Category: Uncategorized

Sister Fair Isle Pullover roadmap.

This week, I finished my 2nd Fair Isle Pullover worksheet to make a vest for my sister. The finished vest, has been made for and about my sister, in that she chose the colours and she did not want arms. These decisions, as well as others, set the vest apart from my jumper, which uses 100 colours. I am now interested in exhibiting the two knits, side by side, as a piece called – I cannot Reach You.

Below are some of the instructions in the worksheet, which is easy to adapt into your own signature story in knitting.

Included in this worksheet, are 2, A4 sized complete, full colour charts used in my pullover / vest. Chart 1, is my full body chart and the sleeve is chart 2. All of the, (more than) 90 colours that I used in this jumper are listed. I am giving you the tools to make your own road map for your own vest or pullover, or scarf, or hat.


You can incorporate any of these 11 large Fair Isle OXO motifs and 12 peerie motifs into any of your own projects and use any colours that you have or even just use 2 colours.


The 190 row pattern charts, knitted in multiples of 24 stitch repeats, included in this work sheet, is not a jumper pattern, nor a vest pattern. What I have produced is a worksheet including the entire range of Fair Isle OXO
motif bands that I have knitted. I have built them into 2 large full charts with a clear centre stitch line marked so that you too, can either replicate my jumper entirely, or move the patterns and colours around to your own taste. One sleeve of my project is knitted in traditional OXO Fair Isle patterns – the other is
knitted using Aran twisting, following how I sometimes braid in my hair in French plaits. I have been asked many times, why I knitted an aran sleeve – why not? and people often have their opions on this sleeve, which is fine, but it is my knit and anyone can knit however they choose to – You don’t have to stick to EVERY rule. I have not included the Aran sleeve charts in this worksheet but the neck aran pattern is included.


The motifs and colours within this worksheet, are a treasure trove of endless possibilities for you to be creative and make your own vest or pullover by incorporating them into your own favourite vest or jumper pattern. Use any colours that you have, use any wool that you have, use 2 colours, or like me, use over 90 colours in your jumper. In the vest I used 9 colours. I am giving you a recipe for you to enjoy and work with in whatever way you want. I am giving you the tools and the freedom to make your own design. This is more than a pattern bank, I lay out how the patterns are aligned. I also explain the importance of a centre alignment.


Recently, I have been reminded of how Kaffe Fassett, in the 80’s made beautiful patterns in books and wrote, ‘ choose 9 balls of varied light colours and 9 balls of dark colours’ and people ran with that, me included. Sometimes, he would write – use double knitting yarn, sometimes he listed the yarn and the
exact colours. This worksheet is similar. It gives you all of the tools to knit your own beautiful projects and to be free with your own decisions. It gives you the chance to grow in your own understanding of your knitted projects.


I would love to see them on Instagram.
My jumper is knitted in Jamieson’s of Shetland spindrift using – some small lengths, some longer. These colours I have had left over from previous projects or workshops or designs. I just worked them together and alongside each other. I did swatch some colours to check how they worked, and I do recommend that
you do that too. As my colour choices are not often repeated in this project, not great lengths of yarn for each motif are required. But you can knit your own project differently.

Use your stash or buy just 4 colours or even 2. The choices and permutations are endless but this relies on you. It relies on being excited to try this idea and to develop your ideas. The project requires you to use your own favourite
jumper or vest pattern and figure out the centre front (which in my case, mirrored my centre back) and I knitted multiples of 24 stitch pattern to fit my size. Make sure that your motif bands align with the centre front. I have
made this easy for you by outlining the centre front line. Developing your sense of colour is achieved by enjoying colour, swatching to experiment for colour combinations.


It took me nearly one year to design and make this jumper – it took me 3 full days to map out all of pattern repeats in the motif bands and to chart every stitch used in the body and in the sleeve of my own knitting project that so many people wanted a pattern for. It has taken 2 more days to pull it together here. It took me a lot less time to knit the vest.


I knitted my jumper and the vest, in the round up until the arm holes, then I split it and worked on the front and back separately but at the same time so that I used the same colours. Make sure that the centre front stitch is the right one so that the motifs bands align above each other. In the chart, stitch 12 (out of the 24) is the centre stitch of the first large OXO motif. The charts are in multiples of 24 stitches.

The worksheet is a roadmap for you to experiment and live freely within your own colour / motif / pattern choices. I would love to see any projects that have been knitted using the worksheet which is here

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fair-isle-chart-2

lots more photos on instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/traceydoxey/


Knitting by the millstones, Stanage.

This morning, a couple of my favourite things collided to make me being in the right place at the right time on a beautiful sun sparkling morning. I walked to a favourite spot to knit at sunrise.

About 5 miles and 10 minutes from home, lies Burbage car park and bridge. From there, you can walk across the moor to Stanage Edge, which overlooks the back of Hathersage and North Lees wood and far into the distance, Hope Valley.

I’ve been coming here for years and years, to walk, sit, eat breakfast on Stanage Edge, chase fog, climb, or to knit during the golden hour of sunrise.   Today, was the first frost of the year and in my tiny flat in Sheffield, I knew that the moor would sparkle.  It is so close that I can walk it, cycle it but today, took the car to Burbage and walked the short distance to a trig point high above old millstones, which date back to the 18th and 19th century, used to grind grain into flour, left discarded in some once used quarry area.  I love it in this place. Everyone who lives within a 50 mile radius knows of these stones, though many lie buried under grass and moss. 

These few that lie just below Stanage, beside an old water trough are my favourites and I often visit, sitting on the same rock with my same thermos, to knit and take in the splendour of this small valley next to a city.

Anyway, last night, I grafted the shoulders of my latest Fair Isle Pullover and took it to the millstones to start knitting the neck.  It was such a beautiful morning at golden hour where every rock was casting its own shadow from the rising sun.  The short grass glistened with crystalised frost. I knitted for some time then went to Hathersage for a cheeky breakfast at Outside Hathersage café, which was full of climbers talking of their chosen climbing routes. 

It’s a lovely place to be, to knit, to see the world.  Stanage Edge, bordering Sheffield and Derbyshire. Come visit.  Bring your knitting.

And take your tea. xxx

Fair Isle chart pattern here

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fair-isle-chart-2

Fair Isle Pullover – Two Sisters

In these beautiful crisp Autumn mornings slowly opening up to warm, sweet afternoons, clear sunsets and most recently the large orb of the super moon rising, I have once again, picked up my second Fair Isle pullover which I am knitting with my sister in mind.   It started off in the colours that she loves – black, grey, with highlights of navy, mustard and dark red but I was slowly sinking in the monochrome of it all.  Without thinking too much, the colours have become richer, using darkest navy as a full-bodied colour rather than a highlight. 

 

The pullover is, as usual with my knitting – a passion project with a story.   If you haven’t read the beginning – it is here.

The most resent result is an overall slightly mismatched look, which I am completely aware of – a little like the character of a person, moving through moods.  But, on a practical level, the colour change has meant that I am now back in love with this time-consuming knit. 

I have packed this project in my backpack and unfurled it at cafes, and on Stanage Edge to watch sunsets, at Chatsworth – sitting below all the ballons taking off, and anywhere calm that I might knit and take in the surroundings and the work through my hands and  fingers.   The jumper takes on the environment within which I knit.

I am still working on the Japanese concept of Ma – the space and silence between all things and this pullover embodies that considering the space between my sister and me.   It taking shape into something just as abundant as the first one but a very different visual character / experience.  

I am using my Fair Isle Pullover chart to complete the jumper in exactly the same way that I did the first – the images show the results so far. Let me know your thoughts on colour.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fair-isle-chart-2

instagram show many more images – here

my places to knit – below a sunset, a rising moon, beside the river, or on my little patio. xx

Wallpaper

In 2023, when I stayed in Japan for 3 weeks, I viewed exquisite screens in Zen temples in Kyoto, and found that in a world filled with noise and speed, the Japanese concept of ‘Ma’ offered me a new perspective. ‘Ma,’ represents the space, gap, or pause between objects, sounds, or moments. It is not about negative space, but a presence of emptiness that enhances harmony and aesthetics.  I am now constantly considering the concept of Ma, I have since resumed my craft and technical skills of wallpaper printing from my time as Artist in Residence at Sheffield Institute of Art (2019). My current body of work is delicately pressed flower botanical prints and encompasses hand-printed wallpaper, cyanotype botanical prints and the concept of Ma. I am working with my own pressed flowers which at first, I rushed to position in fear of losing the sun process to develop the print, but now I am considering, ‘Ma’ within how I work.

Here I am, on a Saturday, in searing heat, down in my little studio in Sheffield.

I am excited to share the new panels of botanical cyanotype prints that are full of risk and joy.  Firstly, I spend hours finding flowers then pressing them.  They’re pressed under all manner of heaps of cardboard and wood until they emerge, almost flat.  I say almost because I am choosing very chunky buds and flowers like the long tall stem of a Hollyhock with varying depths of bud, seed head and stem and slim leaves – which causes issues with pressing different depths of flower. And then there are the wonderful huge fluffy yellow daisy flowers which, when pressed, and gently removed from the paper that they have stuck to, they disintegrate.  I have one long stemmed small sunflower that I hardly dare look at, squashed between paper and wood. 

The African Lilies didn’t fair well either, when I lifted them from pressing, their petals fell off, so I printed them with falling petals, like tears. 

My flower cyanotypes are subject to risk and mishaps and then there is the sun.  The sun is vital in the developing process of the sheet and when breeze joins in, my carefully pressed flowers blow across the yard of Bloc Studios and I don’t know whether to collect the hard earned flowers or pick up the half baked cyanotype.

I have been in a wonderful development phase which has opened ideas to working at Carousel Studio here in the city, with their UV light box, because the sun won’t be strong enough to process the development of colour in a month or so. And, it will be out when I am at work – I cannot turn the sun on 🙂 The strength of the sun and the length of time of shine on the developing cyanotype, all make a difference. Here, you can see details of sections that worked through lengthy sunshine exposure.

below, the print is slightly lost through less exposure, but I also like the ghost like finish

I am excited by the results and my process and new ideas from my cyanotype prints.  If you have been following me for some time, you may remember my first wallpaper prints which were Shetland lace patterns, and are here in 2019, when I wallpapered the inside of an abandoned croft house in Bressay as a testament to the women knitters who one lived there.

I planning further development of my process in printed wallpaper to include lino cuts and silk screen printing and gold leaf. Maybe even golden petal tears. And I will be showing the panels in Flower shop and concept shop windows.



Let me know your thoughts 😊

One hundred colours, or just ten?

One hundred colours, or just ten in your Fair Isle projects?

I am knitting in preparation for the workshop on Friday – to show how alternative colours will look to my normal many many colours that I normally choose for a project.

This time, I am working with the colours that my sister likes but she doesn’t know that I asked her her favourite colours just so that I could knit them for her.

My pullover –  the workings you can find in the rich tapestry of resources in the Fair Isle Pullover chart worksheet, is made up of about one hundred colours.

My next pullover, knitted to the same charts as the first, will use about ten colours – with variations of greys, shetland black, madder, navy, mustard and a cyclamen colour.  I’m already enjoying how it is turning out. – my sister has far more subtle choices in colour.

If you would still like to join me at my free online workshop on Saturday 22nd Just 3-4pm UK time, then buy the worksheet and I will be sending emails with joining instructions up until Weds 18th June.

Let me know what you think to just the black and grey version of this project.

Also – access to online facebook group for everyone who has bought the pattern too.

Here is the fb group.

Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday.

Much love. Tracey

Four New online knitting workshops

New online workshops.

I live in Sheffield.  Whilst I was sorting out yarn this afternoon for my 2nd Fair Isle Pullover, Richard Hawley’s ‘People’, was playing on Six radio.   I stopped to listen.  Sheffield, is, I have realised my home – I have lived here since 1998 but honestly, I didn’t realise until a conversation with my son last week, that ‘I live in Sheffield’ .  I may sound odd to you but to me, I have always been looking to other places, mostly far away.   

Saturday 8th June, my bike outside the beautiful Three Tunns pub, Sheffield

I have got on a train and got off and lived and worked in China, I’ve lived in Salzburg, London, and of course, Shetland.  I have been a traveller for some years and travel is part of my art but, honestly, I have only just realised that, Sheffield is where I live, where I want to live; it is my home.  And then, Richard sings, ‘People’ and I could understand every word – every place mentioned and how people are called, ‘Love’  it is a colloquialism – People in this city, call us ‘Luv’ – On the bus, at work, at the fruit and veg markets stall, at the chip shop, about town, not always, but a certain generation, it is often. 

I love Sheffield, the city centre is a bit broken, the SHU university is financially on its financial knees, and there isn’t much here but there is also everything here.  Art, music, friends, cinema days, festivals, history, vintage shops, people – ‘who fight for every breath’ and so much more. I am proud of this gritty city. 

Anyway, I digress, whilst I was setting up my little video of my swatch book for my new Swatch workshop on 5th July, Richard’s new song – ‘People’ came on the radio.  I found it quite haunting.  It is love of a city and a life and people.   So, I recorded the video with Richard singing in the background.   It seemed quite fitting. 

I am not sure how the swatch workshop on 5th July, will pan out yet but I am asking for registrations of interest. 

I am also doing a one off special FREE online zoom workshop for everyone who has bought the Fair Isle Pullover worksheet.   The session will help anyone who has bought the worksheet, to develop ideas of colour, alignment of Fair Isle motifs in your project and ideas to help you get the best out of the worksheet to make a great project – it could be a hat, scarf, jumper of vest.  This session is on 22nd June at 3-4pm UK time.  You don’t have to register for this one – I will email everyone who bought the pattern with zoom joining instructions on 19th June – so you still have time to buy the worksheet, if you have been thinking about it. It is here.

If I was still living in Shetland, my workshops were sold out within 30 minutes of advertising them.  Now they take time because I live in a city far away from Shetland.  But, I am still the same person, and my workshops have developed into much better experiences than when I was in Shetland.  Come and join me.

TWO NEW DATES FOR MY ONLINE COLOUR BLENDING WORKSHOP IN JULY

DATES AND INFORMATION on all workshops in this link HERE

PS, if you don’t follow me on instagram – there are lots more images in updates there – https://www.instagram.com/traceydoxey/

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. See you soon.

Tracey 🙂

Art, craft, knitting or story telling?

I have knitted something that is recognised as a jumper but it isn’t only that.  The knitted piece now sits well within the intersection between craft / skill / materiality / woo/ textiles/ conceptual art / family / heritage and cross cultural discussion.  It is nearly finished and it has a name.   It is named, ‘I cannot reach you.’

The garment, because it can be worn, has one slightly longer Fair Isle sleeve than necessary, reaching out, ending into a knitted cuff with a thumb. The other sleeve, knitted in Amber coloured yarn in Aran patterns, crosses and plaits the stitches.  This style of knit for this sleeve  was chosen because of how I sometimes plait my hair. So, the indication is now that it is not clothes but craft or art.    Most people who have commented on the Aran sleeve don’t like it – they cannot work with the idea that the sleeve is different to the Fair Isle patterning of the body and other sleeve.  Me, I like it.

The Pattern of Life isn’t all perfectly matching or symmetrical or neat or predictable.  So, changing the length of a sleeve, adding another style of knit to the other sleeve, working with patterns and motifs for about one thousand hours, has enabled me to Knit an evolving story.  First, it was a wearable vest, then I ripped the arm ribs back to start sleeves. I don’t mind if I never wear this garment at all, and yet it is wearable, it is also showable as art, it is passable to be open to a discussion about clothes, knitting, women’s work, materiality – why we knit, why we make clothes, what becomes art, a concept, a thought and why we bother at all.

In my 60th year, I am figuring out what is the stage of my creative journey, today.  I have a valuable story / experience to share – having an MA in knitting when I was 58, a Fine Art Degree at the age of 35, I’ve travelled across some of the largest countries in the world by train, to get to a tiny place in China. I’ve sailed across land and sea to live in Shetland. I knit but I am not a knitter. I can crochet and sew too.  I’ve taught English, I’m a coach for apprentices at Uni, I have been a PA, a Contemporary Dance tour manager, and events manager, a gallery building manager –  but none of this really matters and yet it all matters greatly because it has brought me to this point in my life – to figure out exactly what is the value of my creative practice and where do I want to take it?

I am not an emerging artist, I am firmly placed in an underrepresented demographic of  an older Women still making conceptual art under the guise of a knitted project.

What I would like to do is engage with other women to knit this piece, as they feel fits them. I want everyone to use their own colours choices, yarn decisions, size of the project so that we may talk about the work of women.  

I am really proud of being able to knit this ‘thing’ because, let’s be honest, I have been in a privileged position to do so but I haven’t always been so.   I could not have knitted it when I returned to the city from living in Shetland, without home or job, crying on the kerb stones.  My creative practice was far from my priority then – I needed stability  – take Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, for example.   When I returned from Shetland, didn’t even have the physiological needs – without home or sleep.  Since that time, I have built myself back up and for now, I am around the esteem level with a subliminal eye on Self actualisation.  I’ve also been here before and know that it is not a sure thing nor is it a prolonged state and I know where it goes after – that is down.

I think, what I am writing is that my jumper is not a jumper – it is an art piece about my feelings about my beautiful Sister and I cannot always reach her – which is why I have called it ‘I cannot reach you’  And, weirdly, to this end, I am thinking of knitting  a 2nd jumper, in exactly the same way as the first but in different colours because when we were children, our mother dressed us in identical clothes for about 12 years ,when we were, and still are, like chalk and cheese.  

For all the lovely people who have bought my Fair Isle pullover worksheet, would you like to join me in some kind of knit along.  I will not be teaching you how to do your project but I would love to see your projects and hear what you are making.  I think it will be wonderful to share what we are doing.   I will be slow, I am not in a rush.  I have many other things on the go including finishing this piece, I also have work and workshops and a crochet piece for my daughter and somewhere along the line, I would like to live a little – go see places

I have added a chat group on Ravelry – it is here

I am also thinking of ways to display this piece and have been in contact with The Head of Fine Art at SHU to see if we could show the piece  and she had better ideas – so there are maybe a few things being  mulled over.  
I want to show the piece because I would like to be back in the Fine Art arena because I want to go to Japan to do an artist residency and showing work is part of that process.

Have any of you read this far 😊 ?

Would any of you like to join me in a knit along so that you can knit your own pullover or use the charts to knit something for yourselves?  leave a comment or join the group.

Do you have any thoughts on this whole thing? Positive or negative.

Is it art or craft or knitting or story telling?

Here is the Fair Isle worksheet with all the motifs in 2 large charts, if you would like to join the chat group.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fair-isle-chart-2

A journey to Shetland and back

I am sitting in the calm, welcome sunshine resting on the small patch of grass outside my flat in Sheffield, which I have surrounded with strong sunflower plants that I grew from seeds, a sea of forget me nots, beautiful jasmines in early bud, potatoes growing in bags, peonies in bud and the hydrangea taking over. I am at my laptop setting up my June post for ‘My Shetland life’, on Patreon – the month of June in Shetland.

I remember when I first moved to that beautiful croft house in Shetland and the wonders of existence that I felt every day, until I had to leave 14 months later. I wrote a book in monthly chapters of my life that year on the island, I also wrote to the woman who had lived in the house from 1976 to 1960.

If you have ever wanted to live on an island, or move to a remote place, either as a couple or a single woman – then, you may be interested in the story I have to tell. I have released each month as a chapter, that aligns with the month that we are currently in so that it will give insight into where you live and what Shetland is like. I release the chapters on the 1st of each month. I am sitting in the city calmness, rereading my June chapter before I set it up ready for release and I wanted to share an extract with you.

Extract from May

It is the first day of the fifth month. I’m excited to take a seat on the small seven-seater plane to Fair Isle. The trip is easier for me than someone not living on the island but even so, it’s not a straightforward flight, which makes it all the more unique.  I’m used to the flight path from one island to another, but the close proximity of the tiny plane flying low above the land and sea coupled with the craziness of flying in something so small never ceases to amaze me.  In the small building at Tingwall airstrip, I watch the flight safety video on a small tv balanced on a table, take a seat amid the two rows of six orange plastic chairs to wait.  One of the guys who loads the plane plays his guitar in a room behind me – I hand my bags to the official man, whom I know by name, at the weighing scales to measure the weight of baggage going south (never on the return flight though), and smile.

Outside, where the plane rests on the tarmac, I wait to be seated inside, related to body weight and distribution of balance.  We don’t want all of the bodies on one side, tipping the plane, do we. Bags are stowed in the back of the tapering metal tail, behind a net.  I’m seated above the wheel and love it.  My view down is obstructed by the tiny comical looking triangular metal blue leg with two fat small rubber wheels. It’s like the spindly leg of a blue metal bird.

Extract from June 

At 1am, the horizon line between sea and sky is still visible. In the gloaming, the sky to the North is a pink stripe of clouds where the sunlight lingers between setting and rising, neither dusk nor twilight.  Suspended half-light where everything is still visible. A magical dreamlike world twists in the atmosphere. The energy of the island atmosphere charges our weak bodies. The magnetism in the environment of this northerly world is palpable. It makes me spin.  It draws me outside like a moth drawn to the light bulb.

Together, the two merging lights and the calmness of the evenings full of bird calls are recognisable as only Shetland.   

Time is like a breath.  It feels as if our island world held its breath so long during Winter and spring, that now, there is an opportunity for a gentle exhale.  

On the 12th, I do the rarest investment of time and money, I leave the island for Edinburgh for four days, and I take a small plane from Sumburgh.  On the tram into the city, I see healthy green trees for the first time in 10 months. Before my friend arrives, I drop in at the City Arts Centre and find the oil painting,  La Musica Veneziana, by Charles Hodge Mackie. So beautiful is a dome of light in this painting that I sit opposite it for some time, thinking of Chinese style lanterns dancing in the breeze above the gondola at night. The grand buildings framing half of the painting draw the eye to a life I have never known. Gondolas float on the water at the forefront. But it is the dome of light that holds my attention. It may be the lights of a building, I couldn’t say and I didn’t need to know. it’s such a captivating work that it needs time. It was painted in 1909 and I thought of Susan, living in Shetland in 1909 at the age of 33 and that if I could pick any single work of art from here to show her, it would be this painting. So that she could see something of another floating sea world so different to that of her own.

What light we lose in the winter, we gain in the summer. The Simmer Dim rolls in upon us bringing days in waves and folds of calm, still light so long and rich that they stretch my mind. The bank sides on the drive home from Lerwick, are covered in long swathes and carpets of dancing white dog daisies.  I’m shopping at Tesco at 10pm thinking it is day time and on the way home,  at St Ninian’s at 11pm, the gloaming light astonishes me – I am home at 11:20pm feeling restless, so, I nip to Levenwick beach at midnight   There are two magical lights in the calendar of the Shetland year.
One, is the cracking open of the world between sea and sky in the deep winter where the sun light spears then leaks along the horizon just before the sun rise and now, this crazy time of Simmerdim, where I am out at 1:30am looking at the sky to the North where a pink line of clouds lie suspended where the sun light lingers in a place that I don’t know about. Suspended light…

I am wondering if I actually do tick things off a subliminal list – the sun sets after midnight, ducks flying overhead quacking, a beautiful boat bobbing in the bay.  I don’t feel that this is ticking things off, this is just watching, listening, waiting, experiencing. My face glows in the setting sun light while I knit on the beach. My legs shiver with cold.  I feel it all. Nothing is missed.  I knit the sea, air, and light into this jumper of mine and I am grateful to take the risk to live here.  If I squint at the setting sun, it becomes a pointed star shooting deepest red, orange rays across the sea. The red fire ball sinks into the sea but there is no boiling water as if a hot iron dipping at the iron smiths. Suddenly a few folks arrive at the beach to witness the spectacle   I wait for the green flash but there is none, the sun sank into the sea at exactly 10:30pm having bored its light into my retinas.

https://www.patreon.com/Tracey_Doxey

The Dear Susan jumper that I finished in May, is also here

Fair Isle Vest / pullover Worksheet

I am hoping to go to Japan on an Artist residency and have created a Fair Isle vest worksheet in order for any pattern sales form this £5.75 pattern can go towards my savings for travel expenses (I may only get as far as Manchester 🙂 ) but it is an earnest start.

So, I have been busy today – 2 posts in one day – never before has this happened.

What is this post about – it is about a Fair Isle vest WORKSHEET that I have just submitted to Ravelry

Every motif that I have knitted and every colour that I have used in my original vest turned pullover and every chart that I used when I added the Fair Isle sleeve is included in this Worksheet.

I first started this knitted piece whilst on holiday in Italy, last June.  At that time, I had no plan or idea what it would look like or what it would become because I was ‘just knitting in the round’ starting with lilac and blue and green. I was using the motifs that I had developed in my Stash Buster neck warmer pattern, to play with design, colour and texture to make a Fair Isle Vest using only the OXO patterns from Fair Isle with a bright twist on colour.  

Knitting, I have realised, is a compulsion for me.  Sometimes, I try to leave it, to do other interesting things but it is not long before I am drawn back to it. Knitting is something I have to do every day – for relaxation, design, creative development or learning, for experimenting with colour but I do not knit with the aim to monetise my designs or findings.  Maybe the work develops into a pattern but it is not my first aim to design patterns – knitting is my lifestyle. If I aimed to make money from the beginning – two things would happen – pure playful creativity would go out of the window and two, patterns do not earn me an income.  A £4 pattern is cut to about £2.90 after Ravelry and Paypal have taken their cuts.  Considering the hundreds of hours that goes into a pattern, making £2.90 isn’t really the driving reason to make it.  If I only make patterns with the end user in mind, then a creative design concept just becomes a product.  It has taken years to understand how I work – A Fine Art Degree, A Masters in Knitting, travelling to and from Shetland for years, living in a croft house by the sea in Levenwick, but mostly, it is my love of colour that has developed my practice and out of this was born my online colour blending workshops so that I can teach other people how to develop their own skills in how to blend colours within their Fair Isle and stranded knitting projects.  If I can make a pattern, or share a story or idea, I do – so that others can also learn from the colours.  

My reason for finally producing a Fair Isle Vest Worksheet ,  is because I have been asked so many times for a pattern and because I have decided that the earnings from this chart will go towards my savings for an Artist textile residency that I hope to do in Japan.

I have some faithful social media followers that have been with me for years – all through my Shetland move and back to the city, all through the workshops and every pattern – we have become friends and I respect them greatly.  Janet, Lyn, Cheryl, Yve, Shona, Berti, to name a few. 

So, what have I produced here, what am I putting out into the world?

So many people have asked me for my Fair Isle Vest pattern – I have pointed them in the direction of the Stash Buster Neck warmer where there are many motifs so that they can create a jumper, like I have but they don’t want that – they want a vest pattern. But I cannot produce a vest or pullover pattern in every size that would make everyone happy.  To alter the stich count and where the motifs lie for everyone would take months.   My life doesn’t have that time and I am not a pattern editor – I have done it previously with the help of a friend from America where we spent months number crunching the Dear Susan pattern to deliver it for multiple sizes.  It is not an easy job and takes forever to check everything.   I am but one individual person – spending 3 full months designing a full pattern, at this time of my life is not what I can do.

So, I have made a series of 2 fabulous, full colour A4 charts (body chart and sleeve chart) with all the colours listed alongside, that I used in my own knitting project  – to give you the tools to make your own road map for your own vest or pullover, or scarf, or hat.

The complete charts included in this work sheet, are not a jumper pattern, nor a vest pattern.  What I have produced is a worksheet including the entire range of motif bands, built into a body and a sleeve chart with a clear centre stitch line.  One sleeve is Fair Isle patterns – the other is Aran, following the plaits of how I sometimes braid in my hair. 

These 2 large charts include 23 motifs and colours are a treasure trove of endless possibilities for you to be creative and make your own vest or pullover by incorporating them into your own favourite vest or jumper pattern.  Use any colours that you have, use any wool that you have, use 2 colours, or like me, use over 90 colours.  I am giving you a recipe for you to enjoy and work with in whatever way you want.  I am giving you 23 fully lined up Fair Isle charts to knit in any colour you choose to make your own design.  
Recently, I have been reminded of how Kaffe Fassett, in the 80’s made beautiful patterns in books and wrote, ‘ choose 9 balls of varied light colours and 9 balls of dark colours’ and people ran with that, me included.  Sometimes, he would write – use double knitting yarn, sometimes he listed the yarn and the exact colours.

If you run with these charts, you can use your favourite double knitting yarn and the jumper will be how you like it to look and feel with your favourite yarn, incorporating some or all of these Fair Isle motifs. 

My jumper is knitted in Jamieson’s of Shetland spindrift using over 90 colours – some small lengths, some longer – these colours I have had left over from previous projects.   As the colours are not often repeated, not great lengths are required.   But you can do this differently.  Use your stash or buy just 4 colours or even 2.   The choices and permutations are endless but this relies on you.  It relies on being excited to try this, to work out your centre front (which in my case, mirrored my centre back) and making sure that your motif bands align.  It is about enjoying colour, swatching to experiment for colour combinations. It is a fun package and I would love you to have a go. 

It has taken me nearly one year to design and make this jumper – it has taken 3 days to map out the motif bands and make the chart used in the body and in the sleeve and another 2 days to pull it all together. 

If you have done so, I want to Thank you for buying my pattern for the charts – you are supporting me with saving towards my artist textile residency.

here is where the worksheet is at – let me know your thoughts on this one year project.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fair-isle-chart-2

Trust your unconditional imagination

Trust your uncondtional imagination – I heard this said, by a musician. How many of us spend the time, the real time, to see our imagination?

This morning, I write, quickly, without inhibition, my unconditional imagination – not dream, nor hope but mature, possibly achievalble yet far reaching thoughts.

What I imagine is living in an old small Japanese house in Kyoto, much like the quadrangle houses in the hutongs of old Suzhou in China, where I once lived.   I would find the perfect small place, – where I would live a small, simple life for one year.

I would learn to speak the language of the local people – every day, a little more – enough to get by.  I’d get up when it was time to rise – maybe 4am at the sound of the bell ringing at the temple, or 6am when Nishiki market is rising and I would have a purpose to understand the passing of the seasons of one year, in all of its seasonal and serendipitous times. 

 

I know where the Persimmon grows over the water but I have missed its blossom and leaves – only arriving last Winter to see  a few plump fruits left hanging on the bare spindly branches, for the birds, or for the water but I want a year of the Persimmon trees of Kyoto.  I have not seen the blossoms.  I’d like to view them, feel them, sense and respect the history of them.


I want to learn how to wear Kimono properly – I have been shown but I want to be able to wear it in my small house. I want to rake the tiny garden, hear the rain travel down the rain chain from the roof, admire the growth of moss upon the rocks resting in the raked gravel of the sea.    I want to regularly visit my favourite gardens – Dai Sen In, which made me almost cry at is beauty, Tofukuji, where I sat with the winter sun, a beautiful granny of a bride and watched the great oceans raked into the gravel with wonder at an act carried out in the same patterns for generations, or my first ever visited garden at Kenninji temple in Gion, where the guard was so used to me sitting on the long veranda facing South, in the winter sun knitting, that he began to smile.

I’d like to write the story of the seamstress, who works in the window of Old Gion.  Hope that she would begin to trust me that I am not with her to take from her but to respect and admire her skills of many decades.  I had begun to sit with the man who has befriended the heron on the river bank, I’d like to be a regular companion beside the changing year of the river, so that the birds would also begin to know me too. I’d take the time, hours and hours.

These are the things I already know exist but this is the tip.  I want find, keep finding, keep learning, keep growing as well as give and share, as I once did when I lived in China.

I’d like to just feel the unique wonder of the cultural differences until it was  no longer new to me because then, I would have emersed myself fully – grown the bonsai, joined the ladies chattering outside the theatre in their finest clothes, viewed the moss for so long that I could almost hear it grow, sat on the old wooden stools up to the make shift table in Nishiki market to eat sushi on a regular basis that they would know what I liked and I would know them as friends not as fine sushi and fish sellers,  where I would greet people in the local greeting and mean it, wholeheartedly.  I’d like to see the blossom move from south to north, I’d like to find an Onsen and revisit, I’d like to see Mount Fuji from the window of a passing train, in rain, in sun in mist.

I’d like to live a simple life with complex thoughts and feelings, to appreciate deeply from my heart –  Kyoto for one year and face what may happen – good and bad because these things don’t come easily, don’t come quickly – they take time.

This is my unconditional imagination.