books – tracey doxey

Dear Susan

Surprisingly, yesterday, someone bought my east to knit, Aran , Dear Susan, Jumper pattern. I made this when I lived in Shetland and the entire piece is dedicated to the woman that lived in the house that I bought.

This is a beautiful, quick, easy knit yoke pullover, knitted in Aran weight yarn. It is entirely inspired from my living in Shetland with the landscape, the sea, the weather, the house I bought – and is a letter to Susan Halcrow, a woman that lived in the same house from 1876 to 1960. ‘Dear Susan’

The pattern (which is here) has a 12 page letter/story dedicated to her which is where the name of the pattern comes from

I originally knitted this pullover in spindrift yarn in the summer of 2021 but this jumper / easy pullover, has been knitted for Winter in Aran weight and is a fun, quick easy knit.

It is one size and fits many people. You can lengthen the body if you require.

It is knitted using 4mm (US6) circular needles and 2:75mm (US2) for the sleeve cuffs. It has been knitted by 4 test knitters – from a complete beginner to very experienced. Some of the test knitters went rogue with their yarn choices and the outcomes are lovely.

You can also make it a little larger by using 5mm needles – as one test knitter did.

Yarn:- Jamieson’s of Shetland Aran weight Heather yarn.

My test knitters used lots of different yarns and you will see this in the projects. You can try your Aran wight stash.

There are coloured charts, photos to explain how to do some of the stages and indepth fully written pattern. (23 pages in all to this pattern) 9 pages for the pattern –

Additional, to the pattern is a 12 page story/ letter dedicated to Susan Halcrow – Dear Susan,

here is an extract from the end of the letter after many months of research and living in the house …

(May 2021)
Dear Susan – friend – may I call you friend?

I imagine you looking out of the South Bedroom window as I now do. The early spring evening light is illuminating the edge of the land, holding back the blue, blue sea.
Would you have lit a fire in hearth in this bedroom beside you? I can see you putting the animals to bed – the cow in the barn (now derelict) the sheep in the field (now overgrown) or letting them out on the first clear break after 5 days of blizzards, arctic ice and gale force winds? Would you have smiled at the sudden calmness after such elemental ferocity as I now do?

Everything inside the house has possibly changed since you left in 1960 – except the floors, the doors and the view and maybe the sounds of the birds. The nature and intensity of this ever-changing view through the window is both of ours – both yours and mine.

Susan ….

This is not just a pattern but a true testament to a beautiful woman who lived a very long life in a beautiful house facing the sea with harsh weather, managing on her own and living a full life. It is a pattern of love and integrity.
’Dear Susan’ in Aran weight is a great winter pullover entirely inspired by life in Shetland.

Grateful thanks to my test knitters for the Aran jumper –
Judi Hurst, Janet Benjafield, Cheryl De Ville and Tracie Bailey.

Happy Knitting.
From Tracey.

Dear Susan jumper is on ravelry

Shetland, moss and Tove Jansson

My neighbour lent me a book. Because it was only on loan, it made me read it properly and within a time frame suitable for a kindly loan. The book is ‘Notes from an Island’ – Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietila. It is hard back, it is beautiful, it is illustrated both with washy paintings and words.

I have been in love with Tove Jansson ever since I read The Summer Book, which remains one of my most favourite ever reads. I have used her line on ‘moss’ with my apprenticeship students at the Uni when they built a pillow of moss and transported it to a wasteland on the edge of Sheffield. Their little film of moving the moss pillow book was gorgeous and reminded me of Tove – which, in turn, reminded me of the moss gardens in Kyoto – so revered and respected. You see, life does this, from one book to another, from a line in a book to a presentation from young women at Uni, to the Zen temples of Kyoto and it is when this juncture, almost collision of past moments happen, that I feel alive.

Here is Tove’s line on Moss – ‘Only farmers and summer guests walk on the moss. What they don’t know – and it cannot be repeated too often – is that moss is terribly frail. Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn’t rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies’

Kyoto

What I am trying to reflect on here, is that ‘Notes from an Island’ reminded me of my own brief island life on Shetland. And what the loan of the book did for me, is to read every word properly and enjoy how those words sink in.

I was interested to read that Tove and Tuulikki (Tooti) gave small island treasures away to other people on other small islands so that they could create their own island museums, and they wrote long lists for leaving the island. It reminded of when I was leaving and how I did the same. I sold stuff and gave away so many things – including my grandmothers Wilson Peck, Sheffield made, cabinet gramophone and the old 78’s to the Old folks home in Lerwick, where it was restored so that the people staying their could play 78’s and it would jog their own memories – I went to visit it in situ, just before leaving the Island, and they put on a Shetland jig 78 for me and I cried at the joy of where that gramophone was now homed. I see so many similarities in the life of Tove Jansson of that small island. The sea, the ever present sea and the changing sky. I noted that in the 200 year old house that I bought, that some things had never changed – the doors, the floors, the window framing the view and the sounds. Sounds of the winds howling, sounds of the birds, the deadening sound of fog – carried in the same was as 200 years ago.

I gave the woman who bought my house the most beautiful old Saltware jug with pewter lid belonging to Susan Halcrow, who had lived in the house from 1876 to 1960. Below is the last hour in the croft house, all packed up but the jug left in the kitchen where it had once belonged to Susan. I hoped that the new owner would love it as much as I had and that it would carry Susan into the house still but when I saw that she was selling Smola, and that she had ripped down the front wall to park her car and then ripped down the barn and byre, my heart broke. I had handed over a gem and it was altered beyond recognition. I felt that the jug had meant nothing and I should have treasured it myself.

In this reading of the borrowed book, I remembered how beautiful it was to live in Shetland, and how I was a different person when leaving – actually, a shell of myself. How I had moved through such joy and excitement to needing to leave was a quick shift. If you are interested in reading such a life on an island, or if you are a woman thinking of living on an island in isolation as I did, or, if you are interested in Shetland itself, then I have posted my Shetland life on Patreon in monthly posts which align with the month that we are in. I have just posted the May chapter. If you join now, you will also get all the previous months to read too. I loved my house in Shetland, I loved how freeing it was at the beginning and now, I can look back with love and respect of an island that shapes its people

An accumulation of Impulses – Dear Susan

I had a dream, I achieved that dream but I had to leave it behind. My story is about finding joy / fear, love and loss, heart and soul – trapped and free over the duration of 14 months.

Capturing that year is too big a task. So, I am trying. Many people write about their dream to leave the city and to move to an island life – few write about the reality of that seismic change and the decision to leave the dream, of leaving behind hopes, love, dreams, can be read as failure – but only to those who have never tried.

I tried my hardest and here are the remains of that massive attempt. This is the story I created, then broke down with hardly a word to say for it.

THE HOUSE OF TWO WOMEN

Dear Susan.

Synopsis

‘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 hollow 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 the empty room 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 my story: a single, 57-year-old Yorkshire woman 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. It 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, knitting and landscapes. It is an accumulation of impulses. This is also the story of hope and desire and of demise and leaving.

Here, are the bones of my life of one year on an island and the letters I wrote to Susan Halcrow, a woman that once lived in the house, from 1876 to 1960. 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 walked away, never to look back again. 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 to return to the city.

I hope to 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 full book, written entirely from the islands of Shetland, ending abruptly in October 2021, offering an insight into island life and, finally explaining the reasons why I had to sell up and leave, to never look back again. Here, I draw out the bones of it in letters to Susan.

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