When I look back at my time studying for my Master’s degree in Knitting at Nottingham Trent University, between the years of 2016 and 2018, I realise just how much that period continues to influence the creative design work that I make today. Design isn’t just a thing you do, it has a long history in the designer going back years – and in my case, nearly 50 years.
At NTU, I specialised in Shetland lace motifs, initially developing patterns by hand before translating them on to the hand knitting machine before finally being allowed near CAD – computer aided designs for power knitting machines. Over two years, I worked through an intensive process of experimentation, travel to and from Shetland and experiential learning until finally learning how to programme the computerised design system to produce exactly the patterns I wanted.
The result was something I was particularly excited about: creating, for the first time at the university, large Shetland lace panels using computer-design power knitting machines.
But my work wasn’t confined to the studio.
During those two years, I travelled backwards and forwards to Shetland, usually around three times a year, taking my developing lace panels and laser-cut work with me. These became the final pieces of my Master’s project. I placed them inside abandoned croft houses across the islands, creating site-specific installations as a testament to the Shetland lace knitters who had once lived and worked in these houses. If you dig way back, you will see all of this work, here on this blog going back 10 years.
I photographed the work and the abandoned croft house doorways and windows, making a substantial body of site-specific photographic artwork. I was interested in the relationship between the knitted object, the social history of a place and the women whose lives had been connected to it.
During the final months of my Master’s, I was awarded a travel award to visit the island of Unst to record the voices of Shetland knitters. I still have those recordings of the beautiful voices of the women on our furthest most Island – recordings of sea shanty songs too.
My studies took me in directions I hadn’t initially anticipated. I contacted Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen and worked with the company for a short time in London, spoke to Yarn companies about yarn sponsorship, moved from traditional hand-knitting into computer-aided design and developed my practice into site-specific photographic work. Something I didn’t even know existed before starting at NTU.
I graduated in 2018 with a high distinction. What made that achievement particularly meaningful was not simply the innovative use of computer technology to develop Shetland lace, but the breadth of my exploration, the connections I had made and the willingness to take my practice in entirely new directions and to push my own boundaries.
I loved my time at Nottingham Trent University. It gave me an enormous bedrock of knowledge, experience and confidence, and, perhaps more importantly, I discovered how much I thrive on learning.
This morning I reopened my Master’s journal. There is also a post about this work on my Instagram, here where you can see some of the original materials and swatches in my Technical file.
Looking through the journal again has been unexpectedly and calmly interesting. It has inspired my latest design, which brings together a rather different approach to lace knitting and Fair Isle, using mohair. It is, in some ways, an easy-cheat version of lace knitting, but the thinking and visual exploration behind it have roots in those earlier experiments.
And then something else happened this morning.
I was sitting in a café in Sheffield, looking at the colours of the walls. They were almost a perfect match for the colours I am currently exploring in my new design. I felt an enormous sense of joy. That moment of noticing, recognising and connecting colours is something I never tire of.
Watching and journalling have been part of my life since 2016. For ten years, I have been recording what I see, collecting colour combinations, noticing relationships between colours and documenting the world around me. And, I have recently been teaching others about colour swatching in my Colour Swatch Journal Groups – information about the group is here
Not gauge. Colour.
I have filled journals with observations, photographs, ideas and experiments. Sometimes a colour combination comes from a landscape, sometimes from flowers, plants, buildings, a journey or simply the walls of a café. I watch, I record, I collect, I experiment and eventually those observations find their way into my knitting.
It is a daily – YES, daily, continuous process of looking and learning.
I love colour. I love the process of discovering something I hadn’t noticed before. I love the way one observation can lead to another, sometimes years later, and become something entirely unexpected.
Perhaps that is what has remained constant since my time at Nottingham Trent: the curiosity to keep looking, the freedom to experiment and the pleasure of learning something new.
And I still have so much more to discover, and, although my Nottingham Trent story is much bigger than a knitting qualification, and I did start knitting in the 70’s and 80’s, I realise that my turning point in creative development came from my MA and that my ten years of journalling is potentially a defining part of my artistic identity.
I post daily on instagram, if you don’t follow, I am here
On Friday 16 October, I returned to one of my favourite places to knit outdoors – in the Peak District.
It had been a while since I’d last sat here with my knitting, although I often find myself drawn back to the same places. There is something I love about returning to a familiar landscape, sometimes just a few weeks later, recognising that it has changed completely with the seasons. The colours shift, the light falls differently, the weather leaves its mark, and the view becomes something new again.
The night before my visit, the rain had been so heavy that I wondered whether there might be a cloud inversion in the valley. And there it was.
A view of my world
I sat at the base of Stanage Edge, beside the old stone trough and the fallen millstones that have become such familiar companions on my visits.
From here, I have a 180-degree view of a landscape that feels both vast and intimate. Hope Valley stretches out before me, with Hathersage almost visible over the hill, while beyond the edge the land opens into a patchwork of hills, valleys and dry stone walls. On the horizon, I can see the places where people park their camper vans, hoping to catch the sunrise.
It is a gift to have such a view so close to home – I am lucky.
I love this place for so many reasons: the changing colours, the sound of the wind, the movement of clouds across the valley and the sense of time held in the landscape. Even on a familiar visit, there is always something to notice and although I always go alone, there is usually a conversation to be had on the top of the edge with a passer by also heading for the white Trigg.
And then there are the millstones.
The stories hidden in the stones
Whenever I post photographs from here on Instagram, people ask me about the great stone wheels scattered across the landscape. What are they? Why are they here? And why were they left behind?
The millstones are a reminder of an industry that once thrived across the Peak District. Made from the area’s hard gritstone, they were carved by hand and used in mills to grind grain into flour. Many of the stones we see today date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although the history of grinding grain stretches back thousands of years.
A typical Peak District millstone measures around 1.8 metres across and weighs approximately two and a half tonnes. It’s difficult to imagine the physical effort involved in making one, let alone moving it across rough, exposed moorland without the machinery we take for granted today.
The stoneworkers often worked on a small scale, with some also farming. Quarrying involved drilling into the rock and using metal wedges to split away the stone before shaping it into a wheel. A team of two might produce only around twenty millstones in a year.
Getting a finished stone down from the moors must have been an undertaking in itself. One suggestion is that the stones were attached to wooden axles and rolled towards waiting wagons. However they managed it, the work would have demanded considerable skill, strength and ingenuity.
For centuries, these stones were in demand. But eventually, the industry began to decline. White bread became increasingly popular, and the gritstone used for local millstones could leave traces of stone in the flour. Later, faster milling machinery made traditional stones less practical, while manufactured composite stones offered a more durable alternative.
Thousands of millstones were made over the centuries, and many were abandoned before they ever reached their intended mills. Today, an estimated 1,500 can still be found scattered throughout the Peak District, weathered by wind and rain, softened by moss and lichen, and gradually becoming part of the landscape.
I find it fascinating that something once made for such a practical purpose has become part of the beauty of this place. These stones are not simply objects left behind. They are evidence of the people who worked here, the skills they possessed and the industry that helped shape the landscape we walk through today.
When I sit beside them, I find myself wondering about the people who made them and the journey each stone was supposed to take.
A little colour, a little knitting, a lot of sky
Of course, I hadn’t come here just to look at the view. I’d brought my knitting and my trusty old thermos flask that Patti bought for me over 10 years ago.
I’m developing my swatches for my next knitting project, and there is something about working with colour outdoors that I find particularly rewarding. Away from the distractions of home, I can spend time looking carefully at the colours around me: the muted greens of the moorland, the russets and browns of the grasses, the grey of the gritstone and the shifting blues of the sky. But actually, this project has been inspired by the Dahlias that I grew over the summer. Their architectural shape and many colours have distracted me for many hours.
On this October early morning, with the valley opening out before me, the old millstones at my side and my knitting in my hands, I felt very fortunate to have this place within reach of home.
Some places ask us to keep exploring. Others invite us to return.
Stanage Edge does both for me.
And I suspect I’ll be back before too long, with another handful of yarn, another set of swatches and another reason to sit awhile beneath that enormous Peak District sky.
This week, I had a wonderful, heartwarming stay at Eden Fold – a peaceful off-grid retreat in North Yorkshire, where wild meadow meets ancient woodland and time really does slow down – and that is difficult for me to normally do.
Just outside York, Eden Fold has three beautiful wooden cabins and four bell tents. It is the beautiful passion project of Gemma and Dan, and you can feel their love feeding through in every well thought out detail within the cabins and on site.
The hand-built cabins nestle into the landscape, with the most wonderful luxurious, warm, earthy tones enveloping inside and out, allowing them to blend beautifully with their natural surroundings. Nothing feels imposed upon the land. Instead, everything is considered, natural and connected to it. The aim of the site is about sustainability, but it doesn’t feel like sustainability has simply been added as a feature or a selling point. It is woven through the whole place to give an off grid stay with everything you need for comfort.
I was welcomed by Gemma with a huge handmade soda-and-honey loaf of bread, her homemade jam and her own honey and a beautiful bunch of dahlias. Dan carried up 25 litres of drinking water for the outdoor kitchen. Those little acts of kindness immediately made me feel that I had arrived somewhere where people really care about what they had created and care about the experience of the visitor.
I’ve wanted to stay somewhere off-grid, close to the land, to step away from home for a little while – to become more aware of the world around me — and of my own footprint upon it – as I did when I lived in Shetland.
I also wanted space and time to work and think creatively: to develop the colours for my next knitting project and to read. I am currently resurrecting my book about the time I lived in Shetland, so having somewhere quiet enough to read, think and reconnect with that work was incredibly important to me.
And here I was at Eden Fold.
There are three cabins, four bell tents, outdoor showers and well thought out washing facilities for both the kitchen and the accommodations make staying – both natural and luxurious. The little cabins are powered by solar energy, which generates the lighting and provides USB charging for your phone.
It is a wonderfully simple way of living for a few days — comfortable and thoughtfully designed, but without all the invisible infrastructure and consumption that we normally take for granted.
Gemma offered me the Geo Dome, which is usually a communal space for everyone staying at Eden Fold, so that I could knit under natural day light. It is quite breathtaking.
There is something very different about sitting somewhere like this with your knitting, surrounded by meadow and woodland, rather than sitting at home surrounded by all the things that normally compete for my attention.
I knitted. I read. I thought about colour. I watched the light change. I noticed things. I plaited sweet grass. I lay down in the long grass.
And then there was the owl.
This was, without doubt, my biggest highlight.
On my second morning, I was standing outside my cabin at dawn, watching a barn owl hunting for its breakfast.
I had already been completely captivated by watching it fly around the meadow. But then it came around the bottom of the meadow and flew straight over my head, looking directly into my face.
wait to see the Barn Owl looking at me.
I have never experienced anything quite like it.
For that brief moment, I saw that bird look right into my eyes – something I will never forget.
I stood there completely still, watching it fly away, and I knew immediately that this was a memory I would carry with me forever.
There was something else I loved about being at Eden Fold too.
It felt good to stretch my solo wild-living muscles again.
I have always loved the feeling of being close to the land — of having to notice the weather, the light, the animals, where your water comes from and how much energy you are using. I love being outside – It makes me feel more present.
And being there alone gave me the space to reconnect with that part of myself.
I went to Eden Fold wanting to step away from home for a little while.
I left feeling that I had stepped a little closer to myself.
I am already a bit in love with Eden Fold
It is one of those places where the experience isn’t just about the accommodation. It is about the land, the thought that has gone into creating a mindful stay away from home, the people behind it, the simplicity, the sustainability, the quietness — and all the unexpected moments that can happen when you give yourself enough time to notice them.
And sometimes, apparently, an owl flying directly over your head at dawn.
If you are looking for somewhere to slow down, reconnect with the natural world, spend some time off-grid, get creative, read, think, walk, knit, breathe — or simply do absolutely nothing for a while — take a look at Eden Fold
It really is a special place. see the link below to find out more.
Today, I’ve been thinking about colour again, especially as my beautiful garden Dahlia are coming to an end.
I don’t think of colour as a palette chosen from a shade card, or a set of colours that are supposed to work together, or from a carrier bag in front of the tele but colour as something you discover by looking – really looking. And this year, I have really looked at the flowers that I have grown.
So, I’ve been sitting with Rowan Kidsilk Haze and a handful of my last flowers. I’ve knitted little swatches, changed colours, changed my mind, pulled them out, tried something else and watched what happens when one shade sits beside another. I feel the colours more than just look and I have a very exciting new knitting project in the pipeline.
This is the part of knitting I never seem to tire of but don’t get much time to do. A full day just knitting and pushing colours and flowers around is a true gift of time and creativity.
A colour can look completely different depending on what is next to it. A pink becomes warmer beside rust. A green suddenly looks sharper beside red. A quiet, almost muddy shade can become the colour that holds everything together or becomes the subtle change that the eye doesn’t always see but the mind sees it.
A Creative practice swatching and developing skills and outcomes, is why I started the Colour Swatch Journal.
I wanted others to learn to explore that process of looking and experimenting rather than simply deciding in advance what a “good” colour combination might be.
I’ve been knitting for more than forty years and I’m still surprised by and LOVE colour.
I’m currently working on something new with these colours. I’m not quite ready to show you yet — but I will be soon.
September is looking very beautiful from where I’m sitting.
Want to explore colour with me?
The next Colour Swatch Journal group will begin in January. It’s a space for experimenting with colour, keeping a visual record of what you discover and developing your own understanding of colour relationships. It is a place to learn and grow and take those skills into your own knitting projects after
There is more information about my Colour Swatch Journal Group on my workshops page which is here
On 11 January 2026, I put a post on Instagram saying that I was thinking about starting a Colour Swatch Journal Group and asked if anyone would like to join me. The post almost went viral.
What was particularly interesting was the response. It became clear that people wanted to make their own colour journal themselves. They wanted to learn about colour, experiment with their own yarn and discover techniques that would help them develop their understanding of colour within their own projects.
Patterns aren’t necessarily expensive, but yarn is, so getting the colour right is important. Of course, colour is personal — we all see and respond to it differently — but there are principles that can help us make better colour choices: understanding contrast, dark and light, saturation, avoiding muddy combinations and knowing how colours interact with one another.
So My Colour Swatch Journal Group idea was born.
What I learned from Cohort One
The first cohort started on 1 April and it was a big group. At first, people enthusiastically shared their work and information in the private Facebook group, and something rather wonderful developed: a real sense of community.
But as the six months went on, participation gradually dropped.
There are lots of reasons for that. Family commitments, holidays and simply life getting in the way. But I also learned something important: six months is a long time. The original programme was also very inexpensive, so perhaps there wasn’t quite enough financial commitment to keep everyone committed to their own development.
Last Sunday, 30 August, I held a celebration of the work from Cohort One in our final zoom session.
By then the group had become much smaller. Seven people came to the presentation and six shared their work. But I was absolutely delighted by what I saw and proud of their stories about what they had learned.
Many people in the group had learned, experimented and developed.
I want to say thank you to the whole group because they taught me something too: how important community and celebration are within a learning group and this became apparent in the session 5 where people stepped up to help each other. See blog post When Colour Becomes Kindness on July 27th
Cohort Two began on 1 August, and already I can see a difference.
The Facebook group is busy and prolific. People are sharing their work, asking questions and really embracing the process. They have more questions for me, and I am learning from them too — particularly about the challenges people face when they are developing their understanding of colour and how to step out of their comfort zones with new learning.
The group is open to everyone. There are people of different ages and experiences. Here is a group image of their first swatches. They will develop as they learn to colour blend. I am loving seeing their first swatches and excited to see where they will go.
And now I’m really excited to announce that Cohort Three will begin on 1 January 2027.
Cohort Three
I have revised the programme into a focused four-month master class
Each month there will be a comprehensive newsletter on the 1st, with work to complete using your own yarn. There will be 20 exercises across the four months and approximately 12 video tutorials shared in the Facebook group. Everything is done at the participant’s own pace. They can finish 2 months after everyone else, if they wish. Below are some inspiration for colour images from my summer flowers as inspiration will also be part of learning.
At the end of each month we will meet together so that I can go through the newsletter, answer questions and talk through the challenges and discoveries people are having.
And the private Facebook group will continue to be the place where work is shared and the community develops and I drop little videos – Facebook group is not mandatory but it is a wonderful place to share and feel safe and excited to do so as you can see from the swatches that I have shared (with agreement) from both cohorts.
The newsletter, videos, exercises and meetings are really just the mechanism.
What matters is what you develop, what you learn and how your understanding of colour changes.
That’s what makes this a master class.
Interested in joining?
Cohort Three starts on 1 January 2027, and I’ll be taking bookings during September to early December. There will be an early bird price this time running between 7th – 20th September.
If you are interested, please go to my Online Workshopspage and fill in the registration-of-interest form.
I’ll email everyone who registers next week on 7th September with the full overview, schedule and price.
I’m really excited to see what Cohort Three will discover.
On 7th September, All information will be sent to those who have registered interest in the next cohort – early bird bookings from 7th – 20th Sept. complete registry of interest form on this workshops page
Yesterday, Sunday, between 5 and 6 pm, I hosted our Colour Swatch Group Zoom session.
A small group of us from across the world met, and together we spent an hour talking about colour in knitting. We explored the monthly newsletter, looked at four different ways of knitting the same colours into one motif, talked about where inspiration comes from, and how sometimes the best colour choices are the ones that come from your heart rather than your head, or a carrier bag in front of the tele.
Afterwards, as always, I opened the session up for questions and for people to share their work.
Then something happened that, in seven years of teaching, I have never experienced before.
One of the ladies in the group isn’t really a knitter. Instead of sharing knitting, she shared a photograph that had inspired her. It was a photograph of her mother holding an enormous bunch of pink and peach and pale read flowers.
This lady generously shared how she had only met her mother ten months ago. In the photograph, her mother was surrounded the flowers picked for her by her daughter —flowers she absolutely loved. Looking at the photograph made her smile. This lady’s mother has severe dementia and she mentioned that some days she knows she is her daughter. Some days she thinks she is a friend. Some days she believes she is an enemy.
Every week, my participant drives five hours to visit her mother and five hours home again. Alongside that, she has been moving house. Life has simply been overwhelming.
She had already ordered yarn in exactly the colours of those flowers because she wanted to knit my Sea Urchin Mitts for her mum. But between visiting her mother, moving home and everything else, she just hadn’t found the time.
As she shared her story, it was heartwarming and sad and heartbreaking. And incredibly beautiful.
Then something happened that silenced every single one of us.
Another participant simply said,
“Send me your list of colours. I’ll knit the mitts for you and post them to you.”
That was it.
No fuss.
No hesitation.
Just kindness.
I could feel tears welling up. The lady telling her story was emotional and several of us were in the group. It was one of those painfully beautiful moments that stays with you long after the Zoom call has ended.
What made it even more extraordinary was this.
The lady who offered to knit the mitts lives on the Isle of Wight and The lady she offered to them for lives in America.
Two women who had never met, connected simply through colour workshop, creativity, the opportunity to open up and kindness.
All I could think to do in that moment was send both of them the patterns for the mitts and the matching hat. It felt like the smallest contribution compared to what had just unfolded, but it was what I could offer. In all my 7 years of teaching colour work online across the world, I have never witnessed such altruistic instant kindness and I was very moved.
Tonight reminded me that Colour Swatch Group has become something I never imagined it would be. I thought I was bringing people together to explore colour. Instead, colour has brought people together to explore humanity and we are a community.
My Participants’ colour journals have become more than pages filled with palettes and inspiration. They have become places where stories are shared, where people feel safe enough to be vulnerable, and where complete strangers quietly remind one another what kindness looks like.
I don’t think any of us present in that zoom session will forget that moment of pure kindness. I know I never will.
If you would like to join me in my next Cohort of Colour Swatch Journal Group, we will be starting In January 2027 as my 2nd Cohort starts on Aug 1st is is now Full. Nip to the workshops page and send me a contact form, to say you are interested in information for any future session.
I have been thinking about the Japanese Concept of Mono no aware. Our English language falls short of a real translation for this concept, but it could be loosely be understood as – An awareness of impermanence, and / or the bittersweet beauty of transience.
My allotment has become a place of reflection in the sense that last week, I reflected that in my old borrowed allotment, I’m feeling a sense of belonging to something impermanent but deeply enriching. I have been loaned / am the temporary custodian of 5 fruit trees, raspberry and Blueberry beds and a bed that I am trying to grow vegetables in, in the allotment. Martin, in his early 80’s has loaned me the plot in his old allotment that his grandfather and father had before him – it has been in his family for over 100 years. Can you imagine that in a city of such vast changes?
In the allotment, I recognised a feeling similar to the feeling I felt on my daily visits to the old onsen in Fujiyoshida – realising that things are beautiful because they are old, temporary, inherited, and quietly passing through time. Not melancholy exactly. More like being emotionally moved by the fragile continuity of life, passed through people.
I felt it in the old onsen near Mount Fuji because nothing there was optimized or modernized into a “wellness experience.” It was simply alive with history.
And now I’m feeling the same in my allotment in Sheffield because it has the same emotional structure and yet the places could not be further apart
* old hands cared for it before me * Martin and Liz carried it through decades and generations * fruit trees planted by people long gone are still feeding someone, * I am temporarily part of a chain larger than myself,
I do not have a name for this feeling but it is clear within me and I don’t want to let this tiny space go now because it is a wonderland of overgrown time. I think the name is Mono no aware.
Martin strimmed the long grass and placed plastic a chair under the tree for me.
I feel gratitude mixed with ache in the allotment, as I did in the Onsen in Fujiyoshida.
Some of the qualities of Mono no aware, could be: –
awareness of impermanence
emotional movement caused by transience
tenderness toward passing things
beauty heightened because something cannot last
continuity existing through change rather than despite it
The allotment matters more because:
other hands came before me
Martin will not be here forever, and nor shall I
I myself am only temporarily part of it
the fruit trees outlive individual custodians
the place carries visible time inside it
And the onsen comparison feels beautiful because of its non-pristine preservation and accumulation of human passage over decades and generations.
I have become deeply connected to these moments in places which carry the same depth. And, during time spent in Japan I encountered a feeling later recognisable to me through the concept of mono no aware — an emotional awareness of impermanence and continuity — which I now recognise again in the inherited allotment culture of Sheffield. I also felt it in the house that I bought in Shetland. Maybe I seek it, I don’t know but I do cherish it.
I am thinking of applying for a residency in Japan again, with these thoughts in mind.
knitting
allotment stewardship
inherited labour
ageing
temporary belonging
rural continuity
handwork
impermanence
greenery as living memory
Maybe this is “an application idea” and more like the beginning of a serious long-term artistic direction. I hope so.
Learn how to build your own Fair Isle garment using my worksheet chart on Ravelry as a starting point – Link to chart here
I’ll be running my online Build Your Own Fair Isle Vest/Pullover workshop again on 30th May — and this will likely be the final time I offer this session.
This workshop is designed for knitters who want to move beyond simply following a Fair Isle pattern and begin understanding how to build their own garment layouts using my Fair Isle worksheet chart as a starting point.
Whether you dream of creating your own vest, pullover, colour combinations or motif arrangements, this workshop will give you the skills and confidence to start designing in a much more personal and creative way.
What we’ll cover during the workshop
During this 90-minute online session, I’ll guide you through how I use the Fair Isle worksheet chart to plan and develop a garment design.
We’ll explore:
alignment of motifs across a garment
how to use the 24-stitch repeat creatively
planning sizing and shaping
adapting motifs into your own layouts
understanding gauge and applying it to your project
colour placement and motif combinations
building confidence with Fair Isle chart reading and design
This is not a knitting session — it’s a creative planning and design workshop focused on helping you understand the structure behind Fair Isle garments.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop is ideal for knitters who:
already enjoy Fair Isle knitting
want more confidence adapting motifs
would love to create more personal garment layouts
feel ready to experiment beyond fixed patterns
want to learn how garment planning works
You do not need to be an experienced designer to join.
Included after the session
All participants will receive:
PDF presentation handouts
20% off my knitting patterns
Workshop details
Date: Saturday 30th May Time: 4pm–5:30pm Location: Online Cost: £30
The workshop is based around My Fair Isle Chart as a starting point – link here
Earlier this year I put out the idea of a Colour Swatch group on Instagram. I was inundated with people wanting more information. Finally, a group of knitters joined me at the beginning of March for a monthly Colour Swatch Journal Club – lasting for 6 months.
I hoped people would become more adventurous with colour and even after 3 sessions, I am so excited by their results. What I didn’t expect was the extraordinary level of creativity, experimentation and personal interpretation that began appearing week after week.
I am so proud of my Colour Swatch Journal Group’s development. Here is a peep inside the Colour Swatch Journal Club private FaceBook Group where participants share their swatches and colour development.
I am so proud of them – I’m watching their confidence grow through Colour and swatch experimentation.
My swatch journal club is developmental learning – this group is develops month on month, over 6 months with a sessional newsletter pdf emailed on the 1st of each month, including step by step exercises, inspiration, and charts, research and photo tutorials – which encourage understanding of value of colour, tone, contrast, colour blending and then confidence to run free with all their knowledge – it is a group who love to learn The Joy of Slow Colour Exploration There is also a private Facebook group to share their work and I meet online via zoom at the end of every month.
Each month, I send participants tiny experiments and developmental learning exercises – the outcomes of which I am sharing here today.
Developing A Small Swatch Can Change Everything in your practice.
Their notebooks and journals are filling up with unexpected colour combinations and these wonderful women are developing their own visual language. They are learning to see colour differently and their swatches are becoming little artworks. Their journals will be so exciting to see at the end – we will have a show and tell.
“Some participants became fascinated by…”
contrast
The Shetland motifs
garden colours and inspiration
colour blending
unexpected palettes
historical references
even experimenting with steeking.
This is What Happens When Knitters Start Trusting me to teach them how to use Colour in their projects.
The next series of my Colour Swatch Journal group sessional newsletters and meetings will start in September – so it will be a wonderful Autumn / Winter learning. And, instead of 6 months timescale, I am going to condense the exercises and newsletters into 4 months.
If you would like to go on the wait list to be sent the new information ( Around June time) then complete the contact form below and I will be in touch in June.
I thought I’d share with you my first ever jumper pattern that I designed. In August 2020, I bought a Croft house in Levenwick that faced the sea. This was the beginning of my real knitting journey and of designing Shetland motif knitting patterns.
I started with beanie patterns but in 2021 I designed these two jumpers using the same Shetland yoke motif. The first jumper is in Shetland 2ply and I named it, dear Susan after the woman that lived in the house that I bought from 1876 to 1960.. she was a very impressive inspiring beautiful woman. You can read all about this on my blog if you dig way back.
After I knitted the Dear Susan, I developed the pattern into a very easy quick knit Aran jumper and named it, Easy Aran pullover
Both of these jumpers are very easy to knit and the patterns include photograph tutorials, written instructions, and colour charts I’ve come a long way since designing these patterns almost 6 years ago, but they are still two of my life changing decisions. I’m grateful for the time that I lived in Shetland.
Both patterns also include a 12 page story about my life in Shetland – my house named Smola, Susan – who had lived in it, an me – with each of these patterns
Here is the beginning of that story in the patterns
Dear Susan
and
A house of two women
Tracey Doxey
Preface
Shetland, May 2021
One day, towards the end of May, it rained so heavily that when the winds took up the weight of sky and sea water, dropping it upon the house roof, I could hear nothing else but the sound of pelting rain. Dampness penetrated the house, not as seeping or leaking but as a shroud that rested upon my body. I lit the fire in an attempt to fight back. After one hour, the weight lifted and I began to knit, waiting for the promised summer. By early evening, the sun came out as if there had never been rain at all so I walked to pay the wood man for the fire wood and on the way home, I took a detour to the beach. I wandered the edge of the surging waves, churned up by the afternoon’s winds. The sea, still being in a fury, was not able to slow down its waves to meet the sudden calmness of the early evening. The ebbing sea left a wake of tidal crustations as if lace edges on the beach. I looked for Buckies but all in an instant, I saw a tiny green sea urchin the size of a small flat pea. I bent to pick it up just as the tide surged over my shoes but I caught it before it was lost back in to the sea.
I wondered if you ever walked to the beach to collect sea treasures or if you never bothered.
Shetland, Arrival August 2020
Dear Susan,
I begin with the outside, with what I have to hand; my reason, my eyes, my spatial understanding, and an openness tinged with the unknown.
On arriving, I need my first investigations of your croft house interior to be made alone. I want to inhale the house, listen to my internal feelings at first sight then recognise how my body responds to the old stones – I need to let body and stones talk to me. Thoughts and feelings need space. I need space. I haven’t yet found you. I do not know that you were born in this house 145 years ago.
It is a pale grey day, mist rolling over the hill behind the house as if a blind has been half pulled down a window. The sky is bleached out, the day is calm and windless, not particularly notable.
I open the front porch door, then, I try the house door with its mismatched glass panels. It opens. To the right in the tiny vestibule area, there is a third old, board-door, painted white with a hand-hewn square wooden knob which I turn to the right. The simple mechanism lifts a wooden latch inside. That sharp click sound of the latch lifting and hitting its wooden casing is the sound that I will forever remember of this place. It is my first sound here and it will probably be my last when I leave. It is a click of old wood against old wood, heard by every man, woman and child that has ever entered this house before me, for the last 180 years. Human touch leaves tangible traces of every hand that has opened it before me. The patina of years lies dirty on the paint’s surface.
Simultaneously, within the sound, my heart is given over to the first sight of the flag floor and fire place in the sitting room. In an instant, I am sold on sound and sight. I know I will not pull out of this crazy unseen deal to buy a house and change my life entirely.
Heart over head, I move in three weeks later, with two cats and a bag, the furniture and belongings on a lorry, to arrive a week later.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
Dear Susan,
I have been sent an image of your Brother – John Halcrow, in his Naval Uniform. I begin to look at censuses and the local history ancestry website then I ask around to find out about the previous inhabitants of this house. I called in at John’s to ask about you because I know nothing of the woman I had heard lived in the house for many years. He said to speak to Jim, so I went over the road to Jim’s and Martin was there too. They were off to Anne Mouat’s funeral but Jim was gracious with his time with me. He told me of you – Susanna (Susan, Cissie) who lived in the house that I now live in and that he was sent as a child, nearly 80 years ago, to collect the milk from you at your house. He told me that you had one cow on the croft, you sold milk, and you rowed the little hand-written paper milk bills up on a shelf in the porch – the same porch that I have. He was a young boy then but he clearly remembers you.
At the funeral, Martin spoke with Raymond whose Aunt lived in the house after you. You knew her, her name was Alice. Raymond came to see me the next day with a mesmerising handful of photographs of you. He introduced me to Susanna Halcrow (Susan, Cissie, or even Zizzie) The photographs, he told me, had been left in the house after his Aunt Alice had died some 30 years after you.
For the first time I could put a face to the name of a woman who lived in my old house for 83 years. Your face, your name. I sank to sit on the floor to look at your serene face in the images dating back to early 1900. Your candid expression caught by the lens of a camera, looking openly right back at me opened something inside me to find you more deeply.
You were born in this house on the 6th February 1876 and Died on 4th January 1960.
In the archives at the museum, I found that your Halcrow family had lived here through the 1800’s – 1960. They were listed in the 1888 valuation roll of the Symbister Estate, Whalsay, partly owned by the Laird, William Arthur Bruce (In 1888, John Halcrow, your Father) tenant, paid a yearly rent of £4, 10 Shillings for croft number 7. You would have been twelve years old (registered as knitter). The whole family are on the census of 1881 and ‘Susanna’ is listed as being five years old – there were seven people living in this small house at that time – Thomas Halcrow aged 86, Barbara Halcrow aged 83 (your grandparents), John Halcrow aged 40 and Ann Halcrow aged 41 (your parents) John aged nine, you aged five and a boy named John Brown aged 13, but you will already know this. Seven people living in this small two bedroomed house. Afterwards, I looked at records from 1838 and found your family, here, in Upperton.
In the grave yard at Levenwick cemetery, you lie on your own next to your parents and brothers. Your head is against the sea and in May, you rest above a bank carpeted in pale lemon primroses. I wonder if you are lonely, or if you are free.
Over the months after arriving, I became obsessed with you and wrote thoughts that occurred to me about you, on scraps of paper. These papers began to litter the house. I connected with you through a field of built environment in the house, photographs, your old pottery, the view from the sitting room window and eight sessions in the Shetland Museum archive which revealed the legal documents relating to some of the most notable social changes in Shetland between the 1880’s and mid 1950’s. The *Register of the Sasines, recorded the sale of the house from Laird to local in 1923, valuation rolls of rent paid for three generations of the Halcrow family for over 100 years are traceable, the Napier Commission registered the croft and detailed their calculated rental value and reduction of rents for Shetland crofters and the legal rights for tenants, the Small Holding Act, and I found the registered wills of your brother and finally your own, which gave me an insight into over one hundred years of three generations of Halcrow life within this old house. To the very end, with your serene looking gaze of steady calm and with a glint in your eyes, you put everything in order to the very last moment – crossing every t and dotting ever i. All of your wishes are written clearly in the directions of your will.
But, how am I to find out about you – what you thought and felt and how you lived? The neighbours reveal little.
So, I turn to the physical things to look at our lives carried out in the same place – the same stone walls of a house built so long ago – with no record of its beginning, how the breeze moves through the house through its open doors, the sound of the wooden doors and their opening and closing then there is the view – a view that has changed every single day of every single year but it is the same frame from which you looked and I now look out of at the changing world.
Your artifacts have been returned to the house – some pitchers, jugs, vases, plates, bowls. Before mixing them on the shelves with my own plates and jugs, I turn them around and around to connect with a life before and then there is the biggest connection of all – that you were and I am single women, living a life and paying the bills on our own in an old stone house facing the sea. Did you talk to Ralph, the dog, as I talk with Tiggy and Alfie?
I wonder about the touch upon things, the patina laid down by years of paint, of opening and closing the door, of turning door knobs, of opening and closing windows.
Finding you is like the moment I removed a damp layer of wallpaper in one gentle pull upwards, in an old abandoned derelict Shetland croft house, to reveal a perfect hand printed layer of pre 1950’s paper with wildflowers printed up it. Then, in one more pull that strip of hand printed wallpaper also came off the wall completely intact. I folded the paper and placed it under my jumper, its dampness pressed against the skin of my belly. I thought that if I were to paste the top layer of wall paper back over the void, then no one would know what had been before. No one would know what had been removed from underneath the top layer. It was as if it had never existed.
Finding you IS like finding old beautiful handprinted wallpaper lying beneath layers of less attractive paper. Then peeling it off in sections and placing it under my jumper for safety. Susan, you are under my jumper, next to my skin.
I lift the pewter lid of your old Victorian salt ware jug to look inside. Revealing, peeling, pasting, painting, lifting, closing, opening things in the house, as generations have done so before me. I paint over what has been on the walls and doors. I sit quietly to look at the layers of layers, like the quiet man who mediates first thing in the morning, stripping away layers of noise to his core, before all else happens in the day.
I spoke to Marylyn, who, as a 10-year-old child, moved in to this house with her family. It was the year you died. She told me of a wash stand in each bedroom and jugs and bowls, a sink at the bottom of the stairs and a radio on a dresser in the front room. These were your things left behind. I can picture them now. She told me that her and her brother slid down the green linoleum on the stairs and they telephoned their cousins in the house behind by joining two cans with a long piece of string and shouting out the back window in the north bedroom. I can hear their laughter now. Children in the house for the first time in over 60 years.
I have had moments where I wonder if I am prying. I wonder if you would like me. I hope that you would like me.
Maybe there is not much difference between us. Did you look in the mirror to comb your hair or did you, as I do, stand outside in front of the house to comb your hair into the wind whereupon stray grey hairs blow upon the breeze and hang upon the roses?
Susan, I am now the carer of your house for however long I can endure the winters.
House / Home – Situatedness
Outside, I Inhale the heady scent of peat smoke, as a hundred women must have done so before me.
Standing on to the hand-hewn flag stone veranda that skirts the front of the house, I take in the heady scent of the previous night’s peat fire smoke lingering in the air. The grey sky is touching the grey sea beholding all that is in front of me, under my feet and behind me within the stones of this old house.
The rough stone structure of the house has been touched by many hands over nearly two centuries and is built upon rock. This house is my place of thinking and feeling. It holds me within its walls endowed with previous lives, to live freely, without compromise of any other thing except the elements and darkness of night and the lengthy lightness of summer – yet these are still penetrable. Isolation can penetrate.
The house gives to me the opportunity of freedom and I give it the love and tenderness to continue standing strong. But the Winter took its toll on me and then Easter was beyond harsh where the floors shook and the chimneys roared with swirling storm winds. I have lost energy.
How many women have stood at this door way, eyes drawn East to the sea, mind drawn inward to the shores, children playing, wars questioned, lost ones at sea, the animals and subsistence or maybe even love? You lost your brother in the Battle of Jutland. He left this house and never returned. The interconnectivity of all of us lies in the details of life – past and present. A life before that built the foundations of this house is linked to this life now as my life now is linked to the lives gone before and to those that will live here after me. Who turned the first key? Who left the key under a stone in the garden so that when I found it, the rust was as thick as a pie crust?
Sea air permeates my skin, seeping into my bones and softening the edges of my soul. It takes time. I accept this time as a gift. I have come home. Maybe, all my life has been pointing to this one moment. A moving fluid moment of now. Time is temporary but for now, it is the right place.
I heard Marianne Faithful say, ‘ Eventually, I always end up where I’m meant to be.’
I know that here is where I am meant to be, for now.
The past is always carried into the present by the small unmovable things, the click of a latch, the stone floors, the view of the sea, the old byre, a curling photograph of a group of women, long dead, a sheet of paper left in the window sill, faded by the sun.
In the city, I had begun to lose my idea of direction. My direction was determined by worn out decisions made on previous decisions. This is a house of new decisions.
I am here, this is me, windblown, sieved soil, a beating heart, I am becoming sea, wind, beach, yarn.
The breath of my cats reminds me that in fact, I am not alone.
in October 2021 I moved back to England for many reasons
