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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.

When do the reminders of my journey past, stop?

October 5th, 2015, 8 years ago today

When will spontaneous social media reminders stop pulling me back to a place in the past, a place of my dreams even though it is no longer a dream when it became a reality.

Visual reminders drawing me back to a time of pure joy in a place – Shetland  – it is always the frozen moment in time, captured in an image.

and, I begin to be torn, in my head.

question my leaving, questioning myself and my own judgement.

I achieved my dream but left it behind.

Re reading my journals for my Patreon posts pulls me back – leaving one foot in each place.

The city and the island.

How do memories fade?  Are they skewed or chewed?  Will my brain shrink until there is no capacity to remember?

This week, I heard the beautiful lilting pure Shetland accent on Louise at Jamieson’s,  flooding out of the telephone through the ether, words hanging in the air long after they are spoken. Such warmth, such beauty are the things I that I hang from. Dangling in mid thought.

Words left floating from a thousand miles away, and wished I could have been there. Back in that shop, in that street, in that town on that Island.

When do I lift my dragging foot out of Shetland?

The beautiful isles

The beautiful lilting accents of tangible generations.

Probably never.

Stash Buster Fair Isle Neck Warmer pattern, Knit along

Dear Friends

I am really happy to offer The Stash Buster Fair Isle neck warmer KAL to everyone who buys the pattern between now and December 2023 – and it begins today.

I’d love anyone who has bought the Stash Buster Fair Isle Neck Wamer pattern to join me in this KAL – I will be doing a free zoom chat on the pattern and the KAL on Saturday 14th October at 4-5pm UK time. if you have bought a pattern – I will email you an invite – last zoom invite will go out on 10th October.

We will all be making the Neck warmer,in however which way you want to.  I have already knitted it in 20 colours, but I will now knit it in 4 (or 5 or 6) so that it is an easier option to show everyone how to develop the pattern to their own tastes. The pattern offers all 16 charts for all 20 colours but it also gives you a 8 b/w charts option so that you can knit it in any of the following ways.

  1. your own 20 colours
  2. just 4 colours or
  3. just 2 colours – all of it.

So, What’s the plan?

Buy the pattern and join in on Ravelry on Tracey Doxey Knitting Patterns Group on link below – but you don’t have to join the ravelry group

https://www.ravelry.com/groups/tracey-doxey-knitting-patterns-group

the knit along questions page on ravelry is here

https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/tracey-doxey-knitting-patterns-group/topics/new

The Knit along will last until Friday December 8th. – I will be knitting a second neck warmer in 4 or 6 colours so that you can see how easy it is to use your own stash.

The Yarns? 

I used Jamieson’s of Shetland but this is not easy for everyone to get so I want you to use your own yarn in this project because Gauge doesn’t matter.  JUST USE THE SAME YARN IN ALL THE PROJECT

Prize? 

I reward starting, not only finishing.  All you need to do to be eligible for a prize is post your photo of your Stash buster Neck warmer knit on Instagram or on Stranded Knits facebook group and tag #traceydoxey, or @traceydoxey So that I can see it  —  Prize – there will be one prize for one person drawn randomly out of a hat on 8th December. The KAL winner will win – A choice of 4 of any of my knitting patterns on Ravelry. Just tag me to go into the draw. I will be keeping a tally.

There will be a free Zoom chat with Tracey Doxey about the neck warmer pattern and choice of colours and any questions. To be invited to the zoom meeting, Buy the pattern before 10th October, and I will invite you to join me on Saturday 14th October 4-5pm UK it’s free, come and ask any questions. Say your bit. Please NOTE the last opportunity to recieve a zoom invite to the KAL chat, is 10th October.

The Tracey Doxey’s Stash Busting Fair Isle neck warmer KAL zoom chat and question time will be on the date and time below.

Time: Oct 14, 2023 04:00 PM London

I am looking forward to my first KAL

Let me know your thoughts 🙂

best wishes. Tracey

Fiona Blue Pattern

It is hot outside. The air wraps hot curls of heat around my bare legs when I walk in the city. It is not a day to promote Winter traditional Shetland motif mittens. But these mittens are a little special. They were designed with a wonderful woman in mind – Fiona, who had the bluest of eyes.

To everyone who knew her, it was devastating when Fiona suddenly died. I wanted to knit something to remember her by and to share her name.

Last month, I published a little pattern in her memory. for the first month of sale, 50% of profits will be sent to Macmillan Cancer Support.
The initial blog is here

It is the last week before I will send the charity donation to Macmillan, so I thought that, if you would like to donate and get a little pattern in return, then, here is a gentle reminder. The pattern is in the link below

the pattern is here

If you have already knitted this pattern, please tag me in your project on instagram, then I can share the work.

with thanks to Karen Sprenger for test knitting (bottom left image) and to Ericka Eckles for swatching test colours and gauge (bottom right image), for this little pattern.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fiona-blue

best wishes

Tracey

Update:-

On Sunday 18th June, I sent a donation of £188.00 plus £47 gift aid, making a total of £235 to MacMillan Cancer Support in the memory of Fiona Gray of Bressay, Shetland.

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.

Sheffield to Shetland and back.

On Friday, I set off just before 7am. A sky of midnight blue, changing through a line of tangerine and peach until the sun rose, a golden ball accompanied by a never ending line of staggered planes flying north, whilst the sky turned pale pink, lilac, pure blue and the stag watched it all beside the edge of the tree line.  I felt a pure energy like I used to on my doorstep at sunrise in Shetland, except I was one mile from the edge of a city on an old Roman road crossing Houndkirk moor.

I walked as far as the stone way marker with the skull and crossbones carved in the side facing Sheffield but the weather hasn’t been kind and the marks are now eroded away. 

On the moor, I felt the same energy being drawn from living within a pure hour of anticipating the first tip of the rising sun on the horizon surrounded by many colours of a changing sky across a visible 180 degree sky line.   Instead of sea creatures, I saw the stag watching me and the night before I had watched the young badger and fox in the city.  Finally, I felt back at home.

In the afternoon, I spoke with my agent, Jenny from Jenny Brown Associates about my book proposal, which I am quietly excited by.  I have recently been added to their website as a new author. My proposal will go to publishers next week.  It contains my first three chapters of the book I am writing about my year in Shetland.   I have recently had some great support from Hannah, and The Writers Workshop who helped with editing and the synopsis.

Writing the book has allowed me to rethink what happened that year.

The House of Two Women

A journey to and from Shetland  

‘I stand for a second to take in the moment, to look at the old plank-board door with a square wooden knob which I finally turn sharply to the right. The simple mechanism lifts a wooden latch inside. Human touch has left tangible traces of every hand that has opened this door before me. The sound of the sneck – a door latch hitting its casing – is what I will always remember of this place. I understand that it is a unique sound to this house, one that will forever embody a simple place of great beauty. In this exact moment, I am sold on the sound of a wooden latch and the view of the stone flag floor in front of me. Before the agent has even arrived, I know that I will not pull out of this crazy unfinished deal to buy this house and change my life forever. I won’t admit to the agent that it is the sound of the sneck that sealed the deal, but it is.’

This book is a love letter to Shetland and its extreme elemental landscapes; to an old croft house and three generations of the same family who lived there for more than 140 years. It is my story: a single, 57-year-old Yorkshire woman and knitter who dared to follow a dream against all odds; to sell up and risk all to move lock, stock and two cats from a small city flat to a home facing the sea, in the northernmost reaches of Scotland, the islands of Shetland.

This is also Susan Halcrow’s story – a strong, independent woman who lived in the same house for eighty-three years, from 1876 to 1960 – and how I came to know her through exploring the history of the home we shared. I write a letter to her in each chapter.

Each page is an invitation to share in my arrival on the island and to experience a full year of living through the seasons. It unfolds in monthly instalments, beginning on the very first day I visited the house, and heard the sneck, in August 2020, to my last sunrise in October 2021, when I had to leave. I dreamed of living on the island to be closer to nature, creativity and a life less ordinary, with my knitting practice at the heart of every day; of moving through slow travel across sea and natural beauty, to come to a personal understanding of both inner and outer landscapes. I never dreamed I would want to leave.

I will tell stories about sunrises and sea swimming; island hopping, whales and perfect Groatie Buckie shells; the night sky full of the milky way and a moon as big as a dinner plate; Easter blizzards coating the front of the house with a sheet of icy snow; of knitting and making a home in an old stone house, where learned so much about myself.

I will also share how emotionally challenging it is to make such a seismic life-change from city to island life and how my being an incomer, made it hard to find community both with some islanders and with some other local incomers.

The book, written entirely from the islands of Shetland, ending in October 2021 and offering an insight into island life and, finally explaining the reasons why I had to sell up and leave, to never look back again

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver.

https://www.jennybrownassociates.com

Pink Kitchen (New hat pattern)

Since September, on and off, I have been working on a new little hat pattern.  The colours have been inspired by the dusky pink hue that I painted my new little wooden kitchen, with highlights of rich magentas and wine for the motifs and pale background colours – just as I painted the insides of kitchen cupboard doors.

When I went back to stay with Mati in Fair Isle in September, I started with ideas for colours and motifs because I was, at that time, painting the kitchen too.  But it wasn’t until December that the hat finally took on a full body of a good colour blending work throughout the motifs.  I was then happy with it.

When I teach on my online colour blending workshops, I teach the principles of how I choose and blend my colours in my knitting projects to enable the participants to harmoniously choose colours for their own new work.  After the principles, I give ideas of how to choose colours with ‘your heart’ – to go out and find your own true inspiration and work with those colours and the feeling from the inspiration, rather than to just reach for a big pile of coloured yarn in front of the TV or buy from a shop without forethought, then to just knit anything that looks good together. 

Knitting and designing takes planning, and thought, and even love to get it all right.  To knit a project and work with colours ‘with your heart’ adds another dimension to the work – it becomes art – my art – your art.

The new little hat pattern sings -and I think it is my favourite design to date. I worked on the motifs for some time so that I felt happy with the design and so that the patterns built up and worked together well.

I’ve kept a uniformity of colour changes and carried those through each motif in the same way, which is not really like me.  I am normally more random but I am thinking of knitting a vest with these colours and patterns so this is a taster of things to come.

The pattern for the hat also has a new detail that I haven’t done before, and that is to have a b/w chart as well as colour coded charts for the body and crown of the hat – so that the knitter can use the chart to design their own colours and rows where the colours change.  This addition is quite exciting for me because I am hoping that knitters will take this pattern and develop their own colours for the patterns and that I will see many different combinations.   If you do knit the pattern in your own colour choices, please tag me on Instagram with @traceydoxey so that I can see your work – I share some on my stories and I  would love to share your work too.

The new pattern went to two test knitters, one in Sheffield, who came around to my flat and chose her own colours from my box of yarn, and one friend in Nova Scotia, who knitted the hat using her stash.  I’m grateful to Karen and Shona for test knitting – here are their works of art.

the new pattern is now out on Ravelry, it is here.

For anyone who has attended a colour blending workshop – you still get 20% discount off all of my patterns with a code that I have already sent you after the workshop. But, if you don’t have your code for discount, please email me and I’ll send it to you.

Thank you for reading this little mention of this little knitting project. If you would like to read up to date information on how my book is moving along, please sign up to this blog to be updated, by submitting your email in the box below.

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Fog bow

The cat woke me with his heavy weight transferred through his fat kneading front paws alternately pressing into my sticking up right shoulder.

Alfie joined in the attempt to get me to feed them by his repetitive bipping noise.  The old, cheap, mantle clock chimed six so I turned face down in the pillows.

The forecast (a habit I have from Shetland of checking) read that we were to expect fog in the city first thing, then a ball of sun most of the day.  I lay there for a while, my tired body ignoring the purring and bipping cats.   At 7, I gave in and got up, fed and watered the boys, made tea then dressed hurriedly to get out onto the moors.   Fog in the city is boring, I wanted to remember what fog was like in Shetland –  to remember some part of it that used to haunt me for days on end, so I drove up to Burbage fog chasing.  But, at the edge of Ringinglow, bordering on the Derbyshire boundary, the fog started to clear and within seconds, I’d driven through it into pure blue sky and bright sunshine.  Another world.

At Burbage, both the moon and the sun hung in the sky casting their natural magic.   Fog was nowhere to be seen. A real warmth came from the sun high on the peaks at 8:30am.

I walked towards Stanage Edge where the clear moon tilted over the rocks in a beckoning way. The path was bordered by long dead bog grass, heavy with water, looking like a prairie. Then the fog started to drift in below Stanage rocks, blown gently and slowly from the left, in a long soft ribbon, thick enough for the most magnificent natural thing to happen created by the collision of two things – the bright unhindered sun hit the fog and created a fog bow.

I actually squeaked with joy, turned to look back at that sun, then saw all the fronds on the low-lying fluffy grasses hanging in tiny droplets of water shining like glistening small crystals.

The fog bow came fully into sight.

High up on the rocks, at the Edge, the fog rested in the valley over Hope and Hathersage. Every passing person had a photo at the trig, including me. And every passing person was excited by the energy of the sparkling light and visible moving shifting fog. Until, finally, the gentle wind pushed the fog up and over the edge of Stanage, covering both left and right and finally the trig.

What a beautiful world we live in.