discourse for craft – tracey doxey

Cowl – sampling – colour and looking up North to Shetland.

Cowl

It’s Wednesday afternoon. It’s sunny and a time for sitting, reflecting, rebooting and rebuilding.

I finished the little knitted cowl this week, just in time for the freezing morning weather to have passed. I made it for a number of reasons:-

1, my face is freezing in the wind when I bike at 6:30am to the gym in all weathers (it was), it has warmed up this week.

2, to see if I could plan a knitted piece that fits my around my chin and face comfortably

3, to incorporate 8 different Fair Isle patterns in one round, using 4 repeated blocks of colour with 4 colours in each block – equalling 16 colours with a couple of extra colours for the softer rounds in between the fair Isle OXO patterns.

4, i was using this piece as a sampler for both colour and to see if I liked the outcome of the pattern to see if I would use it in a vest – to look like a persian carpet.

I have already written a blog on how I started this project, which is here, so I will finish off with how it was knitted, what I found out along the way and the outcome.

I cast on 200 stitches and worked a corrugated rib in Peony and Maroon. Then knitted 3 plain rounds, then 5 rounds of the little blocks pattern edged in 2 rounds of a stone colour, then 3 more rounds of colour before starting the Fair Isle motifs. The first rounds were simple – even though the division of the amount of the 200 stitches by the amount of stitches to each repeat didn’t always work, therefore, needed adjusting.

The first 18 rounds utilised the same colours for each round and just flew on the circular needle but when I got to the Fair Isle patterns, the first round was knit easily and as I am using 8 different blocks of colour, I joined the blocks by twisting the colours together at the joins, in an intarsia fashion. But, the second round had to be knitted in purl because the yarn tails were at the end of the knitted blocks, and not left at the beginning (this turnaround to purl going back is ok for me as before knitting everything in the round, I knitted in the flat for many years but it is not the Shetland way.)

To also join each Fair Isle block at the change of a new set of colours on the return, I twisted the yarns of each block going back on the purl round with the yarns in the previous block, in an intarsia fashion for each of the blocks to successfully join them together.

I suppose this is a bit of a bodge job. If I had knitted it in the flat, it might have been neater at the join and easier to knit. But I learned this as I went along.

Finally, it was finished, after a few nights in front of the tele, making sure my yarns were ready if any changes of colours were needed as it isn’t possible to get the correct colours at night time.

The motifs were chosen from the below book and I carefully calculated them many times with many alternative X sections to fit within the stitch count.

I don’t normally choose motifs in this unemotional way. I design in a more connected, authentic way, either from a museum piece or photograph, concept or vintage piece but I was just making a sampler so it is ok to pick and choose patterns. I played around with the X part of the Fair Isle patterns a lot and the amount of stitches in each block.

So, I started with 200 stitches, decreased to 198 for the little blocks pattern then decreased again to 192 for the Fair Isle rounds – this is because I was trialling the Fair Isle patterns on paper and starting the project at the same time. A start of 200 stitches, makes the rib wider than the 192 for the pattern by 8. It makes the rib roll.

If you want a go at this, start the rib at 192 stitches. Work 2 x 2 corrugated rib – the 6 stitches of the block pattern also work with 192 stitches, as does 8 blocs of 24 stitches for the Fair Isle patterns.

In the end, I enjoyed knitting it but don’t really like the outcome of the trial of different colours. I thought that it would be interesting for a vest but I don’t like it. Some colours work for me, – the pinks, the brown and ochre and the blues. But not all in those colours either.

I am still sitting here, in this city, on my tiny patch of ground looking out to a wall situated over the road, when once I looked out from a croft house towards the sea. In Shetland, I often used to let my mind wander southwards, down roads, over walls, into the gentle gardens of flowers growing by trees. But today, my entire thoughts are drifting up North to the islands of Shetland, particularly to the Island of Bressay and to the Gilbert Bain in Lerwick.

I am thinking of a wonderful woman with blue eyes who is kind and thoughtful and creative and who made me feel welcome. I am sending her all the love from this city world.

If I were to make a pattern for a vest, using this sampler, it would be called Fiona.

https://ko-fi.com/traceydoxey

A few words on designing something that you would like to make.

_{whale bones, flowers and mittens – Shetland}

A few words on designing a knitted piece that you would like to make. (including mistakes, errors, bodge)

_swatching

When I was a child, I always made stuff. No one taught me, I just went for it. I remember seeing a large yellow cloth hard backed book on the shelf at the newsagents with 365 things to make in it. I ran to that book every time we went in that news agents and poured over the photos and asked for for the book for Christmas – I remember my mother answering, ‘You want a book?’ I was about 8 years old and loved that book. I sewed rag dolls, made resin ashtrays, made tiny doll dresses and sold them to my sister for her pocket money (which my mother made me give back) collected four / five / six / seven leafed clovers, pressed flowers, made cards – you name it, I made it. A loner’s kind of life then too.

I also remember my mother getting a Singer sewing treadle machine and I used it to make the entire miles and miles of the bunting for our estate jubilee party in 1977 – I was just 14 and could hardly reach the treadle peddle – no one taught me how to use it – I just got on with it coordinating foot and hand movements for miles of bunting, which seems simple but not when you embark on it as a young person – there is a responsiblity that I was unaware of. I also made very unattractive, shapeless, square t shirts for my dad out of the left over fabric, which were never worn.

Later, I taught myself to knit. There was no Youtube. Then I got a knitting machine, then I started knitting intricate patterns by hand, going directly ‘off piste’ every time with my own alterations. Making stuff has been a lifestyle. Now, I spend hours and hours ‘designing’ a few knitting patterns for small knitted articles. I’ve tried to stop but I just can’t. So I’ll share how I think I will make something – from scratch, from an idea, from a light bulb moment.

Just now, I want to make a very intricate pullover in an infinite number of colours, using traditional Fair Isle motifs – so to test how this will look, I will make a cowl. Already, I have learned from this exercise of knitting in the round, where the yarn tails end up after knitting blocks of different blocks of colour – not in the right place – that’s where.

My initial ideas are inspired by any number of things. Honestly, my ideas of colour and pattern come from deeply inspired thoughts of connecting to a person or place in history – ie my ‘Dear Susan’ jumper, or from the sunrises when I was staying on Fair Isle – how the light cuts between the horizon line of the sea world and sky in ‘Fair Isle Sunrise’ or from the beautiful natural crustation of sea urchin shells that I collected from the discarded meals of gulls on Sea Urchin Hill in Brindister, which became the ‘Sea Urchin’ pattern.

But now I don’t live in Shetland. So what of inspiration? I’m still taken by how the light falls, both on my walls or even on the roof top of my daughter’s flat in London. So, I never stop. The excitement of light and colour never stops.

Lately, I have been really taken by a traditional fair Isle jumper that I saw in a museum because of its quality and integrity. Each motif in the row was different and repeated randomly in other rows. I counted about 15 Fair Isle patterns in the entire project. So, I studied them and began to graph them with an idea to draw on my love of colour (blending) and my memories of knitting Patricia Roberts intricate work in the 80’s to drawing on my use of Shetland yarn and love of traditional patterns.

I am wondering if you would like to join me on a journey of making your own design pattern? Go for it. Let’s start with a cowl. Easy.

I’ll show you how I have started project and what it looks like now – admittedly, some weeks have already passed and due to my writing schedule, many more will pass before it is finished. People can think that buying a knitting pattern from Ravelry for £3-£4 can be expensive, but behind it, for me, is hours and hours and hours of trial and error to find the right colour, tension, feel, drape, size and outcome. Then, I’ll let you know, that Paypal take a cut, quite a big cut and that Ravelry then charge at the end of the month for the patterns sold – so a £4 pattern can end up being about £2.90 and if I offer a discount, which I often do, then I will end up with about £2.00 for each sold pattern (they are cheapter than a cup of tea in town) so, you see, that Pattern designing can be just for the love of it (Unless you are a famous ‘knitter’) Fortunately, Knitting is one of my loves – and I share that love in patterns.

I said to someone yesterday, that I am not a knitter – I just knit, then move on.

So, let’s start at the beginning of this project, which may or may not work. What I used for this project is an inspirational image of a Fair Isle Jumper that I admired and wanted to develop into a project.

I wanted to use my colours – lots of colours and my methods of ‘colour blending’ and tiny needles to create a Persian carpet look. Already, the starting image will be forgotten within half a day’s developmental work.

Here we go.

What you’ll need for this project ( I am making a cowl – because my face is cold on the bike in the early mornings)

Your idea of which motifs you would like to knit
A notepad of graph sheets
Pencil, with rubber / sharpie, regular pen, tape measure
Time
Patience
A stash of yarn (all the same quality of yarn)
Day light
and Hello Fresh does work too.

_{boys and colour}

Instructions –

Preparation

Start by looking at the motifs that you like and start replicating them on graph paper. You can also graph out patterns using excel spreadsheets, but that comes later for me, if I choose to put a pattern out. Initially, I like the tactile act of using paper and pencils. Graph the motifs by studying your image of knitted inspiration and working out the pattern or by looking in ‘The Complete Book of Traditional Fair Isle Knitting’ book by Sheila McGregor or the cute little ‘Shetland Pattern book’ by Mary Smith and Maggie Twatt. Both books are pretty old. I have a copy of both ( I used to have 2 copies of each but…)

Start graphing out your desired motifs and be prepared to make mistakes. I start with pencil and do a lot of rubbing out. Then I go over the pencil with a sharpie and still sometimes make errors. Making errors at this stage is also learning how the motif works, if this is the first time that you have knitted this kind of pattern.

Then, start to choose your colours. If you have attended any of my colour blending sessions, you will know how this goes. It can be complicated, it can also be easy but if you haven’t – then I suggest to firstly think of harmony, then contrast. And do not buddy up the colours.

Knit some of your drawn out motifs into swatches. Use different size needles too, to see how the swatch looks. This is not supposed to be torture, this is the first fun bit after you have painstakingly drawn out the motifs on paper. The swatch is to check colour then tension (as a bi product)

When you have knitted random swatches in varying colours, you can see how the pattern stands – are there too many stitches in the block for the feel I want? – is there a harmony in colour, is there enough contrast? How does it feel? – yes, really, how does it feel in your heart? Is it better with dark motif on light back ground or vice versa? How the do the colours blend – oh, and never, never choose your colours under tungsten light or whilst watching the tele or not really looking – always choose your colours under natural daylight – ignore this last bit at your own peril.

When you have knitted the swatch, then you can measure it to figure out how many motifs you need for the size you want to knit – simples? Using the needles that you like for the outcome you like. Easy? Or just stick with figuring out your colours in the swatch. The size will take care of itself – right?

When you have knitted quite a few swatches in a number of colours, then you will have an idea if any adjustments need to be made to the motif or where it falls within the pattern or what motifs will go before or after the main motifs.

Anyway, here is a start – this is where I am with my project – round 3 of the first round of Fair Isle Motifs. It looks messy but I am in full control.

It is a cowl with 8 different hand drawn out Fair Isle motifs joined by seed stitches because I didn’t like how geometric the original Fair Isle joining sections looked. I am using a different set of colours for each block of motif, like I used to with Patricia Roberts’ patterns and even with I used to knit Kaffe Fassett jumpers in the 80’s.

Let me know how you get on. Leave me a comment on your thoughts.

Have a good day.

https://ko-fi.com/traceydoxey

Journal entry from Shetland – November / December 2020

Good Wishes for the New Year.

Hat design, research and process – Tracey Doxey November 2020

On September 11^th 2020, I moved into a small but perfectly formed decrofted croft house called Smola, formerly Croft Number 7. More or less immediately, I began to research the previous names and inhabitants of the house, which I found by looking at some of the archives at Shetland Museum and then confirmed by word of mouth by people still living in the village. I found that the Halcrow family had lived here through the 1800’s – 1960. They are listed on the 1888 valuation role of the Symbister Estate, Whalsay, partly owned by William Arthur Bruce who was the laird (landlord. In 1888, John Halcrow (Susan’s Father) tenant, paid a yearly rent of £4, 10 Shillings for croft number 7 – at that time, it had outlying lands with the house. Susan would have been 12 years old. The whole family are on the census of 1881 and ‘Susanna’ is listed as being 5 years old – there were 7 people living in this small house at that time – Thomas Halcrow aged 86, Barbara Halcrow aged 83 ( Susan’s grandparents), John Halcrow aged 40 and Ann Halcrow aged 41 (Susan’s parents) John aged 9, Susan aged 5 and a boy named John Brown aged 13. 7 people living in this small 2 bedroomed house.

Susan, was born on 6/2/1876 -and died in 4/1/1960 – she was a capable, marvellous 83 year old who had lived in this house alone after her parents died in 1908 and 1914, then her brother John died in the Battle of Jutland May 31^st 1916. I have been to see the family graves at Levenwick cemetery. Susan is on her own next to her parents and brothers. John was a twin to Thomas, who died at the age of 2years.

I was fully introduced to Susan through photographs brought to the door by Raymond, whose Aunt Alice, lived at Smola until the 1990’s, for 30 years after Susan. Raymond also returned the old pottery that had belonged to Susan, which had been removed after Alice had died. Looking at the photographs and turning her jugs, plate, glasses around in my hands, was as if she was back in the house again. She would have used the Salt ware jug with a pewter lid on, daily – maybe for milk which she sold to the villagers. Raymond told me that it was on a shelf in the kitchen – and I’ve put it back in the kitchen. I have been told the she placed the milk bills in a row on a little shelf in the porch about 80 years ago. That was just before the 2^nd world war, She would have been in her 60’s.

My newest knitting design is entirely inspired by Susan Halcrow and her beautiful serene face. When I was handed the photographs, I couldn’t stop looking at her, at her clothes, her smile, where she stood by the wall, her dog sitting on the wall, her horse and people standing by the wall that still stands today. I can touch the history of where she lived in this place. I can sit on the wall, where her dog is photographed sitting, I can lift the latch of the door that she lifted, open the door to the porch which was her door and see the sea – as she would have looked out, especially I am sure, when her brother died at sea in the battle of Jutland on the HMS Invincible. I can lift the pewter lid of her salt ware jug – these things feed inspiration. These things are real. Tangible.

I have 7 photographs of her and have studied what I think are the colours of her peat stacks, her tri-coloured dog, her dark clothes and hair, the lichen on the walls, the turf, flowers, grass and the house itself. I can still see these things today within this landscape – tangible, visible, visceral history. So, after much reflection, I chose colours that I felt reflected Susan and her life here – Peat, Sunrise, Havana, Cocoa, Rye, Moorgrass, Dewdrop and Maroon. They are not showy colours, but colours of strength and of solid ground. The design I chose for the hat is an all-over traditional Shetland pattern and I have blended the colours to work with each other – the background and foreground have had much consideration and work harmoniously. The background is all grasses, seas, lichen and skies, stone walls, and the air – the foreground is of peat stacks, woollen clothes, shawls and warmth. The motif has a kind of stacking pattern, as I felt the peats did in the peat stack photo and the colours chosen for this hat reflect what I am learning of Susan by just living here, seeing the weather, feeling the winter, holding the peats and sitting on those stones.

I had wanted to make Susan a beret but instinctively knew that when I was knitting the hat, the body was a little short for a beret. I could have knitted another section of the pattern – added to the length but I didn’t because it would have taken on an altogether different shape. The design of my hats is usually dictated by the motifs and where they fall. This hat follows that design process – the motifs have dictated the amount of rows and the perfect place to decrease. On a number of occasions, I took the knitting off the small circular needle and placed it on a larger one so that I could try it on my head to see how it fell – I already knew in my heart how it would fall and it wasn’t going to be a beret. In the end, the finished shape is more like a pudding bowl and I gently blocked it purposely in that manner over an inflated balloon. It covers my ears and is a neat, solid, stoic hat made in pure Shetland Jamieson’s of Shetland yarn. Spun from the fleeces of the sheep that roam these islands.

I knit intuitively. I don’t use the computer to design. I draw all the patterns out on graph paper, feel the yarn, consider the colours and sometimes knit a swatch – sometimes not. I instinctively figure out the stitches, length and depth and adjust as I go along. This is, of course, open to risk but I can always recover my knitting and we learn from mistakes. My process is based on 40 years of knitting, the tactile act of handling yarn and by drawing out the pattern with a pencil.

This hat pattern design actually means a lot to me in the sense that it is unique to this house and a woman who once lived here and it is now a place that I live in, in some ways, like Susan – alone, growing things, making the fire, opening the old latch door, looking out to sea every day. I will be very proud next year if I have a peat stack like Susan’s.

I have decided to call this pattern – ‘Good Wishes for the New Year’ – A message Susan wrote at the bottom of a Christmas card that she had taken and printed in a Commercial Photography Studio in Lerwick. This photograph will be on the pattern as it is Susan and her writing that has inspired this pattern. She may have borrowed the fur stole as a prop – we will never know, but she was an ordinary crofting woman living a simple life – often, I think a hard life, but meaningful.

You can see my initial findings of Susan on my blog here –

I have attached the following images with this post – the colours and a close up image of the colour blended motif in the knitted hat. The image of Susan serenely captured in her Christmas Card – ‘Good Wishes for the New Year’ which will be on the cover of the knitting pattern plus research images of Susan’s family tree.

I will be adding more pieces to accompany this knitted hat and I hope that this has opened your heart to a Shetland Woman and to knitting with colour inspired by the landscapes of the people that lived here.

I will publish this pattern on Ravelry on Friday 27^th November

I teach colour blending workshops and yoke sampling workshops. I hope to teach them in person next year and also offer workshops during wool week.

7^th December, 2021

When I look back at my journal entry about the ‘Good Wishes for the New Year’ hat pattern, I see how much integrity and love went into that design. It is not just a knitting pattern or the unearthing of a story – it was a true connection to a life lived within the house that I lived in and to my love of it. How many people really do and feel that?

I published the Good Wishes for the New Year hat pattern last November. So many people have knitted it and after my online workshops to teach colour blending, participants have been developing their own colour choices within the pattern and it makes me smile to see everyone else developing their colour blending practice.

Now, in between finding a home, rehoming my cats, looking for, applying for, interviewing for and not getting jobs. I am turning once again to this Good Wishes hat and I am developing it into the beret that I hoped at the beginning of last november.

I feel grateful for the chance to have met Susan Halcrow and honour her in some small way with the new design which is a beret in greens and mulberry colours.

If I don’t write here again before Christmas, – I want to say Good wishes for Christmas and the New year and thanks to everyone who has bought a pattern and attended a workshop. I have genuinely enjoyed meeting everyone from all over the world. Tracey 😊

here is the original hat – Good wishes for the new year

and here is the start of the new one.

when I left Smola on 23rd October 2021, I also left the saltware jug with the Pewter lid. This is the last photo that I took in the house before the cats and I left the house for the long journey back south. It is Alfie, mirrored below Susan’s jug.

A house of two women.

July 2021

In September 2020, I moved to a croft house in Levenwick and began, more or less immediately, to research the people that had lived here before me. Through conversations with local people, the return of photographs and pottery and 8 sessions in Shetland Museum Archives, I found that the Halcrow family had lived here from the mid 1800’s until 1960. I became particularly interested in researching a woman called Susan (Cissie) b1876 – d1960 who lived in my croft house for 83 years – and after her parents and brother died, from 1916, she was alone. She made the fire in the hearth, grew things, opened the old latch door and looked out to sea every day, as I now do, also as a single woman. Susan was the last of three generations of the Halcrow family to live in this house and she lived through some of the most recorded changeable times in Shetland history.

Through this new frame of mine, I began to write a story of two women living in the same house over a century apart. I began to write and research through my own lived experiences, diarised in a daily practice of writing. I researched a story of Susan, this house and Shetland, juxtaposed with my own lived experiences in the same house and out of that story, I knitted a pattern for Susan. When I look at Susan’s face in any of the photographs that I have been given, she looks calm, serene and has a real beauty about her. The glint in her eye was there to the end.

I was awarded a VACMA award. (Visual Arts Craft MakersAward) to write the story of Susan and myself living in this house over a century apart and to design a knitted piece dedicated to Susan Halcrow. I have made a neat little pullover dedicated to her, with her in mind. The jumper hopes to embody the natural elements of Shetland and how serene and calm Susan looked – always smart, usually wearing a brooch or collar when photographed outside the house. The body of the jumper is inspired by the colours of the Shetland seas of turquoise, aqua, greens and all the blues you could ever imagine and I wanted the yoke to be jewel-like. It is a knitting recipe of light, wind, the sea, yarn, Shetland life and a woman called Susan as well as my own creative practice. My creative practice is a way of expressing my life through the art of storytelling and technology of knitting and through the use of expressive colour.

I would like to thank Shetland Arts and Creative Scotland for supporting this project – for me, it is a thing of great beauty – not only the design but the 15 page story of Susan and I. The writing of this work has been a research and a personal journey written in letters to Susan. If you are interested in the knitting pattern, it is available on ravelry (with the story too).

Big love from Shetland in these long summer days. Tracey.

For the knitting pattern and 15 page story

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dear-susan

Susan, Smola and me.

As a reader of my blogs, you’ll know that in September 2020, I moved to a croft house in Levenwick, Shetland. It has been a busy 7 months, buying a car, driving a car again after 12 years of not doing so, restoring the south bedroom to its original floor and fireplace and to a more relaxed palette, applying for work, getting project co-ordinator jobs, developing, devising and presenting successful online knitting workshops, digging out a byre, sieving soil, learning how to get furniture to an island parallel to Norway, that although is technically in the UK, it is miles away from London and finding that deliveries do not easily arrive on this island.

As well as living here, I have been researching Susan Halcrow and her parents and paternal grandparents who lived in this house for 3 generations from the early 1800’s. I’m particularly interested in researching Susan (Cissie) b1876, d1960 who was born in this house and lived here alone after her parents died early 1908 and 1914 and then her brother died in the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

I, as Susan did, make the fire in the hearth, grow things, open the latch door and look out to sea every day. We both live and lived here as single women.

Through this new frame of mine, my Shetland practice became entirely local (Shetland) based and I began to want to develop a digital written piece with an online knitted design created through my own (phenomenological) lived experiences of living in the same house that Susan had. I diarised my life in small chapters related to the morning or light, or sun rises or moon and frequently of the wind. Through a daily practice of experiential writing, I began to wonder about Susan and her life by researching photographs of her and working on a small colour blending knitting design. That pattern became, Good Wishes for the New Year and it was exactly that – all about Susan.

But, I wanted to develop a deeper understanding underpinned by archival researching of her and her family to write my story of Susan, this house and Shetland, juxtaposed with my own lived experiences in the same house and to share it internationally. This can never be The story because I cannot talk with her but it will be a story to honour a woman who lived a long life within this house.

At the end of January, I read about The Visual Artist and Craft Makers Awards (VACMA) which is a programme of small grants schemes with a range of local authorities and art agencies across Scotland to support Scotland-based visual artists and craft makers in their creative and professional development. I had become really interested in the idea of writing a booklet about Susan and I living in the same house about 140 years apart. And to write part of the story through the experience of developing a knitting design with Susan in mind.

So, I applied for a Visual Arts and Craft Maker Award (VACMA) 2 days before the closing date, and submitted by the skin of my teeth on 2^nd February. The application flowed because this is real for me. I don’t have to make this up, it is my life, my home, seen alongside a very real woman who lived here – I just have to find the right way to write it.

I hope to creatively experiment through an auto ethnographic practice (personal experience in order to understand cultural experience) to enable me produce a 16-page digital booklet about the real life of 2 single women in different times living in the same house (140 years apart).

I will be experimenting with written word, photography and knitted design to tell our linked stories and I will also include a pattern design in the booklet. The project will bring together my previous 5 year’s skills and experiences, my Masters, Artist Residencies and my move to Shetland in an ongoing commitment to my creative practice.

Within time, I received an email from Shetland Arts to say that my VACMA application was successful, which I was over the moon about. To enable me to dedicate time to the project, I stopped all online teaching colour blending workshops until the end of May to give me time to knit the sample, research the family in the Archives at the Museum and to design the pattern and to write this work as beautifully as possible.

Though, from next week, my part time job has increased hours and I also volunteer at Women’s Aid too so I’m finding life very busy and full on but still, without fail, this booklet, the writing, research, design and knitting has been on my mind every day since February. I’ve been to the archives 4 times, I write when I can, I have, tonight, just finished the sample knit which has two different sleeve finishes and uses two types of yarn – as a sample, I am happy. The pullover will develop into another piece. I have a wonderful test knitter, Cait, from Cream City Yarn, a wonderful yarn shop and creative knitting space in a one-room schoolhouse located in the suburbs of Milwaukee.

Maybe the booklet doesn’t need a knitting pattern design in it, but a recipe of life in this house, and of knitting and two women.

This project is supported by VACMA from Creative Scotland, Shetland Arts and Shetland Islands Council

Online knitting workshops

Colour Blending workshops.

For some time now, I have been thinking of doing online Colour Blending Workshops with Fair Isle knitting. Colour seems to be my thing in knitting. I’ll never be as good a knitter as the Shetland ladies but I do have a sense of freedom with colour ideas and I think that is because I come from down south and have never been taught traditional ways. I see in colour from the place I live, the sky, the sea, the reflection in the windows, the beaches, the soil. I incorporate these colours into my designs which are always inspired by Shetland.

I was approached by one of my lovely Patreon supporters to see if I would be able to zoom a meeting with her and her friends on colour blending. One of the good things that has come out of COVID is that we are all now becoming more familiar with online meetings. I often video meet with friends from Sheffield and Fair Isle on WhatsApp or FB messenger. My son also messages, my daughter is more in hiding from me – sometimes I can corner her. The connection gives real time conversations and a chance to catch up – especially when you live alone – you feel less alone. Verity and I make tea at the same time – Mati and I sometimes knit, my son usually looks online whilst talking with me. I love this – a natural conversation whilst sometimes doing other things. I’m mostly eating.

I had been thinking of Zoom workshops but knew I had to subscribe to carry out workshops of over 40 minutes – today, I subscribed. It feels a big leap. It feels good. I feel ready.

On Saturday 23^rd Jan, I will be carrying out a workshop with the lovely ladies from Canada and on Sunday 24^th, I’ll be zooming with UK ladies – so now there will be no stopping me.

Here are some of the workshops that I am thinking of

Swatch Book Saturday
Shetland Saturday catch up – show me what you got.
Colour blending
Yoke sampling (that’s not an egg yolk) it’s for cardis.
Norwegian Star cushion making

If you would like a 1:1 workshop – I’m set up. If you would like to have a specific workshop with your knitting group or guild – let me know, I’m ready.

If you are an individual and would like to join one of my workshops with other lovely participants – then you’re welcome. Just contact me through this site or email me at the email at the end of this post 😊

The workshops will be interactive BYOY –(Bring your own yarn), informative, skills based and time for fun and questions. In the workshops, we won’t be ‘knitting’ but looking at colour and how to blend. I used to teach English in China and here in the UK, I have devised my first workshop session for Colour Blending – here is the core of it –

This is a design workshop where you will learn the skills and gain experience to enable you to blend colours and design your own samples of Shetland traditional tree and star yoke patterns. It’s a fun creative session to experiment with colour in Fair Isle knitting to take forward to create your own swatches for future projects. You’ll be able to throw yourselves into the many colours of yarn on offer to us and you will look at your stash of yarn with a different eye. We will look at a traditional Shetland tree and star pattern, used on Shetland cardigans and jumpers, and at examples of Fair Isle knitting including Yokes, flat knitting and knitting in the round. I will show you real examples of Shetland and Fair Isle knitting and design pattern books and explain how I blend colours.

This workshop will aim to work towards you making a hat using your colour ideas. I will show you how to work on your own idea and choose a tree and star pattern and colours for colour blending so that you can make your own colour combinations that work really work well for you.

At this online workshop, you will learn: –

How to see colour / tone / contrast
How to blend colours in your knitting to create a harmonious pattern.
How to get excited about colour and not frightened
How I take inspiration from my Shetland surroundings to design using colour as a base starting point.
If you love colour and textiles, you will enjoy the opportunity for experimentation

I am looking to carryout February Online Colour Blending workshops on

6^th, 7^th, 2oth and 21st Feb – 10am – 12noon for UK participants or 3pm Shetland time 10am Canadian time and anywhere in between. If you have a group, we can figure out the time.

If you are interested, please contact me using the contact form or email me on traceydoxey@hotmail.com

My knitting designs are here.

Ravelry: Designs by Tracey Doxey

take a look – you’ll see lots of easy colour blending projects. Sea Urchin hat is almost one year old and a beautiful traditional Yoke pattern which is perfect for colour blending.

Blue Winter

Blue light

This weekend has been all about a northern Winter, blue light, snowfall, walking to the top of the hill, and scraping the ceiling.

Two of us have had an attempt at sanding paint off the ceiling now. I bought a fairly expensive belt sander and duly plugged it in and hit the ceiling with it. Holding 3kg up above your head whilst wearing goggles and a face mask, standing on a chair, is testing to say the least. It didn’t work. So I started scraping the paint with a ‘magic scraper’ but it wasn’t magic at all, then Nitromorsing, then I paid a man to have a go at sanding and in one hour the entire room was filled with paint flakes and dust but there was nothing in the dust bag and some areas were sanded but more paint was still left on the ceiling and it was all looking very intact with 50 years of rippled paint beaming down at me. He said it couldn’t be done and to go over it with another ceiling. I thought about it. I poked and wiped a little area clean on the glass in the window so that I could see out, heart slightly sinking at the magnitude of it all – then shut the door for two days.

Saturday, I returned to the ceiling with fresh vigour, armed with new paint stripper and optimistic hope. Somehow, I had forgotten the midweek sinking feeling. Two hours later, there is little effect on the paint from the paint stripper and scraping so I pick up the sander again. Whilst sanding above my head, I can feel my stomach muscles tightening to hold the weight of it all and to balance – maybe this hideous act of restoration can be exercise too. Saturday tea time, I close the bedroom door and shower off the dust.

Sunday, I wake to more fresh snow and decide to ignore the bedroom ceiling until I have walked to the top of the hill which overlooks both Levenwick on the East and St Ninian’s Isle on the West side of Shetland. On passing Jimmy’s, I catch him feeding the birds and mention that I’m walking to the top of the hill and the abandoned mast – just in case I never return and I’m either in a blizzard or lost or slipped or dead – I’m on the hill, right? I’ll call in on the way home to let him know I survived. Living alone risk assessment – it’s a good idea to tell someone where you are going when it’s remote and there’s bad weather. In my bag I packed a little back up 1. a newly recharged domed torch that sticks to the fridge and can flash. I figure this is a good idea in cases I need to flag down a helicopter. 2. a foil blanket in case I get caught out and need to hide under something. 3. a flask of tea. No money and no chocolate.

I’ve not left the village before the first blizzard of sharp harsh hailstones, bigger than pepper corns, lashes across the land from the West. I take shelter against a wall in an old, roofless shearing shed.

Even I think it’s a stupid idea and I know Jimmy will be looking out of his window wondering where I am. After ten minutes, there’s a seasonal change from harsh winter blizzard with hail to calmness and a speck of blue sky so I set off again. The blue light is reflected on the new snowfall, which reflects back a whiteness. Pink edged, dark grey filled clouds begin to surround me, there is a faint sound of wind but it is positively calm compared to 5 minutes ago. Out to sea, a snow storm rages. I can see it pouring, sieve like in vertical strands connecting cloud to sea. I’ve begun to watch the shape and colour of the cloud formation indicating the weather in that particular spot.

Only two sets of foot prints have been before me – one of human and the other of a large dog. The pink frills edging the clouds become peach then fiery gold – the sun, suspended in the moment, is hiding somewhere behind the snow clouds colouring the cloud edges burning them into a golden light. Whilst writing, the paper page turns pink from the reflection of the clouds many, many miles away.

I am the only living human on this great hill – I know this for sure because there are no other footprints. Sheep follow alongside. Abandoned snow topped peat banks to my right marking what would have once been a busy place. To the north, the sky is one sheet of orange/ grey, as if fire smoke and to the South, dark rolling fog coming towards me. It is magical to see the earth’s weather system for miles in both directions – doing different things. The southern weather becomes quite frightening to watch – as if a harsh storm is rolling uncontrollably covering everything in its path. On the hill, I’m hoping for a view of St. Ninian’s Isle but the likelihood is becoming slim. I now begin to look for possible shelter – not even a building but a wall.

The ice on the road is frozen like the waves of a sea. Frozen ripples with small snow drifts at either side. The light is blue – not the sky, but the light itself. The ice is too slippery so I walk in the snow alongside.

Slowly, slowly, not entirely walking but meandering, Bowie on a loop in my head, I reach my goal of the abandoned telegraph masts at the top of the hill with 360 degree view at exactly the same time new hail as sharp as nail points stab my face. The wind howls and whistles around the masts. Briefly, I look over the edge of the cliff to St, Ninian’s way down below – a perfect natural tombolo beach visible from above.

I turn, to face away from the instant hail storm then start the return journey. It’s easier going back downhill.

Bleak blue light

Coldness on my back from the chasing wind. The sea, way below, ahead of me is now a deep Navy Blue. The storm sky has coloured it. At ground level, snow falls gently, sheltered by the hill and for now, the wind has subsided.

Back to the sander and dust storm.

A Shetland sunrise

6:25am. A calm, slightly damp, silent, start of a day, with a waft of wind around my bare legs.

The one star left, after the star-studded sky has evaporated, is high and to my right – it may be a planet, I need to learn. Last night, at 3am, the Plough, ploughing amongst a sky of stars, I, noticing its different position to that when I was in Sheffield.

Here, 60 degrees north, the tilt of my view is different, sharper, present. On opening the door, in dressing gown, slippers and down coat, I’m greeted by a peachy ribbon hugging the sea top and sky bottom, falling temporarily in its homemade fold in the Earth’s atmosphere. Since moving here, it has been my greatest pleasure to be greeted by a line of colour dividing earth from sea – this is on lucky weather days. Some days, there is no differentiation between either. Almost seven weeks since I arrived and my first waking moment has never changed. I look out to sea, to the horizon, in search of a sunrise.

I have renamed the bench a Thinking Bench, rather than a Procrastination Bench. I procrastinated in that quiet garden in Sheffield, here, I view the changing light, devouring its fleeting moments.

This place is not an easy place to live but I am alive by its weather challenges and gift of light because it is becoming briefer at this point of the world. Nothing is missed, nothing taken for granted, nothing is sure – the changing light is a gift.

The door is open. Shetland

If you are interested in visiting this part of the island – bookings are open from spring time for single traveling, exploring ladies who want to experience this part of the world in a safe, unique house by the sea. Air B&B offer 20% off for the first 3 bookers. https://airbnb.com/h/levenwick

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art …

W.B. Yeats – Preface to Celtic Twilight, 1893

At times, I am an artist who has, on occasion, created small, site-specific worlds in abandoned croft houses across Shetland as a response to the researched details in the realities of stories which I seek, hear, see and experience. My art is a respectful conversation with the women who used to live in those beautiful places. I have an instinctive autoethnographic response in writing, site-specific films and photographs by using textiles, hand block prints and words. If I make art, this is currently my artistic practice, evolved from years of embedding myself within other cultures and places including Shetland and China.

When, as a mature student at art school, a wise man who lived a stone’s throw from my house (once a Provost of Derby Cathedral then a retiring Vicar on the Chatsworth Estate), said to me, ‘I read widely, if somewhat cursorily,’¹ I was reading Winterson and he, Dostoevsky. On that comment, we swapped books, I went home and looked up the word cursorily in the dictionary and began my love of existential works – he read a modern ground-breaking 90’s book on sexual Identity and love; this was some time in 1996, he in his 80’s, me just turned 30.

Exuding wisdom, not always in what he said, but how he thought and mostly his ever open, learning mind was a turning point in my life and our conversations became somewhat magnetic for me.

Every now and again, this man, now long dead, returns to me either in the form of a found note, the gift of a book, a photograph, or lead chandelier crystals. As he handed over the large prism crystals and cut nuggets that were once part of something larger but now lingering in an old shoe box in his shed, he said, ‘Tracey, never sell these, I had them during my grandiose period.’² I, who don’t even remember what I did on Saturday, remember these words and both moments as if he had just spoken whilst sitting next to me on this bench in Sheffield. Words that have shaped every year of my life since spoken.

But he didn’t speak to me here, his memory does. I have hung those crystals in windows of every place I have ever lived in the 25 years since the he said that line, including in the old hutongs of Beijing and Suzhou. He is not my story – I can tell you another.

In 2008, after 3 months of living in China, I found out that my partner was cheating on me whilst I was working full-time. At first, I fell down, felt my heart damaged, tightened and fractured but after telling my Chinese friend, a Buddhist barber who lived in a one roomed house in the old hutongs of Suzhou for 50 years, he sat down and in front of me, wrote me a note in full Mandarin which I had translated at work. He wrote, ‘There’s an old saying in China and Buddhists say it too. Falling down is not terrible. The terrible thing is that you don’t stand up in time. You should stand up and brush off the dust and go on walking proudly as you used to do’.³ He also told me to let it go.

5 years after this conversation, I travelled over 3,000 miles to meet him on an ancient bridge in the old hutong lanes of Suzhou. He didn’t know that I was revisiting China, there was no way of contacting him, he hadn’t seen me in 5 years, he was walking with his head down, he raised his head, raised his arm in greeting and his eyes spoke.

Now, I think of the strange impossibility of both men meeting and talking together. I don’t know if they would meet in the heat of China or the well-heeled sitting room of a Chatsworth vicarage but what deeply moving stories they would have recalled for each other. Wise, Christian, Mr Beddoes, beady hawk-eyes twinkling at the sheer marvelousness of the opportunity to speak with the ever deeply calm Cai Gen Lin, his Buddhist chanting songs playing in the background of his one roomed house, 24 hours a day – both religious men responding to the other with great respect, without speaking each other’s spoken language but speaking through their understanding, eyes, hands, gestures and intrinsic visible knowledge. Their stories flowing – neither could ever imagine – such worlds, religions, lifestyles and cultures so far apart both in distance and lifestyles from their own – that only words could bring them close enough to feel those distant worlds. Imagine THAT story – I am their link. I suppose, in a way, I am their story.

Yet, I have sat in silence with Cai Gen Lin and felt and known his worlds in China as I sat with Mr Beddoes in the scullery drinking warmed up old coffee on the stove hiding from people knocking at the door.

And then there are the stories of Shetland from my repeated visits between 2015/19 to listen to the oral histories of the old knitters and found that they mostly did not want to share their stories because they thought that I would steal them and their knitting patterns which, during my R&D trip in 2018, raised the question of, ‘Who owns words once they are said?’

I have so many stories inside of me – so many seen and understood lives.

I want to create the daughter of Hope and Memory – Art- but this may now be through words and not images.

Notes:

The Very Reverend Ronald Beddoes, circa 1995 in the old vicarage, Edensor Village, Chatsworth Estate. b. 1912 d. 2000
The Very Reverend Ronald Beddoes, circa 1995 in the old vicarage garden shed, Edensor Village, Chatsworth Estate. b. 1912 d. 2000
Cai Gen Lin, The Old lane by the bridge off Ping Jiang Lu, Suzhou, China, March 30^th 2009 b. 1945, the 2^nd child of 9, when China was still in Civil War.

me – 57th Birthday on Stanage Edge, Peak District.

Dare Greatly

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

This quote, for me, is not only empowering during my trying to sell my home in Sheffield and move to a tiny house in Shetland, without seeing or feeling it, but it sums up my story.

I feel that there are critics of what I am trying to do. I feel there are non supporters, and worse, I feel there are people who say they want to help but really don’t BUT and more IMPORTANTLY, above all that, I have such love and support from friends who listen, ask how it’s going, check in on me because, as with most great risks I have taken, I am doing this alone. I am grateful for that support of those people

I want to thank anyone who has bought any of the patterns that I have designed –

In the meantime, I am trying to get to this dream of a new life in Shetland – a life built on over 6 years of returning and building experiences. It is not easy selling a property in lock down, recession, fear, job losses and a pandemic but I am trying with everything to make this happen. Here is a link to the original post

I sure know that I am in the Arena and if I fail, I will have dared greatly.