knitting – Page 4 – tracey doxey

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 12^th – 14^th April – Even Kaffe Fassett, is doing a talk. So, maybe I will see you online on at my session on 12^th 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 1^st 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 1^st, 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 1^st 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

Kyoto Baby.

On the way back to the Kyoto guest house, as the light was fading, I passed a small shop in Gion. The front was covered in a grill, at the door, was hanging a traditional Japanese door curtain (Noren). I was only 3 days into staying in Kyoto and had no idea what the little place was, but, I could see a bent woman, working at a table under a light. A small gap in the grill showed a flash of crimson framed by the window. I watched the woman carefully sewing, and, as is my habit, I wanted to know more. At the window, I gestured to ask if I could enter the tiny shop. The Noren, always bending the guests as they enter. I, making no exception to this, bowed as I entered the tiny shop.

Inside, the space, the only thing I could see was the colour in exquisite Japanese silk Kimono taking up the entire huge table under the window and the woman standing beside it.

Crimson, peach, orange, ginger, cherry, turquoise, gold, purple, mint green patterned silk covered in cranes (symbolizing honour, good fortune, loyalty, and longevity) in flight shone under the sewing light. The seamstress was hand sewing the great, padded roll of crimson at the hem of the Kimono. She explained with few words and many gestures that it was a wedding kimono and entirely hand made by her. She exuded the gently quality of unassuming dignity. A craft master who had probably worked at that table, under the window for decades. I was awe struck by her skill.

I returned to the shop a number of times whilst I was in Kyoto – the last time was to show her my ideas to knit using colours that were inspired by the exquisite silk used in the kimono. I particularly noted the thick crimson roll at the hem. She understood what I was trying to do but must have thought that my swatch book was rather naive to her own skill, though she never showed it. We passed small talk about colour, each using our own languages, understanding little in words but everything in the action.

Before I went to Kyoto, I hoped to live in a space between ‘Balance and Beauty’ and here I was, at that exact place.

This little pattern is the result of that experience and inspiration of colour. I swatched for colour in the little guest house, I swatched the colours in the Sky Garden on the 11^th floor of Kyoto Train Station, I swatched in many of the Zen temples whilst viewing the zen gardens.

This little hat pattern, brings together some of the colours that I found that day. It is called Kyoto baby. It’s very easy to knit. The rib is an easy left crossing cable in Crimson to emulate the padded hem of the wedding kimono. It has a simple Shetland flower motif. The pattern has 14 colours related to the Kimono but it can be knitted simply in 6 colours. All the information is in the pattern and it was a joy to make. It is modelled by a beautiful little Sheffield girl, whose name I will keep a secret.

Kyoto Baby is here.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/kyoto-baby

there are a number of colour options in the pattern. I swatched for colour and so did my lovely test knitters. Shona Brown In Nova Scotia is has test knitted the baby beanie. – Thanks, Shona 🙂

The adult pattern will be out next week – Let me know what you think –

Kyoto baby

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 1^st 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 🙂

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

On Saturday 14^th 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?

textile, knitting or art?

Knitting, Art or just textiles?

Under a week after handing over this commissioned piece of knitting, I have had time to reflect. I have a window of time to reconsider what I have made and why and what happened during the making and designing process and the outcome of what seems to some, to just be a knitted pullover.

The idea for this hand-knitted piece actually came from my thinking son because I was questioning the time involved in knitting and designing one off pieces. He suggested for me to consider intricately knitting something that I loved and to log every hour and minute spent making it. This type of time is not commercial time but entirely creative, without speed, without a target. So, to make a knitted piece in this way, with this idea behind it was the initiation that made it a project or a work of art; not just knitting and certainly not textiles.

A constant driving question of any maker is what is the value of time spent. I question time and the value of an hour of my time because, at 55 years old I may be running out of hours and what do I want to do with my one precious hour? is my hour of more value than, say, a 23 year old who, statistically, has more hours left to live than me. If we knew how many hours left, what would we do with those hours? Knit?

So, the act of writing, logging and recognising time spent whilst making became an underlying, fundamental principal of this knitted piece. I did not lie about time, did not hide time spent in the making process, did not adjust hours to fit ‘within time’ or an acceptable amount of time judged by others to take to knit this item and I did not exaggerate either. I was wholly honest.

During the process there was no brief, or contract or even a binding conversation with the person who may or may not buy it, I made a Fair Isle pullover with a woman in mind. A woman who I know respects hand-made items, understands art and creativity and supports makers. And, I know that time is precious to her. Of course, in the end, it is wearable. Win, win.

There was no design brief or discussion or demands or expectations.

Carte blanche.

There was also no discussion of money due to the fact that this was not my driving force for the knitted project. Notice, that this knitting has been called many things – a project, a hand-knitted piece, a piece of art but never just knitting or textiles.

This whole project was a thought process – thinking about design, experimentation, research in practice, 2 years in an MA to research knitted lace, colours, heritage, Shetland-inspired memories, traditional patterns, blending colours, making mistakes and undoing mistakes, patterns I’ve previously knitted and why I wanted to weave those things into each stitch. How can you sell that? In a story? To a believer? It’s an investment of time and detail.

In brief, the underlying principle was to create a work of art which encompassed understanding and mastery of the craft of knitting, which I have done for over 40 years now. To the untrained eye, this knitted piece is ‘textiles’ or ‘just knitting’ but, to the thinking mind it is not.

So, I started. And unstarted. Designed and redesigned and felt my way through many, many, many hours of knitting. Each hour was logged and sometimes what I was thinking, what I was feeling and my understanding of developing certain areas of the piece. The work went everywhere with me and I knitted every day over 4 months. Yes, 4 months – sometimes at night watching things on iplayer. It went to café’s, babysitting, to Sheffield Institute of arts and on train journeys and to different cities but always I stayed true to the principle of logging the hours and to making every loop perfect. I began to want to hold the work and get back to it. It became a piece of wellbeing.

I became fascinated by thinking about how one colour sat next to another and where the pattern had come from and what memories the knitting drew on. I undid anything that I was not totally, absolutely happy with and the happiness came in the detail which fed back to the process of thinking. The whole process took on a journey of its own.

The result is like a tightly woven carpet.

I am partly embarrassed about the hours I spent on this knitted piece and partly in awe of how much time I spent dedicated to something that a knitter would do in under half the time. But, that knitting, from a pattern would be ‘just knitting’. This piece came from scratch – from an idea and a bundle of over 50 colours of Shetland yarn.

On bank holiday Monday – the jewel-coloured surprise was ceremoniously and fittingly handed over