Warning – long post ahead
We had a quiet evening Monday night, which was good because Tuesday was busier on the whole. The start to the morning was a bit smoother – my class didn’t start until 10am and second go round I’d figured out the coffee situation.
Did I mention? Monday coffee was more complicated than anticipated. We’d determined on Sunday that our AirBnB did not have a coffee maker but I figured there were plenty of cafes to get us started instead. It was happily a short walk down the lane to the main Commercial street. Of course, this means a short walk back up the street with the coffees, “down” and “up” being quite literal here:
However, some of the cafes don’t open until 10am – not a good match with a 9:30 class start. But, a few things would be open. I popped into the first local place I saw and ordered two coffees. My hopes weren’t high when they pulled out the styrofoam cups but it took me a few moments to realize that the stuff they were spooning into the cups was going to be our coffee – that’s right. Instant coffee. I paid (I did order it after all, even if in ignorance) and took it outside. A quick sniff revealed that this really had no relation to anything I call coffee. Magic words it turns out are “filter coffee”. I did find this brew and Tuesday did not make the same mistake twice.
Anyhow, Tuesday morning saw us both up and ready, coffee secured, smoothly and well in time for me to trot down to my first class only 5min down the street in the Islesburgh Community Center to learn about the process to spinning Shetland lace. I bought my ticket from another woman who had booked the class before realizing it requires a knowledge of spinning to take it. I gather this isn’t an infrequent issue as the instructor checked that I really did know how to spin, and my drop spindles weren’t something I’d just picked up with maybe a beginning spinning class under my belt.
The class was fantastic and really informative. Margaret Peterson has been spinning for over 40 years and knitting since she was 12. She walked us through the process for combing some of the Shetland fleece in the grease, tips for oiling wheels and re-oiling dried out fiber, and provided feedback on the samples we spun. We also saw fiber samples which had been commercially scoured and carded, and how that process created more harsh brittle fibers of the Shetland wool, making it inappropriate for the finest lace spinning.
Here is my work from the class. I need to aim for a little less twist in my yarn.
The general lesson is that if you’re trying to spin in the “extremes” (such as cobweb lace) you need to start at the very beginning of the production process and how the fleece is handled. For the Shetland lace to hold together and be strong, you need a fine fleece that hasn’t been washed, but which can be combed free of debris. This makes it possible to spin a fine single without excessive twist for knitting with. She weights her skeins after washing while they dry as well.
In addition, she was extremely generous and allowed us to see and handle (gingerly) some pieces of old old Shetland lace she owns. Once shawl is well over 100yrs and you wouldn’t guess it to see the color and condition of the yarn and knitting.
I feel like I was incredibly lucky in the instructors I had at Shetland Wool Week. Margaret Peterson walked us through her process for creating Shetland lace while also being very clear that this is what works for her, and we should take the knowledge she shared to explore and use what works for us.
From there, I picked up my husband, and we went to a talk by Nielanell about her artistic design process in knitwear. It is in many ways harder to summarize a 45min talk like this than a 3hr class on specific production process. Key ideas were that our art comes from our observations and those are always personal, whether we realize it or not, and that for her, it’s very important to connect quite clearly in her mind the artistic results to a thought process and the emotions it evokes. She can explain how to got to each piece and design. Diversity, immigration, and the artificiality of the boundaries people create are all important topics in her art.
Something else which was underscored (though not her main topic) was that artists do not need to work alone. She creates designs which are then translated to knitted fabric with the aid of other crafters and technicians who manage the commercial machines. For an audience of crafters and fiber artists who are often looking to push how much of the process we control directly every further back to basics, this was I think a surprise to many. My husband and I had recently watched a biography of Eva Hesse, who worked in many mediums, often with the help of others to bring her ideas and designs to life, so for us it was another reminder that this is still a valid form of creation and does not diminish the artist’s work.
We then made the trek up to Jamieson and Smiths (J&S, not to be confused with Jamieson’s) to pick up the yarns for my stranded color work design-in-progress. This was actually a pretty quick stop since I already had the colors I wanted selected. It also prevented being completely overwhelmed by all the color selections possible. It was extremely helpful that the instructor the day before helped us all design our palettes. Otherwise I expect it would have taken far longer and felt more stressful with so many other customers there.
TheEnabler had a bit of work to do so I hung out in the Hub for a bit with fellow knitters. En route I stopped to check out the English Smocks exhibit and discovered, to my delight, a women from Sweden selling nalbinding needles. A few more needles of different sizes and shapes (more pointy was key) was the one thing on my shopping list I’d feared I wouldn’t find. But there it was! She let me try a few out to find the ones I liked. At the Hub I had a very nice conversation with a woman from London who showed me a bit of what she’d learned about using a knitting belt. She was working on an adorable jumper (see? Getting the local lingo down) with alpacas on it.
That evening we had pizza at Magnos – a fun local spot with fantastic staff who are very attentive and cheerful – plus icecream for dessert. I know, pizza and icecream are hardly the local flavors. But, I haven’t gone 24hrs without at least one scone and a cuppa tea.
I’d seen a Facebook post saying Jamieson’s was open 7-9pm that night, so we thought we’d stop by to see if they had new stock as TheEnabler was still sweaterless. We’d missed that it was open for the book release of …. so it was jam packed. But, the perfect sweater was there! He bought his sweater plus the book for me (I blame TheEnabler – I was totally ready to put the book down). We then popped into the spin/knit in at the Islesburgh Community center. We ran into Jam again plus a couple other familiar faces, had our tea and cakes (including a pretty tasty local baked herring thing), listened to some live music and finished the night off with a stop in at the Wingham Wools pop-up shop upstairs. We would have escaped with our wallets intact, but…. cashmere was our downfall. 100g of lovely white cashmere…
Then it was time to get back to our lodgings so we could start packing as we would be heading out Wednesday afternoon and we wanted to spend the day Wednesday visiting Bressay and taking a tour of the Shetland University. This post has already become crazy long, so you’ll have to wait to hear about Wednesday.