Shetland – tracey doxey

Fiona Blue

One month of knitting, writing, remembering and the colour blue.

It is the 30^th April – It has been one week and one day, since the sudden death of a great Shetland friend and two weeks since I received a message from her telling me that she had just received results from a CT scan and ultimately, her diagnosis. The above post on Instagram by her daughter, Susan.

Fiona was kind, loving, supportive, honest and intuitive as well as being creative. She reached out to me when I was living in Shetland and offered me the hand of friendship and the loyal ear of a friend.

Just before I left Shetland, we arranged to meet on Bressay, where she lived. I caught the seven minute inter island ferry from Lerwick to Bressay and she met me off the boat. We did beautiful ordinary things – we went to the Speldiburn café for a cuppa and a look at her many weaving, knitting and sewing projects on view there, particularly the lace. She bought cake for Peter and us. With her, I found a safe harbour in which to share my thoughts about leaving the island. To be able to share thoughts in words with others whilst living on the island, was rare for me. A couple of people were the only ones I could share in what I was feeling at the end of my stay in Levenwick. Fiona already understood without me saying anything.

After I left Shetland, to return to the city, we kept in touch and she supported me in every way, checking in on me and joining my online workshops and follow up re group sessions. We both supported charities with our ability to sell creativity – and even at the end of February, we both sent £625 each to the British Red Cross to support the earth quake disaster in Turkey / Syrian border. I sold knitting patterns and Fiona wove cloth in the colours of both countries and made the fabric into little cosmetic purses. In February, she seemed well and active. So, it was a great shock to me that Fiona messaged me on Sunday 16^th April with the saddest and bravest message I have ever read in my life. I couldn’t understand the message – read it three times then asked my friend to explain it to me. It highlighted her scan results and that she wasn’t angry or frustrated. That she had lived a beautiful life with love around her in a beautiful home. I messaged her back to ask if I could call, but Fiona had family staying and was understandably tired, so we arranged a call on the Thursday, only four days later. I sent her a little gift. But things changed, by Wednesday, Fiona was in Lerwick Gilbert Bain, hospital in and out of consciousness, so I couldn’t call on Thursday and by Friday, she had stopped eating and drinking and on Saturday morning, 22^nd April, 6 days after her message to me, Fiona died. Understandably, her partner and daughter were devastated by this shocking loss; they had not left her side for a week.

I was also devestated at this cruel turn.

The decline was so fast straight after a shocking out of the blue diagnosis that I was left sifting through a thousand thoughts on loss and waste and why and how? I could hardly breathe and felt winded, almost punched by extreme sadness. The strength of my feelings, I now understand coming from experiencing the kindness of a woman who cared about everyone, her family, community and even me and now she was gone. Gone. She was one of life’s unconditional givers, she was positive, engaged and engaging, creative, loving and enjoyed her life. She was too young to die – yet, in her message to me, she said that she wasn’t angry or frustrated by the CT scan findings. But I was.

I now realise that the message she sent me on 16th April, was a goodbye.

After Susan (Fiona’s daughter) messaged on the Saturday, to say that she had died, I drove the car from the city to Bretton, to a little pub called the Barrel Inn overlooking the valley and there, the hang gliders were swooping low and rising high in the thermals. It was cold and windy – just like Shetland, and there, sitting on a bench, periodically crying, below the gliders, I truly felt the presence of Fiona rising in the winds, swirling, swooping free. She was in the wind, then, she was the wind.

gliding below a great sun and sun halo

Fiona had the bluest of eyes. So blue.

I haven’t knitted anything new for some time, haven’t felt like it or had the need to but I felt compelled to try to make some attempt to capture the pure blue eyes and the joy of Fiona. I am adapting a previous pattern of mine – Smola beanie, scarf and gloves – from when I lived in Shetland. I was going to knit socks but thought they would be too chunky in shoes or boots so I adapted the pattern into little mitts. The pattern has developed into symmetry.

It is called Fiona Blue

There have been days, before and since her death, when I have heard Fiona’s words, gently correcting any negative bias I have into positive thoughts. She had a knack for doing that, like, ending some of my sentences with – Not Yet.

Here, is to a wonderful woman – Fiona – sadly and greatly missed 1,000 miles away. Just thank you for being kind. I think I will find you in the winds.

22nd April – Max Richter – Earth Day – the day Fiona died, I started knitting.

8th May – The little pattern that I have knitted is here. It took many hours to design, write, balance, make symetrical for two hands, and knit to as good as I can make them for Fiona. A wonderful test knitter (Karensprenger on instagram has test knitted these mitts, Karen is from Sheffield and both she and Erickaeckles on instagram have gone over the text and charts of the pattern for me – both of whom have taken my online colour blending workshops and both chose their own colours for this pattern and I will share them on Instagram.

Friday 19th May – I have finally finished writing, photographing and knitting the little Mitts in honour of Fiona. Here they are with the blue glass star that Fiona gave me as a leaving Shetland present. Here is the pattern

In total, I knitted 3 mitts. The first one, needed alterations on the thumb placement and cast off. Then I made a new left mitt and then a new right one. The last one is the neatest.

The pattern includes photo tutorials on how to make the little thumb and here is a quick clip of those stages.

make a little thumb

I have decided that after paypal have taken their cut and after Ravelry have charged me for each sale – I will donate 50% of the income money that this little pattern makes (about £1.50 per pattern) over the next month over May and June to Macmillan Cancer support.

Macmillan Cancer Support | The UK’s leading cancer care charity

wallpaper #peggyangus.

I called the pattern, Fiona Blue, and it is here https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fiona-blue

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

lambing – 2021 – extract.

May. It’s faintly snowing. The old ginger cat sits upon the second rung of a ladder to get off the cold ground.

Puffins are everywhere about the island, particularly at the north end, so I walk to sit with a hundred or so, amongst their burrows just above north haven beach. Three are in a huddle, clattering their beaks together. Their movements and sounds make me smile.

From the hill, a ewe is calling and calling for her lost lamb. It’s not long before I come upon it. Stomach ripped open by a black backed gull, its innards freshly eaten and its ribcage picked clean. What can I do?

At the croft, the caddy lamb and the orphan lamb are in the garden hard box pen, bleating before the four hours’ time up for the next feed, just as a baby does. They follow us clattering around the kitchen floor on their hoof toes, their stomachs bloated from the formula milk, ready to pop.

The dog is barking at nothing in particular.

The woman is in the kitchen and the man has gone to sea.

Familiarity of the small flock as if family.

Early evening, in the lambing park, when the heaving of the birth pushing and the pulling of the lamb that could not be born, I sink in the mud to sit at the head of the ewe to stroke her forehead between her bulging eyes, making comforting noises to sooth an animal that would normally run away from me.

Any woman who has given birth would empathetically feel the movement of the heaving and grunting of the ewe against or with each contraction. The young man, having not yet been a father, gently waits for the contraction to subside, allowing the ewe to release so that he may pull the unborn lamb again. The ewe pants and groans repeatedly at the man aiding the birth of the big lamb, too big for the mother, having been crossed with a huge texel. I cannot look at the sagging birth hole, the birthing sack coming away, the placenta hanging like a blood liver that she will turn to eat, to stop the buzzards from coming to feast, first on the blood sack then on the new born.

She turns away, so, her head is forced towards to the limp new born to lick a love connection but the ewe, lifeless from the shattering, traumatising, experience, lies unmoving with fearful and unknowing eyes, neither lifting her head nor licking the new lamb. The limp new life in front bleating –

I think,

But…

you are both alive,

you both still live.

The woman pushing and pushing for hours and days in labour, at the young age of 23 years, her first child, big in the womb, stuck back-to-back, until she is lifeless after the rupture and eclamptic fit. Surgeons cutting, nurses monitoring, air is given, the baby is ripped out with forceps, mother unresponsive slips into unconsciousness. Two days later, after finally waking, the baby is passed to me like a lamb wrapped in the skin of another, with the words, ‘this is your son’.

At the side of the lamb being born on FI, I think of Levenwick last week, where the young man, without any feeling or kindness grabbed the new mother ewe by the scruff of the neck, her back legs skidding on her blood and urine collected in pools in the back of the truck, she, pushed into a pen in the lambing shed that was once a house. The new lamb is brought in behind her, hanging by its back legs.

Welcome to the world young one covered in yellow sticky sack of life only minutes old, blood threads entwined bleating for dear life.

Shetland, Fair Isle

Learn, live, grow

I have returned to Shetland, initially on the invitation of Mati because she was heading off Fair Isle for a trip off the Island and offered me a couple of weeks to stay in her house, look after Lola and the cats and write – that changed for her but the dates for me did not.

I travelled to Shetland, ironically, or not, exactly two years to the day of travelling the same journey to live on the Island in the house I bought in Levenwick. On that journey, in 2020, I travelled north by car and the North Link ferry with my beloved cats – I was filled with hope and excitement at a new life by the sea. But, I left the island 13 months later, and in many ways, I am still coming to terms with those 2 years. I never thought that I would do this return journey to Shetland after selling up and leaving, but here I am, back again. There is something that seems to draw me back to this extreme place – I think, maybe, it is love, which, in itself, shows me that my move to live here was the right one at that time.

When I booked all of the details to get here, three planes, two taxis, one bus, and a car and an overnight in Lerwick (and the same for the return), I wasn’t really feeling much at all, then, when the final detail was arranged, I almost felt excited.

Each stage of the travel up north began to remind me how far, both geographically and emotionally, I have moved. When the 32 seater plane touched down at Sumburgh, I felt slightly emotional, as if coming home. This surge of, almost tearful, emotion has happened to me every single time of returning to Shetland since 2016 – usually on the top deck of the Northlink when passing Bressay lighthouse. Maybe the feeling was relief that I made it after all the practical things that could alter on such a long journey or maybe it was connecting with an island that I do know intimately after living here – walking West Voe beach by the airstrip and watching the planes coming in or when collecting buckies at Grutness waving to the many different aircrafts that flew overheard. So many things have happened here for me. Or maybe, it was the emotion of meeting a long lost friend – the islands of Shetland. My connection runs deep to the islands, as deep as with my most precious son and daughter. If this is the case, then, the emotion I felt on landing is one of love.

My next emotional meeting to overcome was catching the bus from Sumburgh to Lerwick because it diverts to go through Levenwick, right past my old house but somehow, I was offered a lift by a visiting councillor in the taxi – I accepted. This meant that we didn’t painfully and slowly drive through Levenwick, stop outside Jimmy’s house where I walked his dog every day, then, opposite Herbert’s old house, at the shop where you can’t really buy anything in date, and then by the surgery. The taxi passed, unemotionally and unconnectedly, above the hamlet of Levenwick, on the one and only road south to north, onward to Lerwick. When we passed the village, at a fair speed, I fleetingly caught sight of the community hall and the foot-channelled, tufted grass path beside it that I walked every day for over a year, to the beautiful crescent beach and I felt nothing. I have no idea how some emotions build or slip away but I really just looked over my shoulder, then concentrated looking forward as the taxi driver cut almost every corner possible. I thought of all the road kill I had seen on this road to Lerwick over the 13 months of living here, mostly hedgehogs by the dozen, birds, and one day a magnificent otter. I sat in the back of the taxi whilst the councillor and the driver talked of things I could not hear and wasn’t interested in.

They dropped me at the Lerwick hotel. I got out, thanked them then walked to the hostel. In Lerwick, I couldn’t believe that the Queen had died. I shared this disbelief with the lady at Isleburgh hall, reception who stoically replied, ‘well, she lived a long life and she’ll get a good send off.’ Which put an end to any additional conversation and, in itself was not incorrect but I felt a little sharp or matter of fact or just plain Shetland pragmatism. This far up north, whatever you think of the United Kingdom, here is a very different land, structure and feeling – especially to royalty, Boris or Liz, or bank holidays. I kept the thoughts of the Queen to myself and shared them with my kids and my lovely neighbour looking after my boys back home. Home seemed a long way away with different thoughts and feelings to that of here. At home, the Queen means something even to folks who don’t care about royalty. The Queen was a very special woman in her own right and our country of England will miss her presence and continuity.

It didn’t feel strange to be back in Lerwick at all, I didn’t bother with walking around – there was no point, the whole reason for being here was for a stopover before the plane from Tingwall to Fair Isle.

In the morning, before sunrise, Bains beach called. It is a small place of great beauty in the town. Always crystalline in clear turquoise water, crescent in beach and clear in view towards the island of Bressay, (even if fog) Bains beach is flanked by The Queens Hotel and the most famous house on the island – the Lodberry or Perez’s house. I think it must be the most photographed house in Shetland too. What a rich and full life these places have had, going back centuries. Both buildings have stone stores built in to the sea. I remember my first visit back in 2015 where I found out that Jimmy Moncrieff, his brother and parent’s used to live in the Lodberry. His brother still does. I called Jimmy at his office at the Amenity Trust and went to visit him. He photocopied information about the Lodberries and I suppose my love of Shetland started around that time, Sept 2015. In January, 2016, I returned for Up Helly Aa and Jimmy got myself and a friend tickets for one of the hall’s dancing and party all night. Since then, I have built up my love of Shetland to the point of buying a home, living by the sea and leaving again.

I was lucky with the flight from Tingwall to Fair Isle. They sometimes don’t go because of wind or wind or even more wind and sometimes, they are delayed. The flight on Friday was a dream flight. 25 minutes inside, over and below blue – blue plane, blue sea, blue sky, blue clouds, little wind – perfect conditions. We landed and I was greeted by people I have long known who both live and work on the island of Fair Isle in a number of jobs. One of them being Fire officers to meet the plane or guide it in. Fair Isle islanders work really hard, in all weathers, relentlessly. Their commitment to community is extra and above. Without the community working together to make things work, no one could live here – as it is, I think there are about 50 islanders though the island population is now swelled by contractors working on the water and building the new Bird Observatory after it burned down in 2019. They are an impressive bunch of people with a vast array of skills to survive here. I think that these extra characteristics are some of the things that I also fell in love with here. Shetland creates stoic, pragmatic people who survive in the harshest of conditions as well as the most beautiful extreme terrains.

perfect

This trip, I felt was to ‘draw a line’ so to speak, on my whole Shetland life but since being here, I find that Shetland, in all its many facets, is in my heart, though my emotions are like a pendulum, anxious at all the wind again, drinking in the familiar sights and enjoying the unexpected. But I do know where I am best placed now, and it is not in Shetland. I nipped for a cup of tea with Marie, she mentioned that I am maybe ‘closing the circle’ and that seems a really nice way of looking at this whole cycle and journey in my life.

As my stay on Fair Isle beds in, I note that I fluctuate from bitter/sweet thoughts about my life 60 degrees north and wonder how I could have made it better for myself when I lived here, but really, on my own, I could not have sustained it for another ten years and I missed access to my son and daughter. The isolation and the relentless wild winds began to drive me crazy.

We are guided by the weather here. Holidaying or staying for a few weeks or even months is not fully understanding what it is to live here. So many things affect a life on the islands, least of all the weather and quite frankly, that part is enormous.

For now, I am beyond grateful to have returned to both Shetland and this rock 3 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, to have friends who welcome me, to have a place of great beauty and creativity to stay and think and breathe. It is a gift of love, learning, personal growth and time.

If you are a knitter and would like to knit any of my small patterns, I am offereing 20% off all patterns on ravelry, while I am here on Fair Isle, link here

finding Smola and a new life in 2020

Two years ago, I was chasing a dream. I made that dream a reality and will now begin to write its story. Here is an overview of what happened to make the dream happen, seemingly so long ago. It feels as if a life time has passed but I have a story to tell and here is the beginning.

At the beginning of March 2020, I began to receive multiple messages from friends on different platforms with a link to a tiny old house which faced the sea and was for sale in Levenwick in Shetland.

The house was called Smola.

At that time, I should have been in Lerwick anyway but I wasn’t because the hostel had finally understood the magnitude of Corona Virus and realised that having 12 people sleeping in each dorm was not the best idea in a pandemic. They finally closed on 16th March, informing me with a telephone call, I was already booked on to the train and ferry on the 17th March and was due for an interview on 19th at the Shetland College. All this changed and cancellation happened overnight because of the Virus which we are all now well familiar with but then had no idea of. I’d called both the hostel and the college repeatedly the week before to check they were still open – travelling 850 miles was a risk for me during COVID too but the hostel had said they were still open and the college receptionist said that they were waiting for hand sanitiser to arrive but the college was open. Waves of knowledge of a pandemic take longer to reach an island 60 degrees north.

I was temping part time in the Sheffield Children’s hospital as medical secretary in Neurology and knew the panic of the virus in Yorkshire. So, on the 18th March, 2020, I was still in Sheffield and what appeared to be the house of my dreams was in Shetland – where I was supposed to be but wasn’t.

I’d been half-heartedly looking for a little house in Shetland for some time purely because I thought the idea seemed a good one as I had been going back and forth for the last 5 years. I’d looked at a small house myself, in the old lanes in Lerwick, in November 2019 but it seemed dark and hemmed in and the thought of not being able to have chickens made me think it wasn’t the place for me. I had a vague idea to have a B&B with a chicken or two and sunshine and this didn’t fit the vague idea. Then, in the new year, a Shetland friend went to look at another house for me that was for sale – he reported back that it was damp and wrong. My budget was low and was reflected in what I could afford. Then in March, a sunshine-flooded image of an old house for sale named Smola, didn’t just speak to me, it shouted my name which appeared to be written all over it. I called the agent who had an open viewing day, on Saturday 21st March, the last of any physical viewings of properties before lock down.

As I couldn’t attend the viewings of the tiny house in Levenwick, I was sent the house report and two small videos the week following the open day – one video of inside the property and one of the outside of the house, the back yard and the byre – which is below.

Outside view of Smola

Although the tiny house in Levenwick was basic, it was perfectly formed and without question, it seemed ideal for me and the dream I thought I had of living in Shetland began to firmly take hold of me. No one was allowed to go to see it for me on the island, due to COVID restrictions. Everywhere had finally closed down, as in England. I pondered, repeatedly looked at the videos sent by the agent which, internally, were mostly of the floors, out of the windows and of himself caught in the mirrors but I did nothing else. Then, on the Monday 23rd March, the agent called to say that one of the Saturday viewers had put an offer in on the tiny house and I lost hope and duly whined about it on Facebook. It appeared to me that this was not just a house, it had become a dream filled with ideas of sharing it, offering artist exchanges to exchange and share skills with each other artists and the wider community, artist retreats, workshops, air B&B to friends and people who have connected with me on Instagram, but most importantly, it would be a home where my (art) work / and life would become without borders – indistinguishable. This dream like state of rose-tinted glasses took over every thought.

I continued to work at the NHS typing consultant letters about very ill children while the heat wave and the pandemic raged on in Yorkshire and I dreamed of a 60 degrees north life where, in the Shetland March, I knew that it was sleeting.

I was screaming inside, it should have been me buying that house because during the preceding seven days, I had been booked to be in Shetland and could have been there, seen it, felt it, put the offer in but instead, I was in my tiny flat in Sheffield forced in to city lockdown, whilst still working, feeling helpless. Then a friend of mine messaged and said, just put an offer in. It was the most practical and real advice I had been given, so I spoke to people I knew in Shetland, who in turn, put me in touch with Chris, who had rented the little house for 3 years. He told me about the house. It wasn’t damp (except the porch), the bedroom was warm because it was over the fire, you could park your car in the grass by the house (what car) the man who owned it was a builder and could help with any issues, he’d really liked living there and the neighbours were lovely. I mean, what more did I need to know? My glasses became rosier as the house became more verbally known to me as some questions were answered.

Someone else messaged to say the roof was sound but it had been derelict in the 90’s and had had a lot of grants and an architect had altered it. In any case, I had already fallen in love with the village in August 2019, when I came across it on the bus route when I was flying to Norway and spent one glistering hour on the beach.

That weekend, I thought about nothing other than the tiny Shetland house and artist exchanges and workshops on knitting and design whilst all the time mentally composing a letter, in parts, to the owners, in order to compete with the unknown offer already on the table. Without seeing, smelling or touching the house, the letter flowed. I was honest, direct, clear and shot from the hip on the financial offer, which was 10% over the asking price.

On Monday 30th March, I emailed my letter to the agents with my ideas of what I wanted to do with the house and ended with the financial offer (which was 10% above asking price), then promptly let it go. I went to work in the searing heat of March and April at the Children’s hospital and through the real harsh uncertain beginnings of the Virus. I got on with my week. The pandemic gathered steam and I started knitting.

On Thursday, 2nd April, I was sitting on my procrastination my bench in scorching heat, outside the flat after work. It was at 5:20pm – a call came from the Shetland estate agent. I assumed it would be a rejection call. But it wasn’t. The sellers had accepted my offer on the proviso of a non-refundable deposit to take it off the market and that they would wait for me to sell my Sheffield flat (which wasn’t on the market and we were in complete lockdown other than anything essential) and finalise Scottish missives within 6 months.

Under offer – my offer and a hidden non refundable deposit

Between 2nd April until 7th May, two Shetland solicitors were involved in writing the agreement for this non-refundable deposit, which I signed, in a wood in Sheffield on 8th May, honoured by my friend Deborah witnessing and co-signing the document. So, just over 8 weeks after seeing an image, both moving and still of a little house in Levenwick, I signed a document to say that I would pay the non-refundable deposit, deductible from the cost of the house, if I finalised the Scottish missives and all the papers to purchase within 3 months – an IMPOSSIBLE task. If, after the initial 3 months, I hadn’t made the sale agreement, I would be offered a further 3 months agreement with the same terms but the first non-refundable deposit wasn’t to be carried over – that became lost and I was to pay a second deposit.

It just seemed the right thing to do and somehow, I naively felt that although my flat in Sheffield wasn’t on the market and everything was shut down, and I hadn’t even seen the house in Shetland – that somehow, it would all work out.

I was asked by a friend, – ‘what did I get for my non-refundable deposit?’ and I said TIME but my wise friend Deb added, security. No one else could buy the house either but maybe no one else wanted it and I had paid way over the odds – it was a risk I took because something is worth its value in many different ways.

Anyway, from 14th May 2020, I had 6 months to turn everything around, still in lock down, during a pandemic and a recession to sell my flat and to purchase a house I had then begun to label – my dream.

My dream was to truly live a life fully, without borders between creative thought process and daily life, with my 2 cats, to go swimming with the Selkie swimming group in the sea, to write a book of knitting patterns and the homes the knitters lived in, to make site-specific art, to offer air b&b to friends and artist whom I have come to know over the years through my artistic practice – was my rose-tinted dream – just words and thoughts…

But, in truth, I achieved the dream and moved into Smola on 10^th September 2020 – I lasted just over one year – the house never dropping from being the love of my life and the most beautiful house I have ever owned – a house that drew me to accept a challenge to change every part of my existence to make happen.

I still love that house, I still love how that house made me feel because so many stories unfolded. It was a place of creativity, a place of sunrises so magnificent that the world stopped to watch, a place of history and tangible beauty. But, it was also a lonely house.

Two years exactly to the date of moving into Smola in Levenwick in September 2020, I will be returning to Shetland to stay with my friend Mati on Fair Isle. I need to think and go over what has happened in the last two years, to understand what I achieved in Shetland and to be proud of that. to share it, to shout about it, to not hide it.

I aim to write a book on my year in Shetland and going back to the location will help re set my Shetland barometer.

Whilst on Fair Isle, I will be carrying out my online Colour blending workshops for Fair Isle Knitters. The workshops and I, have been successful in teaching over 200 participants how to develop an eye for colour blending in Fair Isle knitting projects and to get it right so that they can choose their own colours successfully for their own projects. If you would like to join me on any of the workshop dates in Fair Isle, please take a look at this page and get in touch via the form, or message me directly.

If you would like to support this trip back to Shetland, then you can do so by buying any of my knitting patterns from here.

I look forward to your comments on what you would like to see / hear when I return to Shetland.

Inner landscapes

pin hole camera image after one full year on the drainpipe.

In august 2020, when I first saw the croft house that I was buying in Shetland (3weeks before moving in) my friend Janette met me, drove me to Levenwick, walked round and fastened a pinhole camera made out of a beer can to the drainpipe of the house. You can see it in some of these images. It stayed there for just over a year.

In September 2021, just before I left Shetland, she removed it. Last night she sent me the pinhole image of a year taken by that beer can camera that was strapped to the drain pipe.

It took my breath away. Janette has asked me to write 200 words to accompany the image for an exhibition in Somerset. I was excited but then became aware of the enormous nature of writing about my one year in Shetland in 200 words. I have started and restarted. I don’t know if I will be able to capture the essence of my one year there because I’m still processing it. And, that one year is still processing me.

I moved from joy and excitement to vulnerability and an inner trauma that spiraled from my own thoughts. Here is my start, it may change.

Inner Landscapes.

At a still point of the turning earth, where stars are caught arching and the sun warms the metal roof,

I ask you,

what did we both see in the one year that we both looked outward?

You, with your objective tin-sheltered eye looking south.

Me with my dream-like wishful eye looking east to the horizon from a bed that became a boat tossed around in a sea of extreme weather and emotions.

I arrived on a tide of high hopes and dreams, having moved heaven and earth to make it from city to island. You stoically rested against the house.

All the things came and went – ALL the things, except my son and daughter.

Hushed by clear moonlit nights, wide-eyed at blue winter days and crystalline turquoise seas, looking up to encounter the milky way in the midnight sky, endless pure unbroken fiery sunrises cracking open the fold in the world between sea and sky, whales and tiny golden birds – there is no place like Shetland. But beauty alone was not enough for me.

You sat beside the house through storms, gales, fog, winds so harsh that I could not stand and still your tin eye stayed open capturing a static and whirling world.

But you did not feel. You did not feel the damaging power of loneliness creeping over the horizon month by month eating me away to a vulnerable husk, looking inward, feeling everything and nothing, seeing little outward.

I am still processing my year in Shetland. In truth, I could not even think of it until asked to write 200 words to accompany the photograph. I feel I am touching on the essence of a full year but have not fully done the time justice. This is my thinking process so far.

A last Shetland sunrise

A last Shetland sunrise
Its flaring red, pink, lilac and blue skyscape performs to remind
the boys and I of perfect
untainted natural beauty.

I smile
I walk out to greet the glow
Sky, wind, cold envelope me.
Sheltering from the Baltic wind in a steadfast porch that faces east,
I watch
To etch the view forever.
A basin of ice cold sea
wraps the surface of a world below a rippled dancing sky.
Alfie by my feet
on the age old stones.
The red sky does not fade,
it glows, it sings, it morphs

It shouts to me
“Goodbye, do not forget me,
For I am in your soul”

Levenwick, Shetland. 23/10/21

Shetland Wool Week 2021

This week is Shetland Wool week 2021. The first time I visited Shetland, was for a Wool Week in 2015. I stayed at the hostel in Lerwick and every bed in every room was taken by wool week visitors. I fell in love with Shetland, its culture of knitting and the tangible, visible history across the islands. I also visited St Ninians for the first time and squealed with joy at just seeing it. I still sometimes squeal at seeing St Ninians.

Since 2015, I revisited again and again – for Up Helly Aa in 2016, a few more holiday trips, an Artist residency at the Booth in Scalloway in December 2017, and an R&D trip to Unst in 2018. All of these trips deepened my love of the social history across the islands and my love for Shetland knitting. I remember meeting Hazel Tindall in the Textile Museum one day in May 2017, and I recorded her talking about her Grandmother collecting the peats for the rayburn. (At that time, I had a passion for old stoves left in abandoned croft houses) I still have that recording and I have always been in awe of Hazel, her skill and her warm character. She makes me smile when I see her. She is a Wool Week Goddess. I met her for lunch a couple of months ago. We went to the Mareel. It was a joy to be with her, such an honour.

Six years after first visiting Shetland, it is once again, Wool Week. It is not a face to face Wool Week where thousands of participants descend upon Lerwick and the surrounding areas to enjoy workshops, trips, visits to museums and of course both Jamieson’s wool shops, but a virtual wool week. Next year will be real, I know it. But, in 2015, it was my first experience of being here – I sat by the pier knitting and watched an otter come in carrying a huge fish. He didn’t know I was there until I moved. I mean, a city girl watching an otter whilst sitting on the pier knitting in the town – who would have believed it?

Here is a blog from that time https://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/Scotland/Shetland/Wick/blog-901174.html

This week, six years later, I am teaching Online Colour blending sessions in the Virtual Shetland Wool Week programme -2 this weekend, 2 next weekend and on Friday, three ladies are coming to the house to do a face to face colour blending session and incidentally, they are from my home town of Matlock. Seemingly, we are 6 degrees of separation, or maybe just one degree.

I’ve been teaching online sessions since January when one of my supporters asked for a class, in December, for her friends for a Christmas present. I said that I was busy with the house but would do a workshop in the January. It happened the last weekend of Jan, – I got in by the skin of my teeth and since then have been teaching up to 4 sessions every month ever since – except when I took a 6 week break to work on the Dear Susan Project. I would very much like to thank that supporter who truly developed my own Creative Practice.

This weekend, I have met ladies from America, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and Scotland. Today, I had two ladies join me from Canada and America at 2am and 5am their time – I felt honoured and flattered that they were so dedicated to join me in the middle of their night.

Every time I do an online workshop, I feel warm and happy afterwards. I get so many messages after the sessions that I know that all the hard work to teach, inspire, engage with and to share skills is worth it. Some of the ladies over the last 6 months have also become my international online friends – especially Cait St. George, whom I met through a session with Cream City Yarn in Milwaukee. Cait became my test knitter for Dear Susan and also number crunched the pattern. The Internet and Instagram has made these sessions possible and I want to thank every one who has attended a session already, everyone who is booked on to a session and to future bookers. You make my creative practice valued and I value every one who has joined me. If you would like to join a colour blending workshop, I have a couple of places left on 17th October and I am taking a waiting list for November (dates to be confirmed) If you go to my online workshop tab, here on the website, you can see information of the classes.

Here’s to Shetland Wool Week 2021.

I look forward to seeing your work – tag me on Instagram. Tracey 😊

Oh yes, I have 20% off all of my knitting patterns during wool week.
The code for the basket is Wool Week Workshop

and patterns are here

https://www.ravelry.com/designers/tracey-doxey

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

The approach of mid summer.

We are approaching midsummer, the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. We are in the Shetland Simmer Dim – my first fully experienced one here and it is a rare experience. June is the time of year where we are graced with a light until after midnight although the sun sets at around 10:30pm. The evenings are some kind of twilight, a half light in which you can still see everything even at 1am. From the bed, I look out to sea where the twilight meets the sun rise at around 3:30am. Together, these joining lights and the calmness of the evenings full of bird song are recognisable only as Shetland.

For a few short weeks, Simmer Dim means that there is no true darkness at all, which I am accepting as the flip side of the coin of Winter whereupon it is daylight between 9am and 3pm and if it is a bad day, there is no true daylight at all – just a greyness.

In June, time is like a breath. It feels as if the world held its breath so long that now, there is an opportunity for a gentle exhale.

The Summer light in which we are living by here in Shetland, brings us out from hibernation. I have become lighter with the lightness fo the weather. The plants grow at a speedy rate, pushed on by the long days. The cats lounge outside rolling around in the dust. Finally, the winds have slowed.

I find myself wallpapering at 11pm because it feels like early evening then I’m awake by 4:30am because of the fully sun lit day light. The cats think it is breakfast time, I’m up, dressed, out and down on the beach by 7am before work. I feel tired because I’m doing so much but it is not an exhausted tired. It’s a fulfilled tired of living a long full day, Then, I am aware that on 21^st June, the days will begin to grow shorter, slowly at first then gather speed. I don’t even want to think about it.

I was hoping a friend would be here on Summer Solstice but I am not sure, so, I will mark the day in some special way – by doing something I hardly do anymore, camping or swimming in the sea, or just by sitting out and listening to the world – not knitting, or writing – just sitting and marvelling at this special place where the season of Summer rewards our waiting. Maybe I’ll do all three.