 stitch pattern repeat and the V-neck falls in the centre of a tree – if I increased the size of the jumper I had to consider the following. It is knitted in the round so to increase the size, you would have to increase stitches by adding one more motive making it a very big jumper and a different management of other parts of it. Such as, if I added one more motif – then the V-neck position would fall in a different place and the shoulders and armpits would also increase in size. This would mean a TOTALLY different pattern, more test knits and not many people buy the patterns for me to spend one year of my life knitting 2 different jumpers.
I decided, instead, to experiment to increase the size by using 3.5 mm needles to make a larger jumper. I was doing this to help people see what would happen, it was not a solution to increase size but an experiment -Something I often did in the 80’s and 90’s with other patterns, changing yarns and needle size. I wondered it I increased the needle size or even the what would the outcome be.
The outcome of using the same yarn but needle size change, is a much larger jumper. I have steeked the neck and the armpits, if I’m completely honest I don’t like the bulky selvedge but I also wanted to experiment technique. I have steeked before but this time, I just cut without securing the steek stitches until afterwards.
I have found that many knitters need a pattern to be exact for them and to include all of the yarn colours, the weight of yarn, the amount of balls, the exact position of everything and that no one really wants to experiment at all anymore. I get it, yarn is expensive – but there is also a freedom in using what you have and experimenting which, interestingly, I have done all of my knitting life
So, my last knitted piece is a complete experiment in needle increase size, colour combinations, steeking stitches techniques, and just enjoying the sheer joy of making this project running free and dictating to me how I make my changes and adaptions.
Yesterday I cut the V Neck Steek stitches and it brought a new lease of life to me and my own practice. I stayed in the whole day finishing off the inside stitches and starting to knit the V-neck. I have developed an idea for making the sleeve edges larger so that they fit neatly into and increased size armpit.
This is where learning and design begins. How do I make this project work?
I’ve looked at it so long that I partially wanted it just finished. I also partially still don’t know what’s gonna happen with its outcome – but I planned out the V neck stitches and the sleeve increases and gussets on the back of a houmous packet – so I reckon, ALL IS WELL
If you would like to join me in my May online Colour Blending workshop, the link is here
After the rains of yesterday and after the ground has cooled down during the morning releasing that wonderful heavy scent of petrichor, in the afternoon a faint mist rising as a result of all the elements of rain, soil, warmth, and I am in my own elements.
I have been loaned three beds in one of the oldest established allotments in the city which has been managed by Martin’s family for over 100 years. He is 3rd generation. Can you imagine that? In the city of Sheffield, what these allotments have seen and hear. I am delighted with my small allocation which houses, at the edge, 3 old cooking apple trees, 1 eaters, 1 plum and 1 pear tree. I began by digging out the one and only bed that I think I can plant – the middle bed being full of raspberries which are my favourites and rhubarb which I can ignore and the last bed is full of blueberries which actually sadly look a little bit worse wear. Beyond my three little beds are three more on a lower tier and then three more and a greenhouse where I am the proud overseer of six tomato plants and a shed full of accumulation. Honestly, this simple small plot has given me hope – I am in my element.
After while when I rest with my flask of tea, the humidity of the weather and the vast greenery of the area rest upon the bare skin of my arms. The plants are still covered in the rain drops from yesterday’s 24 hours of constant mizzle. I begin to have a few hopes for the blueberries and I cannot wait for the soft fruits to grow. I will bring my knitting down here. the other allotment folks will get to know me and I will get to know them. I will be seen as a small part of a very large Community and I welcome that.
Here is to a healthy summer.
I have forked and dug and raked the single bed for planting and added onions, spring onions, broccoli and cabbages. I don’t even really eat cabbages but the Deer and her baby will like them.
I return to this tiny plot every day. Each day is different always the birds are singing always it is lush and green but on the fifth day there appears a calm in me whilst I knit beside my baby cabbages starting life under the net, next to the apple trees where a gentle breeze is blowing blossom petals across the beds. I have knitted in some places in my life but I think that this is the most stable, close to home, open to nature, light, and growth.
I have just opened a May Colour Blending workshop on 31st – there are only 2 places left, if you would like to join. Take a look at the content of the session here.
On thursday evening, I set my alarm for 3:45am on Friday morning so that I could get to the meeting place at 4:45. Surprisingly, there was no need for the alarm because I woke at 3:30 and wondered if I’d missed it – IT being Beltane Gathering, high on a hill overlooking the city.
The sound of bells could be heard in the pre dawn light, lanterns were being lit and people gathered to walk in a line through the wood to the platform. I was in my hightened state of pure joy where elements meet – the unknown, a gathering, darkness, lanterns, masks for Beltane – moving from Spring into the first day of Summer – or May Day
It was my first time, not quite a novice but not a pro having not made a mask nor lantern due to other committments. But, I did make a rose flower crown from out of date roses. The hum and chatter of everyone walking in the semi darkness came alive at the top, with Morris dancing, singing, music and people dancing. It felt like another world
Until the song to welcome in the summer was sung then everyone danced and slowly went back to their ‘normal’ lives – the sun having risen, each person carrying their own beautiful rare internal feeling of being part of something so special and joyful that everyone was happy.
Yesterday, I decided to nip out to Stanage Edge for a walk to the Millstones. I post about this location a few times a year. The last time I went was 8th Feb when I was Fog chasing.
Yesterday, 2nd April, was a beautiful crisp cold day in the city and when the sun started to rise, I new I needed to take my knitting, beat the tourist cars in the car park and revisit the stones.
Apparently, throughout the Peak District, there are more than a thousand abandoned millstones, covered with lichen and moss, weather-worn and often hidden to all that pass by. I remember going to a quarry near the base of Stanage and the place was full of them – all hand made, all abandoned dating back to the 18th and 19th Centuries and were once used to grind grain into flour for use in the mills in the area. I don’t know of any mills except Baily’s grain Mill in Matlock that now houses some very elegant flats. All of this history lying around on the ground that we all take for granted as being part of something that we don’t really have the curiosity enough to check out.
The stones are huge – about 1.8m in diameter and lie where they were left. I will start to research them and bring to life some local history – for me, for you, if you are interested.
But for now, these are my favourites and I have many happy memories going back over 40 years, just at these very millstones and old stone trough that face towards Hathersage and Hope Valley. I take my knitting, a flask, and time.
This summer, I think I will go on small millstone tours in the Peak District which borders Sheffield – starting just 6 miles from my flat and is a place I grew up in but I haven’t seen as many of the stones as I would like. This is the year will be my year of the round stones.
Oh, yes, as an Easter offer, I would like to thank everyone and have offered 10% off all of my knitting patterns, which doesn’t seem much on a £4 pattern but when Ravelry and Paypal take their cut, it is, indeed a small gift – Even the Kaleidoscope Jumper, the alternative sleeve pattern and Fair Isle long hat and the Chunky knit Vest are included in the offer for the first time. Happy Easter break. Maybe go look for your stones.
Thank you for your support over the last year and if you are interested in checking out my patterns – there is a 10% discount until Midnight UK time, tomorrow night – 4th April
I would like to say a big thank you, if you have recently purchased the Easy Aran Pullover pattern.
I designed and made this jumper when I was living in Shetland. It is a very easy version of the Dear Susan pattern that is in 10 sizes. The Easy Aran is in just one relaxed size.
Quite a few people have recently bought my Easy Aran Pullover pattern and I have seen some very lovely versions on personal colour choices of the knitters. they can be seen in projects on Ravelry.
I designed this jumper with people who wanted an easier option to make a traditional Shetland motif yoke sweater and the result was a very lovely go to jumper.
The pattern also has a 10 page story with it, about my life in Shetland and a woman called Susan Halcrow, who owned the house that I bought from 1876 to 1960
Living in Shetland seems a long time ago now but I do know that my time there shaped my thinking and design ideas for my patterns.
If you have been following me for a while, you will know that my favourite place to knit outdoors is beside the abandoned old millstones at the bottom of Stanage Edge. I have been going for years. After 7 weeks of solid heavy rain, this morning, there was a hint of a tiny blue sky so I headed out for Burbage Edge to walk to Stanage. This is what it was like
I must admit, the extremity of it all was magical. So many people were out on the moors walking, running, mountain biking – it is a gritty, strong city here.
I don’t think it was total mist and rain, I think the clouds had dropped to cover the entire moor and rock edge.
at my favourite place, I sat beneath the shelter of the overhanging rocks to knit, drink tea and look at the moving wetness. Everyone seemed moved by it.
Afterwards, my knitting was wet with cloud and mist. It smelled of Lanolin and the Peak District. How lucky are we in this country to live near such peaceful places when the world is in deeply sadening pain – and we feel it.
Kaleidoscope jumper on the hand made stone trough beside very old abandoned millstones.
This Winter has seemed long and dark and wet. Even I have begun to hibernate.
Last week, we had one small window of a couple of hours of light and I walked through the woods looking at the sky between the bare branches up high.
Behind the scenes, I am devising a 6 month programme for a Colour Swatch Club – some of you have sent me registration forms for this – I am looking forward to sending you all the information and monthly list soon as well as starting the club in April.
I have also been knitting my 2nd Kaleidoscope Jumper using any leftover yarn that I have in my box. To help the people who wanted a larger jumper than the first one, that came out at a 44 inch chest, I have been using 3:5mm UK size needles instead of the 3mm ones in the first knit. My latest jumper will come out at about a 50inch chest, which will be big and look silly on me or will look pretty cool. Either way, I will be able to tell everyone how to increase the size of the original finished chest.
I have been knitting Tree and Star sleeves this time – which is a bolt on pattern ravelry as an option to knit other than the Tree sleeves in the original jumper pattern which you can see here.
The detail that I particularly love in the bolt on sleeve pattern is that I have added a full chart of the Alphabet so that you can personalise your knitting with your initials and date of knitting it. I finished one sleeve in 2025, the other on new year’s day on 2026. So my sleeves have different years knitted into them.
Here are some of the really wonderful Kaleidoscope patterns knitted by other knitters – they are in the projects on the pattern tab. You can see a lot more projects here
Screenshot
Some of them have been steeked and the project photos show you how this has been done.
Another thing that I have been doing behind the scenes is updating this website /blog which I started in 2016 when I was doing my Masters at NTU in Nottingham. I added to the home page until it was not understandable and there has never been a buy now button on my online workshops page.
The home page is now very clear, with just services listed and the workshops page, I am very excited to say, now has a BUY NOW button which takes the customer straight to paypal with easy payment methods.
image of workshops page with new BUY NOW button
Learning how to sort html, link paypal to the blog, add a button and links and update the page work for the customer more easily took me a heartbreaking 8 hours over 3 days. BUT, I finally did it.
A quick link to my workshop page is here. Give me feedback on how it looks, if you like and how I can make it better for the customer.
Today, has been particularly wet, after days of heavy rains. Today, never really got light – so when I say that I hibernate, I really have been staying inside.
Above are a couple of photos from today – my Home Wear which includes my Tree and Star Hat for cosiness.
staying inside is not like me but it’s been harsh weather. I often see people living wonderful seemingly carefree lives in camper vans, in the forests or by the sea but lately, it would be a damp existance, in a van in England.
Another thing that has happened behind the scenes is that I have given my notice in at work. I am an Apprenticeship Coach at a University. I love my students / apprentices but after staying in Japan for a month in December, I knew that I need to begin to find myself again. I am 63 this summer and my time is precious. I am not sure whether it was the right thing to do because the part time job gave me financial and emotional stability but it also took away my freedom and made me very tired. The team at work are brilliant. We all support each other and accept every unusual quirk that we may have. There is a lot of laughter when people come into the office and I will miss that. I will also miss the photo copier. So, Onward and upward. I am hopting to use mondays as my design days from April going forward.
Comment if you would like to see anything new in my designs.
or if you want to get in touch about anything then complete the contact form below. Thanks for subscribing to these little posts. Tracey 🙂
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It is a very quick and easy knit vest to knit using stash yarn and large 12mmUK needles. It flies off the needles with great speed – mine took me three days to knit from beginning to end. It is something to love, something lovely to knit and very useful by using up your stash yarn – that you also bought because you loved it.
This vest is made up of chunky yarn by playing 3 to 6 yarns together to make a really nice fat yarn. Please be aware that what you make with your plied yarn maybe thicker or thinner than what I plied because it is all random but totally works out in the end because we knit by length. Here are some visual examples from my swatch book of the yarns that I used.
For a yarn example, you can see here I used 4 strands of mohair together with 1 strand of Lettlope or two strands of orange mohair with five strands of very thin of the yarn or, for example, one of the yarns that I used on its own was the Big Wool by Rowan so the experimentation of yarns plied together goes on and on and the results are a surprise and exciting which makes you excited about colour knitting.
In the pattern, I recommend practising swatching for gauge. I give you instructions on how to measure a section of your knitting that you like and feel the drape of and how to make this work in your own vest project.
I have knitted two of these vests and I wear one in the winter and the other one was bought by a client and I enjoyed embroidering a little label for the neck which you can see it here.
The last images are knitted by Kath Ward this week which she shared to instragram and I was so happy to see. She has been a long time follower of mine on Instagram and she normally knits lace so chose to knit this chunky Vest pattern as a rest. It also took her three days to knit – I bet she knits another.
Cath’s Chunky knit VestCath’s yarns
She knitted one strand of grey mohair through all of her waist yarn colours to keep unity through it all.
You can have a lot of fun with this pattern and just use what you’ve got and really enjoy it and see what happens
The pattern has 9 pages and includes images of the yarns that I used, information on how to get your gauge, photo images of progress of the vest, finished measurements of my vest, and written instructions on how to make it
It’s a real joy quick joy to make for yourself or for a gift or to just to use up some of that stash that you have that you’ve never touched for years but really liked.
This is a project to use those really like lots of different yarns.
I thought I’d share with you my first ever jumper pattern that I designed. In August 2020, I bought a Croft house in Levenwick that faced the sea. This was the beginning of my real knitting journey and of designing Shetland motif knitting patterns.
I started with beanie patterns but in 2021 I designed these two jumpers using the same Shetland yoke motif. The first jumper is in Shetland 2ply and I named it, dear Susan after the woman that lived in the house that I bought from 1876 to 1960.. she was a very impressive inspiring beautiful woman. You can read all about this on my blog if you dig way back.
After I knitted the Dear Susan, I developed the pattern into a very easy quick knit Aran jumper and named it, Easy Aran pullover
Both of these jumpers are very easy to knit and the patterns include photograph tutorials, written instructions, and colour charts I’ve come a long way since designing these patterns almost 6 years ago, but they are still two of my life changing decisions. I’m grateful for the time that I lived in Shetland.
Both patterns also include a 12 page story about my life in Shetland – my house named Smola, Susan – who had lived in it, an me – with each of these patterns
Here is the beginning of that story in the patterns
Dear Susan
and
A house of two women
Tracey Doxey
Preface
Shetland, May 2021
One day, towards the end of May, it rained so heavily that when the winds took up the weight of sky and sea water, dropping it upon the house roof, I could hear nothing else but the sound of pelting rain. Dampness penetrated the house, not as seeping or leaking but as a shroud that rested upon my body. I lit the fire in an attempt to fight back. After one hour, the weight lifted and I began to knit, waiting for the promised summer. By early evening, the sun came out as if there had never been rain at all so I walked to pay the wood man for the fire wood and on the way home, I took a detour to the beach. I wandered the edge of the surging waves, churned up by the afternoon’s winds. The sea, still being in a fury, was not able to slow down its waves to meet the sudden calmness of the early evening. The ebbing sea left a wake of tidal crustations as if lace edges on the beach. I looked for Buckies but all in an instant, I saw a tiny green sea urchin the size of a small flat pea. I bent to pick it up just as the tide surged over my shoes but I caught it before it was lost back in to the sea.
I wondered if you ever walked to the beach to collect sea treasures or if you never bothered.
Shetland, Arrival August 2020
Dear Susan,
I begin with the outside, with what I have to hand; my reason, my eyes, my spatial understanding, and an openness tinged with the unknown.
On arriving, I need my first investigations of your croft house interior to be made alone. I want to inhale the house, listen to my internal feelings at first sight then recognise how my body responds to the old stones – I need to let body and stones talk to me. Thoughts and feelings need space. I need space. I haven’t yet found you. I do not know that you were born in this house 145 years ago.
It is a pale grey day, mist rolling over the hill behind the house as if a blind has been half pulled down a window. The sky is bleached out, the day is calm and windless, not particularly notable.
I open the front porch door, then, I try the house door with its mismatched glass panels. It opens. To the right in the tiny vestibule area, there is a third old, board-door, painted white with a hand-hewn square wooden knob which I turn to the right. The simple mechanism lifts a wooden latch inside. That sharp click sound of the latch lifting and hitting its wooden casing is the sound that I will forever remember of this place. It is my first sound here and it will probably be my last when I leave. It is a click of old wood against old wood, heard by every man, woman and child that has ever entered this house before me, for the last 180 years. Human touch leaves tangible traces of every hand that has opened it before me. The patina of years lies dirty on the paint’s surface.
Simultaneously, within the sound, my heart is given over to the first sight of the flag floor and fire place in the sitting room. In an instant, I am sold on sound and sight. I know I will not pull out of this crazy unseen deal to buy a house and change my life entirely.
Heart over head, I move in three weeks later, with two cats and a bag, the furniture and belongings on a lorry, to arrive a week later.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
Dear Susan,
I have been sent an image of your Brother – John Halcrow, in his Naval Uniform. I begin to look at censuses and the local history ancestry website then I ask around to find out about the previous inhabitants of this house. I called in at John’s to ask about you because I know nothing of the woman I had heard lived in the house for many years. He said to speak to Jim, so I went over the road to Jim’s and Martin was there too. They were off to Anne Mouat’s funeral but Jim was gracious with his time with me. He told me of you – Susanna (Susan, Cissie) who lived in the house that I now live in and that he was sent as a child, nearly 80 years ago, to collect the milk from you at your house. He told me that you had one cow on the croft, you sold milk, and you rowed the little hand-written paper milk bills up on a shelf in the porch – the same porch that I have. He was a young boy then but he clearly remembers you.
At the funeral, Martin spoke with Raymond whose Aunt lived in the house after you. You knew her, her name was Alice. Raymond came to see me the next day with a mesmerising handful of photographs of you. He introduced me to Susanna Halcrow (Susan, Cissie, or even Zizzie) The photographs, he told me, had been left in the house after his Aunt Alice had died some 30 years after you.
For the first time I could put a face to the name of a woman who lived in my old house for 83 years. Your face, your name. I sank to sit on the floor to look at your serene face in the images dating back to early 1900. Your candid expression caught by the lens of a camera, looking openly right back at me opened something inside me to find you more deeply.
You were born in this house on the 6th February 1876 and Died on 4th January 1960.
In the archives at the museum, I found that your Halcrow family had lived here through the 1800’s – 1960. They were listed in the 1888 valuation roll of the Symbister Estate, Whalsay, partly owned by the Laird, William Arthur Bruce (In 1888, John Halcrow, your Father) tenant, paid a yearly rent of £4, 10 Shillings for croft number 7. You would have been twelve years old (registered as knitter). The whole family are on the census of 1881 and ‘Susanna’ is listed as being five years old – there were seven people living in this small house at that time – Thomas Halcrow aged 86, Barbara Halcrow aged 83 (your grandparents), John Halcrow aged 40 and Ann Halcrow aged 41 (your parents) John aged nine, you aged five and a boy named John Brown aged 13, but you will already know this. Seven people living in this small two bedroomed house. Afterwards, I looked at records from 1838 and found your family, here, in Upperton.
In the grave yard at Levenwick cemetery, you lie on your own next to your parents and brothers. Your head is against the sea and in May, you rest above a bank carpeted in pale lemon primroses. I wonder if you are lonely, or if you are free.
Over the months after arriving, I became obsessed with you and wrote thoughts that occurred to me about you, on scraps of paper. These papers began to litter the house. I connected with you through a field of built environment in the house, photographs, your old pottery, the view from the sitting room window and eight sessions in the Shetland Museum archive which revealed the legal documents relating to some of the most notable social changes in Shetland between the 1880’s and mid 1950’s. The *Register of the Sasines, recorded the sale of the house from Laird to local in 1923, valuation rolls of rent paid for three generations of the Halcrow family for over 100 years are traceable, the Napier Commission registered the croft and detailed their calculated rental value and reduction of rents for Shetland crofters and the legal rights for tenants, the Small Holding Act, and I found the registered wills of your brother and finally your own, which gave me an insight into over one hundred years of three generations of Halcrow life within this old house. To the very end, with your serene looking gaze of steady calm and with a glint in your eyes, you put everything in order to the very last moment – crossing every t and dotting ever i. All of your wishes are written clearly in the directions of your will.
But, how am I to find out about you – what you thought and felt and how you lived? The neighbours reveal little.
So, I turn to the physical things to look at our lives carried out in the same place – the same stone walls of a house built so long ago – with no record of its beginning, how the breeze moves through the house through its open doors, the sound of the wooden doors and their opening and closing then there is the view – a view that has changed every single day of every single year but it is the same frame from which you looked and I now look out of at the changing world.
Your artifacts have been returned to the house – some pitchers, jugs, vases, plates, bowls. Before mixing them on the shelves with my own plates and jugs, I turn them around and around to connect with a life before and then there is the biggest connection of all – that you were and I am single women, living a life and paying the bills on our own in an old stone house facing the sea. Did you talk to Ralph, the dog, as I talk with Tiggy and Alfie?
I wonder about the touch upon things, the patina laid down by years of paint, of opening and closing the door, of turning door knobs, of opening and closing windows.
Finding you is like the moment I removed a damp layer of wallpaper in one gentle pull upwards, in an old abandoned derelict Shetland croft house, to reveal a perfect hand printed layer of pre 1950’s paper with wildflowers printed up it. Then, in one more pull that strip of hand printed wallpaper also came off the wall completely intact. I folded the paper and placed it under my jumper, its dampness pressed against the skin of my belly. I thought that if I were to paste the top layer of wall paper back over the void, then no one would know what had been before. No one would know what had been removed from underneath the top layer. It was as if it had never existed.
Finding you IS like finding old beautiful handprinted wallpaper lying beneath layers of less attractive paper. Then peeling it off in sections and placing it under my jumper for safety. Susan, you are under my jumper, next to my skin.
I lift the pewter lid of your old Victorian salt ware jug to look inside. Revealing, peeling, pasting, painting, lifting, closing, opening things in the house, as generations have done so before me. I paint over what has been on the walls and doors. I sit quietly to look at the layers of layers, like the quiet man who mediates first thing in the morning, stripping away layers of noise to his core, before all else happens in the day.
I spoke to Marylyn, who, as a 10-year-old child, moved in to this house with her family. It was the year you died. She told me of a wash stand in each bedroom and jugs and bowls, a sink at the bottom of the stairs and a radio on a dresser in the front room. These were your things left behind. I can picture them now. She told me that her and her brother slid down the green linoleum on the stairs and they telephoned their cousins in the house behind by joining two cans with a long piece of string and shouting out the back window in the north bedroom. I can hear their laughter now. Children in the house for the first time in over 60 years.
I have had moments where I wonder if I am prying. I wonder if you would like me. I hope that you would like me.
Maybe there is not much difference between us. Did you look in the mirror to comb your hair or did you, as I do, stand outside in front of the house to comb your hair into the wind whereupon stray grey hairs blow upon the breeze and hang upon the roses?
Susan, I am now the carer of your house for however long I can endure the winters.
House / Home – Situatedness
Outside, I Inhale the heady scent of peat smoke, as a hundred women must have done so before me.
Standing on to the hand-hewn flag stone veranda that skirts the front of the house, I take in the heady scent of the previous night’s peat fire smoke lingering in the air. The grey sky is touching the grey sea beholding all that is in front of me, under my feet and behind me within the stones of this old house.
The rough stone structure of the house has been touched by many hands over nearly two centuries and is built upon rock. This house is my place of thinking and feeling. It holds me within its walls endowed with previous lives, to live freely, without compromise of any other thing except the elements and darkness of night and the lengthy lightness of summer – yet these are still penetrable. Isolation can penetrate.
The house gives to me the opportunity of freedom and I give it the love and tenderness to continue standing strong. But the Winter took its toll on me and then Easter was beyond harsh where the floors shook and the chimneys roared with swirling storm winds. I have lost energy.
How many women have stood at this door way, eyes drawn East to the sea, mind drawn inward to the shores, children playing, wars questioned, lost ones at sea, the animals and subsistence or maybe even love? You lost your brother in the Battle of Jutland. He left this house and never returned. The interconnectivity of all of us lies in the details of life – past and present. A life before that built the foundations of this house is linked to this life now as my life now is linked to the lives gone before and to those that will live here after me. Who turned the first key? Who left the key under a stone in the garden so that when I found it, the rust was as thick as a pie crust?
Sea air permeates my skin, seeping into my bones and softening the edges of my soul. It takes time. I accept this time as a gift. I have come home. Maybe, all my life has been pointing to this one moment. A moving fluid moment of now. Time is temporary but for now, it is the right place.
I heard Marianne Faithful say, ‘ Eventually, I always end up where I’m meant to be.’
I know that here is where I am meant to be, for now.
The past is always carried into the present by the small unmovable things, the click of a latch, the stone floors, the view of the sea, the old byre, a curling photograph of a group of women, long dead, a sheet of paper left in the window sill, faded by the sun.
In the city, I had begun to lose my idea of direction. My direction was determined by worn out decisions made on previous decisions. This is a house of new decisions.
I am here, this is me, windblown, sieved soil, a beating heart, I am becoming sea, wind, beach, yarn.
The breath of my cats reminds me that in fact, I am not alone.
in October 2021 I moved back to England for many reasons
tracey doxey 