yarn – tracey doxey

Wet Winter.

This Winter has seemed long and dark and wet. Even I have begun to hibernate.

Last week, we had one small window of a couple of hours of light and I walked through the woods looking at the sky between the bare branches up high.

Behind the scenes, I am devising a 6 month programme for a Colour Swatch Club – some of you have sent me registration forms for this – I am looking forward to sending you all the information and monthly list soon as well as starting the club in April.

I have also been knitting my 2nd Kaleidoscope Jumper using any leftover yarn that I have in my box. To help the people who wanted a larger jumper than the first one, that came out at a 44 inch chest, I have been using 3:5mm UK size needles instead of the 3mm ones in the first knit. My latest jumper will come out at about a 50inch chest, which will be big and look silly on me or will look pretty cool. Either way, I will be able to tell everyone how to increase the size of the original finished chest.

I have been knitting Tree and Star sleeves this time – which is a bolt on pattern ravelry as an option to knit other than the Tree sleeves in the original jumper pattern which you can see here.

The detail that I particularly love in the bolt on sleeve pattern is that I have added a full chart of the Alphabet so that you can personalise your knitting with your initials and date of knitting it. I finished one sleeve in 2025, the other on new year’s day on 2026. So my sleeves have different years knitted into them.

Here are some of the really wonderful Kaleidoscope patterns knitted by other knitters – they are in the projects on the pattern tab. You can see a lot more projects here

Some of them have been steeked and the project photos show you how this has been done.

Another thing that I have been doing behind the scenes is updating this website /blog which I started in 2016 when I was doing my Masters at NTU in Nottingham. I added to the home page until it was not understandable and there has never been a buy now button on my online workshops page.

The home page is now very clear, with just services listed and the workshops page, I am very excited to say, now has a BUY NOW button which takes the customer straight to paypal with easy payment methods.

image of workshops page with new BUY NOW button

Learning how to sort html, link paypal to the blog, add a button and links and update the page work for the customer more easily took me a heartbreaking 8 hours over 3 days. BUT, I finally did it.

A quick link to my workshop page is here. Give me feedback on how it looks, if you like and how I can make it better for the customer.

Today, has been particularly wet, after days of heavy rains. Today, never really got light – so when I say that I hibernate, I really have been staying inside.

Above are a couple of photos from today – my Home Wear which includes my Tree and Star Hat for cosiness.

staying inside is not like me but it’s been harsh weather. I often see people living wonderful seemingly carefree lives in camper vans, in the forests or by the sea but lately, it would be a damp existance, in a van in England.

Another thing that has happened behind the scenes is that I have given my notice in at work. I am an Apprenticeship Coach at a University. I love my students / apprentices but after staying in Japan for a month in December, I knew that I need to begin to find myself again. I am 63 this summer and my time is precious. I am not sure whether it was the right thing to do because the part time job gave me financial and emotional stability but it also took away my freedom and made me very tired. The team at work are brilliant. We all support each other and accept every unusual quirk that we may have. There is a lot of laughter when people come into the office and I will miss that. I will also miss the photo copier. So, Onward and upward. I am hopting to use mondays as my design days from April going forward.

Comment if you would like to see anything new in my designs.

or if you want to get in touch about anything then complete the contact form below. Thanks for subscribing to these little posts. Tracey 🙂

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Easy Pattern spotlight – Chunky Knit Vest

Hi, I thought I would Spotlight one of my patterns that I was designing and knitting this time last year.

It is called the Chunky Knit Vest and that’s exactly what it is.

Quick link to Chunky Knit Vest pattern on Ravelry is here

It is a very quick and easy knit vest to knit using stash yarn and large 12mmUK needles. It flies off the needles with great speed – mine took me three days to knit from beginning to end. It is something to love, something lovely to knit and very useful by using up your stash yarn – that you also bought because you loved it.

This vest is made up of chunky yarn by playing 3 to 6 yarns together to make a really nice fat yarn. Please be aware that what you make with your plied yarn maybe thicker or thinner than what I plied because it is all random but totally works out in the end because we knit by length. Here are some visual examples from my swatch book of the yarns that I used.

For a yarn example, you can see here I used 4 strands of mohair together with 1 strand of Lettlope or two strands of orange mohair with five strands of very thin of the yarn or, for example, one of the yarns that I used on its own was the Big Wool by Rowan so the experimentation of yarns plied together goes on and on and the results are a surprise and exciting which makes you excited about colour knitting.

In the pattern, I recommend practising swatching for gauge. I give you instructions on how to measure a section of your knitting that you like and feel the drape of and how to make this work in your own vest project.

I have knitted two of these vests and I wear one in the winter and the other one was bought by a client and I enjoyed embroidering a little label for the neck which you can see it here.

The last images are knitted by Kath Ward this week which she shared to instragram and I was so happy to see. She has been a long time follower of mine on Instagram and she normally knits lace so chose to knit this chunky Vest pattern as a rest. It also took her three days to knit – I bet she knits another.

She knitted one strand of grey mohair through all of her waist yarn colours to keep unity through it all.

You can have a lot of fun with this pattern and just use what you’ve got and really enjoy it and see what happens

The pattern has 9 pages and includes images of the yarns that I used, information on how to get your gauge, photo images of progress of the vest, finished measurements of my vest, and written instructions on how to make it

Chunky Knit Vest link here

It’s a real joy quick joy to make for yourself or for a gift or to just to use up some of that stash that you have that you’ve never touched for years but really liked.

This is a project to use those really like lots of different yarns.

much love. Tracey

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 21^st 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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How I choose my colours for my knitting patterns

I use two types of motifs when I design my knitting patterns – Fair Isle patterns which are traditionally OXO patterns – if anyone tells you any different or says that they are knitting Fair Isle, mostly they are knitting stranded colour work, which is also wonderful but not culturally Fair Isle.

And my other knitting designs which mostly have Shetland motifs – which I colour blend.

My Fair Isle designs have been particularly colourful. I designed the pattern as I knitted it and whilst I ran with the colours that I most love. Fair Isle motifs do not need lots of colour and always only 2 colours in each row. But, there is a particular way that I combine my colours. For example, for the Vest that I made for my sister, which is less colourful than I would normally choose because I asked her what colours she liked and she said, black, grey, navy and maybe dark red and mustard as well. I started knitting the vest with the colours she liked best, black, dark grey and light greys for the bigger OXO motifs then used the navy or red or mustard for the smaller bands of motifs in between. But, then, I got bored so stared to add the reds and navy and mustard into the larger OXO bands – kinda forgetting any sort of order. My favourite section of the vest is the part from the dividing vest at the armpits for front and back. I used her colour choices but where I wanted, and if you look carefully, you can see that I contrasted the colours in each OXO band between motif and background.

we live in time exhibition piece — sisters

Here are some examples of my Fair Isle charts/ patterns – The Long Fair Isle Hat/Scarf and the Fair Isle chart. If you would like to learn how to build your own Fair Isle vest or jumper from my Fair Isle chart, then I am running a workshop on how to do this on 15^th March.

Here are the links to the Fair Isle long/hat scarf pattern which gives you a full list of all the colours that I used as well as lots of clear easy to follow Fair Isle charts.

Here is the link to the Fair Isle Chart which gives you all of the colours for the jumper in the bottom image and also gives you full charts so that you can make your own jumper or vest. It is not a pattern.

The patterns that I make using Shetland motifs, for example the Kaleidoscope jumper, I blend the colours for the back ground and the motif, I love colour blending. I use between 3-5 colours in the background and 3 or 4 colours in the motif, which gives the knitted article more of a rich colourful knit. I go for a glow.

here is a link to my latest design – but actually, the Dear Susan, Easy Aran jumper pattern which is a very quick and easy knit, also has colour blending on the yoke, cuffs and above the rib.

All of my patterns give clear instructions which row to change your colours but if you would like to do a Colour Blending Class, I have one running on 14^th March.

new online classes are here

My favourite way to use colours in my patterns is to blend them. 🙂 let me know in a comment how you like to use your colours. and if you would like to subscribe to my posts – just fill in the subscribe box below and you’ll receive any new posts.

Fair Isle Vest and colour blended sleeves for my 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper

I cannot wait to pick up my knitting again 🙂

Announcement – New Kaleidoscope Jumper Knit along.

Kaleidoscope Jumper Pattern KAL

Hi everyone. Happy New knitting year.

I put a pole out recently on Instagram stories to see if people would like me to knit another Kaleidoscope Jumper and over 100 people added yes.

When I first knitted the jumper pattern in August, I made the pattern one size only and some people were disappointed about that. I wrote a blog on why this was the case which is here, if you would like to read that.

Recently, I have knitted the Tree and Star sleeves and didn’t know whether or not to knit another Kaleidoscope jumper body or just add them to a striped vest. I have decided to knit a 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper in larger needle size than the first one so that I can show everyone what increasing needle size will do to the overall size of the jumper.

The orginal Jumper pattern uses 2:75mm UK needles for the rib and 3mm UK needles for the body.

The jumper I am now knitting will use 3:5mm UK needles for the body and I will let you know along the way, what difference the needle size increase makes to the overall finished jumper.

Here are the two sleeves that I have just finished – one in 2025 and the other yesterday, 2026. The Tree and Star sleeve pattern has a full alphabet sheet so that you can add your own initials and date your project

The Tree and Star sleeve pattern is an additional option instead of the Tree sleeves in the original jumper. I have really enjoyed knitting these sleeves using my stash of randome colours, though, each band is mostly colour blended.

I have decided to do a Kaleidoscope Jumper Knit along so that it might help people if they feel stuck with the pattern. I will not be teaching on the KAL but I will be adding photos and updates to ravelry.

Here is the announcement on Ravelry and here is the Knit along forum group discussion on my ravelry I’m not very good at the group discussions on Ravelry but I will be trying very hard 🙂

For the timeline, I am thinking along the following lines
January – Cast on
Feb / March – Knit the body of the jumper
April – Knit the front V and back to shoulders.
May / June – Knit the sleeves, graft the shoulders, knit the V neck and join the sleeves by grafting

This might not be possible for everyone so, start when you like and if you have already started, then please add to the group chat

I will be knitting my 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper in many colours – I hope that some of you will join me – this is my first every real KAL.

If you have started this jumper pattern and would like to join the knitalong, then please add your relpy to the Group KAL thread here.

I am looking forward to meeting some of you in the group. 🙂

lots of love. Tracey

Happy New Year and a chance to win Shetland yarn bundle

New Year Sunrise at Stanage Edge

Happy New Year to my long-standing followers on this blog and to my new subscribers.

To celebrate the New Year, I arrived home from Japan on New Year’s Day and the next morning, I promptly went to Stanage Edge in the Peak District, which is 6 miles from my home in Sheffield, to watch the sunrise.

I could not have imagined that I would witness the biggest Orange Wolf Super moon setting over the horizon before an equally orange sun rose opposite making a truly Golden hour.

The ground was covered in ice puddles and the first scattering of a salty snow. An Icy wind cut through my coat and knitted jumper to the skin on my arms and I felt alive. Glad to be home glad to be back to the place that enriches me, time after time.

Normally I’m the only person on the edge of Stanage rocks at 7:45 am but there were small groups and a couple with a child who could not moderate the level of his own voice which carried excitedly across the edge of the rocks

I go to this place to reconnect to the core of myself – no cars, no city, no internet. The landscape has not changed for thousands of years. Many people know of this place and it is big enough to share because you need to be bold and brave in minus temperatures and biting winds to witness a moonset and a sunrise within half an hour while people still sleep in their warm unknowing beds.

On the New Year, as a thank you to my followers I have posted on Instagram an opportunity to win enough yarn to knit my tree and Star beanie hat in its original coloured yarn, purchased from Jamieson & Smith in Shetland, but some of you do not follow me on Instagram so I’m posting on here the same opportunity

I am offering one person, who will be picked out of a draw next week, the opportunity to win the original Shetland coloured yarns to knit this gorgeous Tree and Star beanie.

To enter the drawer you have to buy the pattern for the hat.

The link to the Tree and Star hat pattern is here

If the winner of the draw is in the UK, I will post the Shetland yarn to them free, but if you live in another country other than England, then I will ask for a contribution to the postage for the winner

This hat pattern is a perfect easy starter project if you would like to knit the kaleidoscope jumper project because they both have the same easy Shetland Tree and Star Motif

I hope you’ll be following me for another year because I will be changing a few things in 2026. If you already don’t do so there are lots more images on Instagram.

Kaleidoscope Jumper Pattern is here

Here is the post on instagram – where you will find lots more photos and offers.

Happy New Year – good luck with this opportunity to win enough wonderful Shetland Yarn to knit the Tree and Star Beanie –

Happy knitting. Love Tracey

Knitting to keep us warm and to develop ideas.

This week, the weather has had a sharp turn from really quite warm to really quite cold, in fact bitterly cold.

On Monday I reached for my stash Buster neck warmer and here I am on my bike going to the gym at 6:30 in the morning for a 7 am Body Balance class. I love Body Balance class on a Monday morning – it starts the week in the right way but getting there on these days in the pitch dark and freezing cold with sleet or lashing rain, on a tiny wheeled bike is a bit tough.

I designed the Stash Buster neck warmer in September 2023. You can see a link here for a blog on the making and designing of it. At the beginning of the process, I decided to chart out lots of Fair Isle patterns in my design sketch book on graph paper using the OXO motifs in different colours which means that the neck warmer is constructed in an intarsia way where each block has its own set of colours.

I have had a lot of new followers on instagram, and since I have been wearing the neck warmer again, there has been a small revival and interest in this pattern. so I want to say thank you for supporting me.

This week, on Tuesday evening, it was our crafting night at a local café in Nether Edge which has a huge wood burner inside. The cafe is a small room full of wonky tables, lots of chairs, a large fish tank and lots of plants and friendly people. This cafe is very comfortable in more ways than one – it is open- hearted and totally inclusive.

It is the best café in Sheffield and maybe Yorkshire so if you’re in the area check it out it’s called Café9 and you will always receive a great welcome

Next Friday, I will be flying to Tokyo. This week I’ve been sorting the last small details and meeting people who are going to look after my cat and come and live in my flat over the time that I’m away.

This afternoon I showed a new friend, that I met through Instagram, all the things in the flat and how they work for when she comes to stay. I wrote a cat and flat manual. This evening, I pondered how Instagram is quite a marvellous platform for joining people up. I have met so many brilliant women through my Instagram feed – either they’ve got in touch with me or I’ve got in touch with them and over time, we have built up longstanding friendships.

I’ll be taking quite a few of my making ideas to Japan. I’ve decided to take my Tree and Star sleeves to Fuji, because I have an idea that I’d quite like to add them to a jacket that I’ll make using flea market kimonos. I’ll take the kimono to pieces and reuse and reshape the pieces in different ways to make a jacket body – this is one of my ideas – I have a lot of ideas and I don’t know if any of them will come to full fruition but I am so looking forward to having one month in Fujiyoshida to just be – think, write, observe, sit quietly and notice the details.

I am excited to be taking the sleeves, because I know that they can be knitted into to any number of things such as on to a previously knitted vest or as I hope to do, added to a fabric body or as add-ons to the kaleidoscope jumper.

When I begin to be free with my creativity, more and more ideas come. Ideas to create things that I had not thought of before.

I was asked on Instagram today, if I could post works in progress so, above is an image of both of my Tree and Star sleeves using colours from my stash.

If you would like to knit the sleeves yourself, to add to other projects, or to add to your Kaliedoscop jumper the pattern is here

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/tree-and-star-sleeve

I post work in progress on Instagram here – I love instagram for images.

Small Independent knitted stories.

I try to design beautiful knitted articles but they may not be considered interesting. All of my designs are meaningful to me but of course they will not be meaningful for others. All of my patterns also have a story embedded within them often from inspiration of place, people or colour But my stories are also not that meaningful to other others.

And big yarn companies that make patterns like Rowan or Sirdar, don’t genuinely take inspiration from real places or people that they’ve met. They often start with a mood board which has no integrity within the finished article so how do independent designers like me make a living from our creative practice?

Well, the answer is we don’t. I work at the university 2 1/2 days a week to pay my bills then I do my house jobs, care for the cat and manage the car and daily tasks and try to fit my creative practice into the time left for me, which can be hard when so many other other things take up my time

Independent designers do their own marketing, promotion and social media – responding to comments on Instagram and writing for the website to promote my creative practice. But then if I do sell a pattern for say, £4 Ravelry take 10% and then so do Paypal so I get about £3.20 for probably three months work to design Knit, test knit it, write the pattern – And that’s if I sell any at all.

I don’t have funding like a lot of creative practitioners, nor financial support so I want this post to say a big thank to you if you have ever bought a pattern or been on one of my workshops with me which showsme that the hard work that I’ve put in over the years has not been wasted and now, when I do finally get time to sit down and knit – my cat sits on top of me.

Here is a spotlight on my favourite pattern that I have ever designed at the moment and it’s the kaleidoscope jumper with add-on sleeve pattern and matching hat. I love wearing this jumper and always receive so many beautiful little comments about it so from one independent designer to whoever it is reading this Thank you for supporting us

Here is the Kaleidoscope Jumper pattern

And here is the link to that alternaitive Tree and Star sleeve, if you prefer to have the sam motif for the sleeve as used in the body.

Thank you

Finding Colour Confidence

Finding Colour Confidence: Trusting Your Eye and Your Yarn

I often have comments on my posts about how people like the colours that I choose. They look at all those colours — beautiful, bright, blended or contrasting and say that they don’t know how to choose their own colour combinations successfully.

I used to feel the same way.
Choosing colour felt like a test I hadn’t studied for — as if there were secret rules I hadn’t learned.

My colour journey started after I went to Shetland to stay on Fair Isle with Mati, then at Brindister just before Christmas of 2019. At Brindister, I found Sea Urchin shells scattered on the hill beside the voe. I began to name the place Sea Urchin Hill and really took notice of the colours and form of the dried Sea Urchin Shells after the sea gulls had eaten the urchin.

In Jamieson’s of Shetland, in Lerwick, I bought colours that I felt worked for me for a new hat project. By then, I had started sampling colours but still didn’t know what I was doing. When I got home from Shetland, I started the Sea Urchin hat pattern with light background and a darker coloured Shetland Tree and Star Motif. And that is where the story of my colour blending started I laid two yarns together on a whim: a stormy and washy blue skies and a flash of dark reds and purples from one of the shells that I had seen.

.
It shouldn’t have worked — but it did. It looked alive.
And that was the start of learning to trust my inspiration and eye and I began to blend the colours.

What Changed

It wasn’t that I suddenly “understood” colour blending – my swatch book will show you that but it was that I stopped trying to get it right and started trying to get it interesting and understand the changes in tone and colour.
I began to notice colour in the world around me — the copper of old bricks, the green of moss after rain, the pink glow of dusk.
Nature never worries about matching. It just works.

That’s when I realised:
Colour confidence isn’t about knowing rules — it’s about paying attention, and being willing to play.

Small Steps to Build Colour Confidence

1. Start with Inspiration, Not Theory
Forget the colour wheel for a moment.
Go for a walk, look through a photo album, open your wardrobe.
What colours feel like you?
That’s where your palette begins.

2. Work With What You Have
Lay out your stash and make little “yarn bouquets.”
Mix fibres, tones, and textures — even scraps.
Sometimes the most magical combination comes from leftovers you’d never thought to pair.

A Palette from the Everyday

This week I took a walk through Sheffield woods — everything was damp and glowing.
There was soft lichen green, deep bark brown, a sudden flare of orange leaves against a grey sky.
When I came home, I pulled those colours from my stash and swatched a few rows.
Instant calm.
Sometimes, the best palette comes from the ground beneath your feet.

Confidence Comes with Play

Colour confidence isn’t something you’re born with.
It’s something you knit into being — loop by loop, swatch by swatch.
Every “wrong” colour combination teaches your eye what it loves.
And every small experiment builds courage for the next.

looking at all the colours to really see them

Ready to find your own colour confidence?
If you want to learn more now, and would like to join my exclusive small Colour classes of 6 people, then, I do teach colour blending workshops online and the information is here.

You’ll get the Sea Urchin Pattern free to work with after your workshop. Many people have joined me in the Colour Blending sessions from my first workshop in January 2021 – held in the window sill of my window in Shetland looking out to sea.

Now, I still teach but not often, so if you would like to grab a space, there is only one left for Friday 9^th Jan and 4 left for Saturday 17^th Jan. So please get in touch using the form on the workshops page.

If you have knitted the Sea Urchin hat pattern, please tag me on instagram because I do share other people’s knitting using my patterns.

Happy successful colour work knitting 🙂

Tracey

Tree and Star Hat pattern last week above the burning copper coloured fallen leaves

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