Category: Uncategorized

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.

New Sea Urchin Pattern in Rowan Felted Tweed + Rowan Connect workshop

I’m really excited to have redesigned my Sea Urchin Hat in Rowan Felted Tweed and to be doing an online colour blending workshop for Rowan Connect in April.

In preparation for the workshop, I have been working with Kerry, from Rowan, regarding yarn colours to work with in in the workshop and to reknit the Sea Urchin hat pattern using Rowan Felted Tweed.

It didn’t take me long to finish the new hat and I was really pleased with how the colours worked together. Along the way, I had to adjust the pattern for an entirely different yarn to the one I originally used.  I knitted a corrugated rib for this pattern to show off the texture.

Here you can see the two hats alongside each other – one in Rowan Felted Tweed (RFT) and the other in Jamieson’s of Shetland (JoS).

RFT, is thicker yarn than I originally used – it’s composition is 50% Wool, 25% Alpaca, 25% Viscose and comes in 50g balls. It knits up as double knit, it’s soft and not scratchy. Jamieson’s Spindrift is 100% Shetland wool and knits up as 4ply and can be scratchy.  As well as the feel and size, the two hats turn out very differently in shape. The Rowan Felted Tweed hat is, of course, bigger thant he original.

When I first knitted the Sea Urchin hat pattern ten years ago, I used vintage tapestry yarns and the hat was just a quick project for me.  I knitted it in a number of different colour ways before going to Shetland for the first time in 2015, and finding Jamieson’s spindrift.  I still have those first hats from 2014 – they’ve been part of my design process going back 10 years.  The new hat, knitted in RFT is of similar design to my first ones. Below are images of the ones I made in Tapestry yarn.

The yarn used in any project dictates the size and shape of the finished hat. Over time,  I’ve blocked each hat in to a shape that resembled a slouching hat or a kind of beret and latterly, with Jamieson’s yarn, it was a neat beanie.

Seeing the early photos of this hat, I see a different shape entirely to the one that they morphed into over time, taking on the shape of my head through being soaked in gale force rains, being stuffed in pockets and in bags and left for months in a drawer.  When I was living in Brindister, West Burrafirth, Shetland, I wore the Tapestry yarn hat every day whilst walking around the voe on those winter days- especially in the piercing winds.

It was then that I was first inspired by the Sea urchin shells that I found in West Burrafirth, where I began to find many discarded Sea Urchin shells of various sizes and colours, left by seagulls. They were abandoned on banks and on flat, wet, mossy plateaus used as seagull breakfast tables.  All had been smashed to get to their breakfast but I was on the lookout for a complete one.  My very first complete found sea urchin shell was an exciting surprise, like finding a four-leafed clover when I was a kid.  I turned it around and around looking at its pattern. I collected any shell that was whole, even if it was broken into until I couldn’t hold them in my hands – so I used my hat to carry the porcelain like sea urchin shells back to the croft house. When I scrutinized the patterns, I saw that both my hat and urchin shell had a similar shape – the hat with a 5-pointed section crown and an urchin-like roundness and in return, the sea urchin shell looked hat-like.  When I returned home to Yorkshire at the end of 2019, I produced my first knitting pattern in January 2020, and called the it, Sea Urchin Shetland Hat pattern.

I am now loving using Rowan Felted Tweed yarn for this new pattern which is just called, Sea Urchin Hat.

The new pattern using Rowan’s Felted Tweed yarn, is here  but you can use any double knitting wool to knit it and if you do knit it, tag me on Instagram @traceydoxey so that I can see your experimental projects.

My workshop is now live on the Rowan Connect Website.   There’s lots of workshops on during the weekend of 12th – 14th April – Even Kaffe Fassett, is doing a talk. So, maybe I will see you online on at my session on 12th April  – hope so.  AND if you would like to win a place on all complimentary sessions and to my workshop at Rowan Connect on the weekend of 12th – 14th April, I will be picking one person out of a hat from the people who buy the new pattern. Closing date to buy the pattern is April 5th.

I’m really excited to be doing an online colour blending workshop for Rowan Connect because it will run completely differently to how I run my smaller workshops.

Online colour blending workshop for Rowan Connect in April is in link below

https://www.rowanconnect.net

Let me know what you think 🙂

Much love, Tracey.

Sharing my Creative Practice

Hi everyone, Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to those who have followed my on my website for some time, and to those new people who have recently joined me on here. This is my ‘blog’ and covers topics from knitting to travel, inspiration, Shetland, my cats and my workshops.

today, it feels like a long time since I started my Patreon supporters website so, I’d like to update you on some of the exciting knitting posts that I have been uploading onto my Patreon site around the 1st of each month, since last August.

I cover topics such as behind the scenes (of knitting projects, patterns, motifs, colour blending and events) as well as inspiration, links, prompts and every month, there is a downloadable chart or charts in both colour and b/w so that you can use them with your own coloured yarns to knit in your own projects.

I started posting in August – with my first post – For the love of colour work knitting, which is free for everyone and is here 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/for-love-of-work-87220920

Then there is the first August subscribers post where I add half of the motifs that I used in the Stash buster neck warmer – both in colour and in B/W for every knitter to enjoy

September’s post shares the joys of swatching for colour – not for gauge. And I add the last of the neck warmer motif charts to download  – so now, you could knit it yourself without even buying the pattern because you have all the motif charts and all the colours.

By the time we are getting to September, I have written the stash buster neck warmer pattern, that so many people wanted and the pattern is finally launched, which I share first on patreon.

Then people on social media want more than just the neck warmer so I start adding charts of the pullover to Patreon too on the October post called Using my intuition and pragmatism.

In November, I write about finishing off and inspiration. And I also do my first pod cast chat and it is with Irina Shar – which was a bit scary for me but I loved it nonetheless.

December post begins with my love of – it is all about Shetland Dice.  – I tell the original story of my first pattern and why I used the dice patterns  – there are many images of the dice swatches and downloadable charts

In December, I post from my stay in Kyoto and there is a free little story on the needle shop and I post photos of knitting in the dry raked Zen gardens in the temples, which I fell in love with.  On January 1st, coming from Kyoto, I share how the city has inspired my love of colour and I start swatching for Kyoto Baby pattern – there are beautiful photographs fo the temple gardens and of my swatches and of the fabulous Wedding kimono that started my love of Crimson.

In February, I post about my behind the scenes of designing the Kyoto Baby hat and there are downloadable charts of the motifs.

March’s post is already written, it will be posted on 1st March – there will be downloadable charts, behind the scenes on my upcoming Rowan Connect workshop, and I will be joining a crochet group and there’s links to really interesting stuff.

So, you see, there is so much to get your teeth into.

There are  5 different levels of memberships.  The knitting level only – is £5.00 a month – cheaper thana a cuppa and a biscuit in a café – and that’s gone in 10 minutes.   Your subscription also goes towards supporting me as an artist – to continue creating.  If you join now, you get all the older posts back dated so it is a wonderful opportunity to see and read so many months of posts.

There is an expensive tier where you get a free workshop and 1:1 tutorial with me too and I have one incredibly generous supporter who joined at this level.

Each knitting subscriber, also gets 20% discount on all of my patterns on ravelry and a discount of 10% on my online workshops.

So, if you like my work, and if you follow on here, you can get much more from Patreon –

thank you to my current subscribers. some have left, many have stuck with me. I am back, I have energy again. I am looking forward to March’s post 🙂

Let me know your thoughts

Very best wishes

Tracey

knitting and walking.

https://videopress.com/v/JfRVsOUh?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true
7:15am

This morning, I felt flat, deflated but didn’t know why, couldn’t figure it out.  So, just after 7am, I put the dryrobe on, over the top of everything, including a bag over my shoulder with my knitting in, to just walk.   I headed towards the damp, defrosting, dripping, waterlogged world in the woods. As I walked, I slowly knitted, because it’s a simple pattern but still, I connected with little. I neither wanted to walk, nor knit but to stand still would be worse.  There was so much water everywhere, coming through the small gulleys and streams to make large quantities of water swirling and surging and falling at great speed and I saw the tiny tree sapling hanging on by a rock, and the huge tree trunks covered in rich deep green moss. But still, I felt little.


Until, on exiting the wood near Forge Dam, I heard a whooshing noise like the sound of wheels going around and around. Upon looking up, I saw two herons, flying side by side, their four great wings making the eerie beautiful sound of great creatures in flight. And there it was, the true moment that I felt alive, connected, grateful.


Temporary. Fleeting.

https://videopress.com/v/jUQoufFC?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

all large shetland motifs in the jumper were started, test knitted and charted in the Stash Buster Neck warmer pattern.

Sea Urchin Hat pattern

January 2024

I thought that it was the Sea Urchin hat pattern’s third anniversary, but, because we slipped into 2024, when I was in Japan, I finally realised that this unassuming first design pattern of mine, is a big FOUR years.

I gave it the name of Sea Urchin Shetland pattern, after collecting Sea Urchin shells in Brindister on the West coast of Shetland in the December of 2019.

There were so many on the hills making the lunch tables for wild birds to crack open sea shells, that I began to call the place, ‘Sea Urchin Hill’.   

So much has happened since the inception of this little beanie pattern, that I had already been making up in vintage tapestry yarn for some time.  In January 2020, I formalised the pattern a released it.  I didn’t know about test knitters or pricing or anything, and it flew.   It was the colours, you see.  I made the pattern beanie up in my very first use of Jamiesons of Shetland, Spindrift, after returning from 2 months of living on Fair Isle with Mati Ventrillon, as intern, at the age of 56.  It was around that time, after many visits to Shetland, that I began to feel at home there, and think about moving to the islands. 

I look back to the time of writing and designing this little pattern and now see that is it was the Kickstarter to my creative design process – the beginning of how I saw colour in knitting and how I began to blend those colours.   The pattern became incorporated into my online colour blending workshops and was the possibility for a new me. 

I designed the pattern on the doorstep, out back of my Sheffield flat using the yarn from Jamieson’s, posting little posts on Instagram, building what I didn’t realise then, was an interest in the pattern and in my colour ways.   I began dreaming of living on an island 60degrees north.  (the full story unfolds here and you can read Aug – January of the book I wrote, if you join us on Patreon now – then each month will drop on the 1st of the month) and enjoyed how I mixed the  colours to sing.

It makes me really happy to see this pattern interpreted by knitters in their own colours, some of which are included here.  If you have knitted this pattern, please tag me in your posts so that I can see the results. 

Here is the little pattern.

Just think, you never know where knitting can take you. It is all interconnected and all a journey .

Thank you to everyone who supported me in 2023.

Tracey 🙂

Kyoto Zen Gardens and knitting

Tofuku Ji

I’ve begun to get a small obsession with sitting in different Kyoto, Zen temples with dry raked and or moss gardens.

My favourite so far is Daisen In temple where I sat with a Japanese architect viewing the gardens in wonder together –  but no photos were allowed of this astonishing place – I do have Instagram reels of the temples – @traceydoxey.
Sitting on at ancient wooden verandas surrounding these gardens, I usually end up facing south whereupon, I get my knitting out



I’ve begun to take instax shots of them. Some work, some don’t.



I have already had so many wonderful experiences but for me, the most memorable things about kyoto are the Zen dry gardens, and knitting in the sunshine. No one moves me on, I can just sit there with everyone filing past at their own paces. I’m in heaven.

Yesterday, at Tofuku- Ji temple, (my 2nd visit) I was knitting in the warm wonderful winter sunshine on the great wooden veranda facing the south garden with a backdrop of Japanese wedding photography, when I saw a man with a rake and knew what he was about to do.

I thought the raking was a secret, I thought the gardens are raked before people arrive but here he was, beginning to rake the 8 great oceans. Everyone there was silenced in great respect of his skill.

When I arrived, there was a wedding photography session going on – with the ancient temple as a backdrop.  Sometimes, the photos are real, sometimes they are dress up. But yesterday, was real. I sat on the veranda beside the 81year old grandma of the bride. We were both chasing the sun.  She was delightful – I mean full of delight and must have been all of 4ft 8. I gestured if I could take her photo. She had no idea what the instax was. So I took 2, one for her and one for me. She was astonished. She chose the one she wanted and laughed and laughed. We sat together for ages. The wedding photographer even took our photo


I feel very lucky to have seen all of this at Tofuku-ji but it is about spending lengthy time in one place, engaging with the environment fully and the people within it.  Then, you never know what will happen.

If you are a reader of this post and love reading about Kyoto and love knitting, I will give 20% off any of my patterns for the new year – runnin for the next 24 hours use the code – blogpost

Ravelry pattern link here  ravely patterns are here

Happy Holidays – and good wishes for the new year

What do you eat? – a post from my old Shetland life

On Saturday 14th November 2020, I was the guest on a really interesting 2 hour Zoom meeting with the lovely ladies at Cream City Yarn in Milwaukee,  4pm Shetland time – already twilight – 10am there.  The meeting was to be about my knitting designs and my tiny croft house here in Shetland with any of their customers who would like to join.

I sat, in frame, on a small old wooden Liberty chair in front of my wood burning stove, burning peats.  I showed the peats, what they looked like, how they burn on the fire and explained a little of how they are harvested.  I was surrounded by my knitting (completed and half done) and my knitting design book that I add to all the time. I explained how I start to make swatches and of my colour choices and how I blend my colours.  I explained the importance of colour and how you choose the right ones.  I then went on to how I am inspired by place and or person and how that inspiration then turns into a research of sorts; possibly bordering on a small obsession to get details right.

I showed photographs of Susan Halcrow, who had lived in this house for 83 years and then a 360-degree panoramic view of the room with the old latch doors.  
I showed all of my designs and explained the inspiration and colour and how they had come in to being.  They are a story in themselves.    I even showed the Sea Urchin shells that Inspired my Sea Urchin hat pattern and how I had developed the colour for that design which is described in the pattern. There was a conversation between myself and the ladies at CCYarn.

I hoped to create an atmosphere of the house and an insight into colour blending and knitting design.  An atmosphere of my way of life.

After 1 hour 45, we opened up for questions from Zoom participants

The first question was – ‘What do you eat?’

I mean, this was kind of a weird question to me – both personal and odd because we have a Tesco Megastore in Lerwick and a big fat Co-op and many small stores including farm shops.  I felt like I was back in China – when in the mornings, they don’t greet with, ‘Good Morning’ they often say “你吃了吗(Nǐ chī le ma)?” which means – have you eaten?  I always considered this to be funny but realised that the deeper route goes back to the times of famine – Have you eaten? What have you eaten? Because food was rare and is precious.  So, on the zoom,  I explained my lunch that day – Shepherds pie with 5 root vegetable mash and gravy made of the wine left over from when Mati visited and all the juices of the meat.  And then I explained that Mati had stayed the week before and that she had brought me 2 butchered lambs from her croft in Fair Isle and they were in my freezer – the day before, we had had roast lamb and all the trimmings so I didn’t really understand her question.

But on reflection, I realise she didn’t mean – what do I eat – but how, on this isolated island do I get my food?

I’m new here.  I have no stock or store or polytunnel stocked with mature soft fruits growing protected from the harsh weather.  There are no trees here that shed an autumn harvest of apples, pears, plums and there are no pecan trees shedding pecans to fill my belly ( I have been reading Braiding Sweet Grass)

This island is barren and bleak in Winter, which can last from the end of October to the end of March.  I have no cellar store with stacks of pickles or potatoes.

I mean – WHAT DO I EAT?

What if the boat did not come from the mainland, due to endless storms, to stock up Tesco? What if the electricity went and the freezer died?  What if the boat from Aberdeen to Lerwick gets cut and the service is lessened?  

In truth, I did save pasta and a few things when COVID hit us in Sheffield and you couldn’t buy pasta or rice for love nor money.  That time was an eye opener that shops can be cleared in hours, in a city of 550,000 people with a food shop on every corner. So I did stock up for the first time in over 2 decades with non-perishable foods.  So, a more rounded question might be – what can I eat if everything is removed from a shop?

When I arrived, I dug out the small stone roofless Byre of over 20 years of soil, weeds, fern, roses, plants I didn’t know the name of with the intention of getting it reroofed in polytunnel plastic to be a greenhouse to grow my own food.  Everywhere across the islands are new expensive polytunnels.  A high percentage of homes have one – over half. They are high yielding, complete with internal growth systems inside.  The smallest polytunnel will set you back 3.5K and that is a kit.  You have to lay the base and put it up so that it will withstand any gale (of which there are plenty) I have been quoted 5K to re roof this tiny building which I am still taking a deep breath at.

As part of the eco system of this house and my new life, I need to grow things for two reasons – one to have a supply of fresh organically grown fruit and veg and two, something to fall back on and there is another reason – I would like to offer organically grown vegetables to my visitors.

To grow here, you have to cover your plants.  The sea air burns leaves, the wind rips plants back to sticks.   At the moment, my city pot plants of Winter Jasmine, Star Jasmine and Orange Blossom are jostling for space in my porch.  But I want to grow things – both edible and scented.  It’s important.

To do this, I need to get a roof on the byre and then I will learn how to grow things in the wormless soil of Shetland. 

So, I don’t think the workshop participant meant, ‘What do you eat?’ but more, where do you get your food from and how do you survive on that island?

Fiberchat podcast

podcast with Fiberchats

On 4th October, I met with Irina Shaar of Fiberchats, online, to have a little chat.  It was pretty in depth because, I appear to be a talker.  Stories of my journey in how I learnt to knit and my knitting journey were an initial soft entry into the chat.  Topics such as ‘what constitutes an original design’, how do I teach colour blending workshops?, why did I move to Shetland? and did I fit in? talk about my book and other topics are all covered in the chat.  I was totally honest, slightly guarded but honest.

There are things that I learned from my chat with Irina – to go for something new, to be out there – warts and all ( I look like my mother) to put my trust in a recording that was not at all edited, to find a joy in what I have achieved. To actually hear myself talk about what I have done in my life.

My life so far, has been a small but interesting journey.  Of course, the 44 minute podcast only scrapes the surface but under that surface lies a challenging, sporadic, optimistic journey with many dents and bumps and breakages along the way – a bit like my knee at the moment, because I came off the bike – visible on the surface but such a lot going on underneath.

In the podcast, I talk about my knitting journey, my Masters at NTU in Knitting where I developed my skills in CAD fine lace knit which I took back to Shetland and placed in the abandoned derelict homes of the knitters long gone.

Unst – 2018

If you go back in this website, you will see all the Shetland visits to abandoned croft houses.

With Irina, I talked of writing to Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen’s and working with them for a while whilst at Uni, and how that happened, and also, how I got on a train in Sheffield and got off in China. 

Irina asked me about my online workshops, and about the book I wrote whilst living in Shetland for which I had an agent but no publisher.   If you have ever wondered what it is like to move lock, stock and two cats to a remote Island, I am releasing the chapters in monthly instalments on Patreon.  There are already 4 months posted – August to November, filled with the joy of buying the house, walking to the village beach, collecting flowers, shells, and sunrises, whale watching, soil digging, paint stripping.  December’s will come out on 1st December.  There are also knitting posts, with downloadable Fair Isle motifs in colour and b/w –   It is all there. Well, it is all here.

and here is a little note from Unst in 2018

So, if you want to listen to my chat with Irina, then, it is here.  say hi to her for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQR4FMa1dA

Much  love Tracey

 

https://patreon.com/tracey_doxey

Sitting in on someone else’s class

https://videopress.com/v/jenKqMMl?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

It is raining.  It has rained and rained and rained, amid strong winds.  Here, in the city, this extreme stroke of lashing weather is nothing to what it was like when I lived in Shetland. Today, the weather that has brought trains and buses to a standstill and cars are sitting in 3 ft deep water on Chesterfield road in a huge city puddle where the roads dip (why?)  It is like an Autumn day in Shetland, where it was exhausting to even go to the shops and come home in the car and carry the bags to the house.  So, I got wet today, so I sat in traffic but it is relatively mild storm weather and I feel safe.

At work, I dropped in to the Architecture lecture for module 1, for the first year Architect apprentices,  so that they could see me, ask questions related to their apprenticeship support and for me to understand their first module.   I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. It was so exciting to sit in a class situation and be inspired by the slides of the work of Architects who deliver sensory responses to social, physical and environmental spaces – to develop relationships between person and place, altering sensory experience.

My mind flew to where I would go with the project group work, if I was in their class and I realised that I missed academic stimulation to create new work.     My mind rushed back to my own Fine Art degree of 1995- 98, and my MA in Knitting at NTU 2016 – 18, creating site specific work back in the abandoned croft houses in Shetland, and then it flew forward to Kyoto and how could I carry the inspiration I felt from this one hour lecture that wasn’t even for me, to create work within the environment of a city I have never seen, using found materials to make a prop to alter the sensory perception of place? that’s the brief, but in Sheffield from the city to Sky Edge.

I unintentionally started drawing a row of thin, long, unambitious, vertical lines / threads with ideas of tiny macrame baskets fastened to the lines, full of sunflower seeds, that I have gathered from my trip to Tickhill Sunflower fields in the heat of one day, seemingly so long ago.  The vertical lines would be tied to a tree branch and anchored into the ground, burying a pellet of mixed sunflower seeds from Doncaster, in to a wood in Kyoto.  I also thought of the confrontation and humorous work of the artist, Nina Saunders, that I saw in 1996.   It feels like forever ago that Nina, upholstered sofas and chairs with great spheres couched into the seats in Chesterfield sofa style buttoning, making them into structures that could not be sat upon.

I also stripped sofas in 1996, when I was at Art school and upholstered them in dried rose petal filled muslin upholstery.  The scent was sensory.

Used furniture has huge potential to tell a new story if used in sculpture or out in the environment.  It is interesting how people relate to everyday furniture when is has been manipulated. In the 90’s, I found Nina’s work both beautiful and memorable. I felt part of the confusing artwork that asked me questions.

So, today, as I watched the presentation for the degree students, my own thoughts developed ideas that I could  make to be manipulated into seed hills on sofa frames for the outside sensory experience for the passer by to connect with environment and place.  I have collected many sunflower seed heads and am going to send some to Shetland, in the hope that they will grow in my friends’ (x2) poly crubs and bring a flash of yellow to the Shetland weather.   I no longer want to rip out the upholstery of a sofa to reveal the frame to rebuild it as a sensory object, but I am thinking of taking sunflower seeds to Kyoto to make site specific work in nature and walk away, never knowing if they will grow, or be eaten by birds or squirrels, using fine cord and maybe crochet.

Did you know, that the stripey sunflowers have stripey sun flower seeds?

I haven’t felt so alive in a long time as I did in that class that wasn’t even for me.   How lucky these students are to be able to experiment with environment and materials to make architectural choices at the beginning of their 3-year degree.  I could drop in on Fridays, I might drop in on Fridays, but it is hard for me to keep quiet, because I am so excited by such possibility and it isn’t my degree so I need to keep away. Though, the lecture did trigger my memory of my own site specific work in Shetland which is here which I did during my MA.

After today’s presentation, the SHU library beckoned.  All of the art books from the library when I did my degree in 1995 – 1998 were transferred from Psalter lane when it was demolished, to the city library – the art book collection is extensive, though some are missing.   Where is Twombly’s 24 poems to the sea?

I borrowed – Van Gogh and Japan.  Let’s see what happens. Maybe nothing, but for one hour, I was transformed to think completely creatively and those ideas bled into thoughts of reading, art and site specifice work. Now, I have to keep quiet on my ideas and just be an apprenticeship coach.