Tag: socks

Celebrating 6 years

I’d like to celebrate something that seemed small when it happened but has been the absolute foundation of my creative practice today.  

On Jan 21st 2020 – 6 years ago, I published my first pattern on Ravelry.  It was my Sea Urchin Shetland hat pattern.   When I look back, I see that I have never really just produced patterns but knitting stories – like recipes – like myths – like stories that I uncovered.

The Sea Urchin Hat pattern text starts with the below (it was written in January 2020)  :-

Dear lover of yarn and of the tactile act of knitting,

This hat design has been long in the making.  I’m producing it as a design sheet because the pattern can be followed to the stitch and colour, or you can use it as a springboard to develop your own ideas by choosing your colours and even a different tree and star motif to the one I have chosen to incorporate into your hat pattern – you can make it your design too.

Over the years, I’ve made this hat using varying yarns and colours.  I’ve blocked it in to a shape that resembled a slouching hat or a kind of beret.  I still have two of these hats from 2015, and I’ve worn them in all weathers and in many countries.  I’ve left one and lost it in places but I have always retraced my steps and gratefully been reunited with the hat that now is part of me every winter.  Seeing the early photos of this hat, I see a different shape entirely to the one that has morphed and shaped to my head through being soaked in gale force rains, being stuffed in pockets and in bags and left for months in a drawer.  In November 2019, I was living in Brindister, West Burrafirth, Shetland and wore this hat every day whilst walking around the voe.  By now, its shape had morphed into a basin shape and I felt lost without it if I ever forgot it any winter day – especially in the piercing winds.  

In November 2019, when, every day, I walked around the Voe at Brindister, I began to find discarded Sea Urchin shells left by seagulls. They were abandoned where the gull had left it after breaking it open to eat the urchin. I found them on banks and on flat, wet, mossy plateaus used as seagull breakfast tables.  All had been smashed to get to breakfast but I was on the lookout for a complete one.  The first 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 and the smashed opening. Then, I started looking out for these sea treasure on the land. I collected any shell that was whole, even if it was broken into until I couldn’t carry them in my hands – so I used my hat to carry the porcelain like sea urchin shells back to the croft house. When I looked, 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

I would love for you, the knitter, designer, maker, lover of yarn and the tactile act of knitting, to make this hat in whichever colours and with whatever tree and star motif you would like.   Any motif will make the same shape as the decrease around the tree creates the crown. Have fun, send photos of your finished hats to https://www.facebook.com/DoxeyKnits/ and I will post them on the FB and Instagram pages https://www.instagram.com/traceydoxey/

I would like to ask  – How many knitting patterns do you know that start with a letter to the knitter ?

The pattern ends with  the following words :-

I hope that you have enjoyed knitting this hat. If you want to experiment with larger needles and different yarns, as I have over the years, you’ll have a lot of fun with the results. I look forward to seeing your hats.

Big knitting love, Tracey.

How many knitting patterns do you know that end like a letter.

I want to thank this little design that I made whilst staying in Fair Isle then in Brindister, Shetland, running up to the end of 2019. The design challenged me at the end of my MA in Knitting from NTU during which time, I went back and forth to Shetland until I finally bought a croft house there in 2020 and I am ok that I made the decision to return to England  in 2021– I wrote a book about my life in Shetland but it never was published. 

I want to acknowledge and thank my creative spirit for developing  this simple Shetland Yoke motif and simple hat into workshops, colour blending, and finally – a new jumper pattern.  I have learned so much along the way, in 6 years.


What a journey.

Thank you to every one of you who has supported me by buying a knitting pattern or attended a workshop.  I do not know what is to come 😊

much love. Tracey 🙂

Ravelry patterns are here – you will see the visual journey

Sea Urchin hat and mitts pattern 2020

Sea Urchin Shetland hat pattern is here

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We Live in Time

we live in time exhibition piece
We live in time, exhibition piece

‘We live in Time’, is my knitted textile piece incorporating a hand- knitted vest and two photographs of sisters from 1970 (my sister and me)

The work is partly about the gaps in the relationship between me and my sister and me not being able to reach her which also takes into consideration the Japanese concept of Ma, the spaces in between (間 )  the silences, the unspoken, past and present. It is also about knitted garments for siblings over time.

I was born on 26/06/1963, my sister 11 months later on 27/05/1964. Our mother dressed us identically for about 12 years until we tried to impress our own tastes upon the clothes we wore. My Grandad enjoyed the latest photographic technology available to a working-class man.  He took many photographs, particularly in 1970 when I was seven and my sister, six years old. He loved his polaroid camera -these photos, though, were taken by a small new instamatic. In all of the photographs that I still have, my sister and I stand beside each other but rarely touch – there is an unspoken physical and emotional space between us. All of the images were ‘set up’ in a way for my mother to show that her daughters were ‘well turned out’. 

There are hand written words over one of the photographs – ‘What about our Julie?’, which is what I always asked if I was ever given anything and she was not – this was, of course, very rare. 

There is a poignancy from our childhood to now, where there is still a wide physical and emotional gap between us.

As a representation of  personal choice, I have knitted a vest in nine dark colours which were chosen by my sister as an expression of her preferred colours now. When I asked her what her favourite colours are – she said, black, navy, dark red and mustard –but,  I had to knit with some contrast so added pale grey, pale yellow and pale orange. We were cut from the same cloth but with totally different personalities.  I knitted the same article for myself but it has sleeves and 100 colours.

We Live in Time, is part of a larger piece called, ‘I cannot reach you’ where both pieces will be exhibited beside each other, not touching, and my jumper will be reaching.   Four photographs of us in 1970 will accompany the textile piece – showing how we always looked – for years. 

I cannot reach you
I cannot reach you – the same but different. 

‘We live in Time,’ questions the discouraged individuality growing up in a working class home in the 60’s / 70’s –  and the ever growing space between sisters.

If you are in Sheffield on Saturday, 15th Feb, you are invited to the private view, because it isn’t private and it’d be lovely to meet you from 4-6pm.  Come and look at some textiles.   Address in invite above.