Shetland Wool Week 2018 - Ep. 63 - Fruity Knitting

[Music] [Music] welcome to fruity knitting this is episode 63 I'm Andrew and I'm Andrea and we've just had a huge trip away the Shetland for the wool week we've recorded lots of interviews and footage which we're really excited to share with you over the next few episodes there's way too much material just to put in one episode so for this episode we've chosen a lovely selection of material to give you a good impression of the wool week and we hope those of you who couldn't come to the wool week that you'll get a good feeling for the event and for those of you who were there that you can enjoy reminiscing with us and maybe we've even captured something that you didn't see yep we've got a feature interview with hazel Tyndall we're going to be visiting Shetland College where we'll speak to one of the lecturers in the textiles department we're also going to meet one of her graduate students and look at her design work which is really cool we've put together a little film which goes over the highlights of the wool week itself and we're also going to feature a young Shetland designer in our new releases segment so for those of you who aren't familiar with the Shetland wool week it's a festival that goes for a little bit over one week there are a ton of classes on ferrule and lace knitting and spinning and natural dyeing and felting and machine knitting and other specialty knitting related topics but most of these events take place in the main town of lyric but it really is advisable to hire a car so that you can get out to the other islands because they also have really great tools and exhibitions and other kinds of gatherings and activities on the other scattered around on the different islands there is a makers market on one of the days that's been Saturday I think for the last few weeks but that's not really the focus of the event I think the focus is really a cultural a Shetland cultural experience of learning and sharing yes so we have got our little film with the Shetland wool wait 2018 scenes and happenings as we took them down but before we get into that Andrea what were your personal favorite bits my personal favorite my highlights without a doubt the first thing is the landscape it is so stunning and I absolutely love seeing the wild ocean waves crash into these sharp you know high cliffs and all the nesting seabirds and the wildlife there it's really quite extraordinary that's that's absolutely beautiful I love to look out into the horizon and see these little fishing boats you know they're in the haze and then also faraway islands you can see that from one place that we stayed we always saw Ferrer sort of a hazy distance I mean that it's magical and stunning the second thing for me is was wonderful to get to know the locals through interviewing them more so that you know that was a really good special experience and it it struck me that I think probably because living on an island it makes you very practical and capable and just sort of the attitude of getting on with things even if it's difficult through we did interview a few of the shetland errs and some of them you could tell that it wasn't natural for them to be interviewed especially when they're thinking that a few thousand people are going to be watching them so they were really quite out of their comfort zone but I was really impressed with how despite it being a difficult experience or challenging experience for them they just kind of got on and did it you know so they were used to doing things that are difficult for themselves yeah and that I found really impressive I also think oh their accents their accents are just like a soft musical version of the Scottish accent so and the women all have these really soft smooth voices yeah they do have their own dialect which we kind of pick up little bits of it we try to imitate it's just the two of us together so that was a really great experience there so yeah definitely the landscape definitely the people are getting back to it I mean I think I was just I can only say again I was so impressed with just the way they get on and do things and I think that's probably because they still have hard times in living memory and that just helps them maybe have a more natural appreciation of good things in life so if you do think that the world is going completely mad I would highly recommend that you move to Shetland in fact that's what I really want to do and I bought the shipment I'm taking steps here I'm taking active steps for this because I'm looking for a job that I do and I found two possible jobs to him on the highest furthest most northerly Island there's a job for a science teacher at school yeah that's probably only got five students in the school there was another job opportunity for you and there that's the fine finance assistance for the star rent-a-car yeah yeah but it's I'm working on it what's definitely working on me yeah oh and fish and chips fish and chips so what about I'd have to agree I must say one of the really things that's special about going to Shetland this is our second trip is taking the ferry over because it's like a real introduction we're kicking off the event and the experience travelling on a ferry is really unusual you travel overnight that's really beautiful we didn't get sick it is great apart from that I'd have to agree the coastlines in Shevlin are absolutely stunning we're sort of we don't get any coastlines around here we did meet somebody in Shetland who said oh I wouldn't like to be out of sight of the sea and that's something you can kind of manage on Shetland because the sea is all around you and it's so beautiful the weather the winds and the rain and everything a lot being fair weather the weather is so present the Knitting is incredible I was really struck but on this visit by the lace knitting some really beautiful work and I always think very closely connected to that is the spinning which is required to make this very fine lace again really incredible work these very talented skilled women and you were actually we went to an auction and we saw the prize-winning fleece the Shetland black fleece and you were actually drawn yeah I mean it is such a rich amazing luscious color if you think of the the best dark chocolate you can possibly imagine and that but it's yeah it's wool then it really does have such an attraction to make it into a yard yeah it's beautiful and then yes the fish and chips is definitely good there is the fort cafe in Larrick we also went to the North Atlantic fisheries college canteen and had fish and chips there and that was also great yeah we took the ferry from Aberdeen to Shetland overnight and arrived early next morning in lyric it's around 210 miles and it takes about 12 hours we had a cabin and actually managed to get a good night's sleep the town is totally beautiful we stayed in the center of lyric and we took this coastal walk to a cafe for breakfast a couple of times Larrick is almost the same distance from Aberdeen in Scotland and Bergen in Norway and the word lyric means Bay of clay and it was first settled in the 17th century as a herring seaport for trading with the Dutch now we're at the Shetland Warwick opening ceremony and the ceremony was opened with the fiddle band ERT born Holger who have played in the Edinburgh - and also in our hometown Melbourne in Australia the Fiddler's were wearing costumes designed by knitwear designer Neela Nell there were few short speeches and then everyone mingled with a glass of wine and some chocolate and it was a lot of fun to check out everyone's hand knits each year the Shetland wool week patron designs a feral hat which becomes the official Shetland wool wheat pattern and Elisabeth Johnston was the patron for this year and her hat is called the Meera dances Tory it's based on a cap or hat that's on display in the Shetland Museum and Archives and these hats were worn by fishermen when they rowed out to the deep sea in open boats and at the end everyone gathered for a group photo wearing their me read answered Tory's and of course all of their other handit's [Music] [Applause] [Music] and so I have a couple of minutes to talk to you I decided I would talk about the wet light you've been here maybe a couple of days our weather gets interesting and while I was driving you see a novice definitely you see it there's a shower going past the other sunshine and there's blue sky there there's no better wind is picking up the sea and I thought you know that's nice colors that's something I could talk about so two Shetland people make each other say on the street are in Tesco's cool let's see it's a nice day they won't say hello how are you and a nice day means it's not wrong again that's not chopping down or they might say it's about blowing that means it's always a gale force wind so you get the idea and we're all we always talk about the weather because we always have definite weather so if through the next week you get a bad day don't be disappointed it's just a look at how the colors change in that the color changes in the sunshine ended up with a different cloud cover and the Duffing winds and we don't have autumn here as such because we don't have trees but we've got Heather and the Heather on the house and in the autumn colors now so you've got that their own prosperity over the house you've got hell grasses which really got a nice rolling boom and among the green and the yellows of a fading seed heads on browser you have mosses which are no florrum have really nice orange you've got definite color to green grass and that always changes in the different weights so in the moorland it looks like one thing and that rain and it looks something else and it's Lorna Gail you've got weather on that see the waves kicking up and then it changes so I hope you don't have a bit of wings I hope there's not too much rain but a few clothes skimming off us so you see that different colors on the house that's where our most of our inspiration comes from for nothing fair line and we will obviously talking about the color Davis Goods did you see that yesterday that was really good so we're always talking about it so as you go through the week keep an eye on the weather and see where we get a lot of our inspiration from and you might get some too [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so as you've just seen the Shetland Museum and Archives have an amazing collection of 19th and 20th century Shetland hand knitwear and the museum is very central in lyric and the hub which is what you can see now is where people could hang out knit and chat in between classes and on the walls was an exhibition of photographic work by 8 to 26 year olds as part of the year of young people and the photographs were based around the theme of my Shetland and were manipulated into repeating patterns to represent Fair Isle in knitting patterns my name is Kathy I'm from Toronto and I'm here for Shetland wool week and the best thing I did was travel to hunt and learn about the culture and the history of knitting my name is Jan I'm from Toronto also and I took a class with Barbara Sheen yesterday afternoon and speaking and it was a fabulous class everyone has such a good time there were 12 of us and it was a lovely afternoon so I'm Theresa I'm Tonya and we're both from Vienna in Austria the most interesting class with Pinsir was actually today hazel Tyndall's class on knitting with the Knitting belts and I was completely convinced to buy one afterwards so I had all along I was actually rather scared because we knit continental and we thought we would need to knit English style but actually knitting continental with a knitting belt works out perfectly fine so we're glad and was great fun and I bought the Knitting belt as well hello I am lost from trondheim in the Norway I'm the for the first time in Shetland wool wick really enjoy take a great workshop yesterday with Elizabeth Johnson was dyeing yarn with natural plants really interesting so this is not my last full week I know for sure hi my name is Julie and we've come from Suffolk in the UK and it's our first time at Shetland wool week and it's been a delight from getting off the plane and I've loved the way the whole of the time LeFleur works come together to support wool week and make everybody welcome and last night we went to talk with his locked in door didn't wake ya the Hazeltine door talk was absolutely fantastic she was going on about the history of knitting and like we're sitting here doing it as a hobby they had to do it as a necessity to actually survive and it was fascinating really fascinating directly in front of the Shetland Museum and Archives is this amazing view and another really interesting little museum to visit is the grimmest a bird which is also in lyric it's in a bird which is the typical 18th century Shetland fishing booth which was used as family accommodation and storage for fish curing activities and this building is where Arthur Andersen the founder of the piano shipping line was born [Music] and this amazing scarf and hat is one of the original articles featured in Susan Crawford's book the vintage Shetland project [Music] and I thought this was a great idea if you don't want to wear fancy lace you can decorate your furniture with it so on the Friday night there was a Kaley and we arrived really late when a lot of the war week visitors were already leaving and it was mainly just the die-hard Shetland locals still dancing around midnight and Andrew and I had been filming interviews and editing all day so it was really brilliant to be able to join in and get some exercise but some of the dancers here that you can see are also very highly skilled knitters and they might just be a few years older than us but they're just as fit and they just kept dancing one reel after another [Music] on the last day of the wool week the Shetland guild of spinners knitters Weaver's and dyers put on a traditional Sunday tea and there were demonstrations of knitting and waving and spinning there was a lavish afternoon tea and an exhibition of members work [Music] [Music] hello my name is Winnie I've been spinning for 20 years but I've been knitting since I was 4 learn to knit from my mother it's just passed down through the generations I love both but I do like spinning this is a local fleece a purebred Shetland fleece grave with a little bit of color in it which I've left in because I find that small interesting I washed the fleece and then I I've just combed it so I'm going to be spinning and roasted style that makes it nice and firm and I will do two threads of this and ply it together and eventually it will be ready to make a scarf or a stole I think but it takes quite a lot long time it's much longer to spin than understand it [Music] so we're back I haven't got much knitting done over the wool week we were pretty busy running around doing interviews and recording during the day catching other footage and in the evening we had to or I had the backup lots of footage to make it safe and get batteries recharged for the next day so there hasn't been much progress but I'm still working on my gloves we'll get cracking so I'm going to tell you very quickly a couple of the purchases that we made I thought you'd be interested to have a look you might remember last Shetland wool week I bought a couple of pieces of tweed to make skirts out of one of them was particularly unsuccessful well I feel like I've learned some new things since then I've received a few new tips so I'm back feeling confidence so therefore I bought two more pieces of tweed this one is particularly beautiful this is going to be from Madeline and it's a lovely shade of light green for those of you who might remember she's just finished knitting a cardigan Audrey and ansed in a lovely sea green color Surak and that'll go with it really well you've shown that to her already I've shown this to her and she loves it she loves it so I'm gonna show her a fairly straight sort of almost mini skirt out of it I think she'll love it and it'll look great and I'm it's sort of so you can see this very strong blue stripe unit is also a green stripe about that color you get much finer in it so they're just beautiful beautiful fabrics to look at so heathery and lots of different colors in them and this one I've got for me that one again it's more muted but it's it's it's blue and green and sort of orangey tan Browns in it and this is a fine herringbone it may not see it there but it's also a really just a really beautiful tweed so I'll make myself as just a simple skirt in that and it'll go with all of my hand knits so of those two purchases of the main purchases that I did and that's from Jameson's of Shetland and then you might remember in last last episode we featured a new releases Jennifer Beal is a new designer from new and she's got a couple of designs out that pretty impressive fare our designs and I'm gonna knit one of them it's called parts content and it uses 16 different colors from Jameson's of Shetland lots of colors so here they are here bought them yeah a ton of colors so that's fun whoops that one oh yeah there's that one too and this one so that's that is not going on the needle straightaway there's a couple of things that I need to get needed before that bit so that was the main purchases and I also bought another Andrew's next project which we'll talk about in an upcoming episode because we had to post that home he had no room in our suitcases which were full of camera or quiz language yeah so that's coming up soon so I'll show you a little bit of what I've done knitting wise it's it's a mixed story I saw a story of a little bit of whoa you've all seen this this is the jumper this is the knitted and around for this is going to be for Andrew so if you can hold that with two hands thank you so you've got the fare out down the bottom and then the rest of the garment up the top it's going to be set in sleeves sort of a crewneck jumper it's just going to be in this dark blue and then the sleeve and I had very little time to knit I was you know working during the day and at night just sort of doing editing and backing up footage and things so the the the Knitting that I got done was just in between things like in the car going from one place to another or at the cafe waiting for the food to come and so it was a bit haphazard anyway you can see on the sleeves that the sleeves are going to match up with the gradient we've got sort of an aqua color here then more of a lighter blue than getting into a darker blue and that's going to be mirrored on the sleeves we're about up up to here and so there's a bit more more of the patterning and then the rest at the top of the sleeves are going to be like the top of the body here in in this dark blue so well so far so good so far doing the sleeve on magic loop and this is the other sleeve so I can show you've got my needle to knit you can see like this now because I'm I was knitting it haphazardly whenever I could something happened I think my needles came out or fell out or whatever and I put them back in in a hurry and I I didn't have my decreases in the same spot they were moved around two stitches and then I think I was knitting partly in that in the dark or whatever so I didn't realize from about this section to this section because my stitches I was doing the decreases like two stitches too far in one direction that my my these didn't line up increases well it's it's it's a long story so do with increases and how I was doing the patterning and the patterning is extremely easy that was probably the point I wasn't thinking yeah but it was all sort of shifted two stitches so between here and here it's it's not nicely matching up so I thought I'll look I'm not gonna undo it because I've got almost no knitting done as it is let alone undo it and and so then I thought okay I'll just duplicate stitch over the top to make them sort of line up and look neat and even well I have to say I couldn't decide if this was a dog's breakfast or a pig's ear and room just not having it he said that's not good to put I won't wear it duplicate stitch and but I was pretty sure that I could do something and then the story all changed because I have to just let you know about this little incident which is very funny we we were interviewing to absolutely expert Shetland knitters who you're going to meet in a couple of thumb herbicides episodes time and we had we bumped into them a few times and every time I just happened to be wearing the same garment which was my newly completed Nora GaN cable sweater in the dark green my yak and I think they thought I was just a one jumper one desert that's all I couldn't it because that's all they ever saw me in it so finally Jung upstart yeah so finally we met them at the Kiley at the night and I happen to be wearing my Allister more Henry the eighth which is a pretty impressive design and Andrew was wearing the Jade's down more Firebirds so I very proudly when I over to them and said look I can it have a look at these two jumpers and they were duly impressed but they immediately turn them inside out to have a look at the finish there was no duplicates teacher I got the thumbs up though did tell me well done it was very good they even said they'd give me a first price which is nice but I thought okay I'm definitely I'm picking this because there's no way that Andrew can wear this jumper with my name written on it somebody who had some weight put their opinion in yeah and for them to to check it out and see it see my my dog's breakfast of it so I am actually going to unpick it now and I'll um pick it while you watch the next section which I hope you enjoy yes coming up now we're taking you to the textiles department at the Shetland college which is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands in this segment we're gonna meet Elaine who is a Shetland ah and she has very strong ties to knitting in her family background Elaine has taken traditional lace patterns and used them or transform them to create modern textiles in a really interesting way and the stories and the family stories that are the motivation behind her work are also very moving yes they and what's also moving is this yarn so you have to help me that's your job I have to roll yeah roll it up [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome to fruity knitting I'm at the Shetland College and with me is Fae hackers who is a lecturer and program leader or course coordinator of the Contemporary textiles program here and Faye is going to show us a couple of the machines that the students get trained on so that's knitting machines and weaving machines and then we're going to see one of the graduates design students work so that's really exciting so first of all thanks for giving us your time and welcome to fruity knitting thanks sipping on fraternity having man you're welcome so before you show us what we've got here which is looking really interesting some some great designs on the wall can you just give us a rundown or a bit of an overview of what are some of the skills based subjects that are covered in The Bachelor of contemporary text are absolutely so in the first year of the degree the students look into introductions for machine knitting weaving on a table loom screen printing with silkscreen digital's and cad based skills so computer-aided design drawing and history of Arts when they move into second year of the honors program they then specialize in a constructed textile so that's specifically the machine nursing or the woven textiles and they're obviously able to use all of those other skills to add to that sign like I can see we've got very contemporary work here on against the wall and it is the Shetland wool week and the Shetland has such an amazingly rich textile history so as a lecturer how are you encouraging and guiding your students to build on this tradition very rich tradition but to still make modern Shetland textiles yeah so the students that we have are encouraged to look at new sources of points of interest you can see the work behind has been based heavily on our student Marcia Calvin going for walks she looks at the ground she looks as industrial influences so line markings on row corrugated metal on buildings cracked concrete the covers of road manholes all of those things that work has been translated into knitted fabrics so she's worked over several different types of machine so looking at a single bad machine where she's worked with a short row type stitch here and working in both a wool and a nylon fabric and monofilament to create this see-through effect section she's worked on view bed machines like this one in front of me to create ribbed patterns this is very highly felted fabric she's also looked at some stitch definition on the front using a front bed only stretch and then she's moved on to our electronic machines in our textile facilitation unit to create these patterns where she's used photography of her subjects material to create these beautiful very kind of textured looking close-up imagery which have been inspired by red markings they're really amazing it's a fantastic work and your your main area is the knitting machine isn't it yes and you've you were telling me before that there's quite a story with the knitting machine because it hasn't always had a positive interpretation so yeah absolutely in the past in Shetland these large view bed machines have been in everybody's homes so in kitchens and living rooms very much part of everyday life people were paid very little money to quickly knit garment jumpers and ribs whether that was the mother the father the grandmother the grandfather it was very much part of a lot of people's lives there's quite a negative association in some some places with for me I don't have that I'm not from Shetland I have a very positive association with this knitting machine and the sound that it makes when I was studying my lecture I described it to me as it sounded like C so I've always had a very calming effect from never listen to an absolute day so that's you found grinding onto the background for people here is something quite different ways for me yeah it can be relaxing but I could imagine it symbolized hard work and little pay yeah very hard work very hard work so face just going to take us over to the looms and show us a couple of the pieces that have been worked there so to tell you a little bit about the weaving side of things the loom you can see in front of me is a table loom wheezes in first year when the students doing that introduction to wheat bang behind me you can see an array of different floor-standing looms these ease when students specialize in second year and onwards through third and fourth here I just wanted to tell you a little bit about this gorgeous piece of weaving next to me so this was by one of our international students from Poland Alicia bisca she has created a woven shawl which is a double-sided fabric utilizing Jameson and Smith's yarns and there's a chunky yarn and there's also a two-ply heritage on in here which is interesting because the project that she was looking at her source theme was 2017 year of history heritage and archaeology as you can see she's created a beautifully contemporary garment looking at those sources some of the great pieces you can see in here were inspired by Shetland archaeology features such as Brock's so or very local but to get you back onto the theme of knitting that's my department I've got one of my students one of my graduates Elaine and today so inland graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor bachelor's degree in contemporary textiles she is a Shetland student from Walzer so quite different from the work we've seen here I Miller Nicholson and I was born and brought up on the island of Walser on this side of Shetland I'm very fortunate because I choose to net however my forbearers didn't have the choice they had to net to put food on the table so so my grandmother she would net a border jumper each week detected the shop to barter for the food on the table and they netted every day although sometimes before the seventies they didn't net on a Sunday my mum netted really to supplement the income she netted fair isle she netted lace she netted cable she netted I think it's called shellac I've never done that kind of netting she netted on a V bed netting machine at one point in time they netted for the local network forum I mean I enjoy meet me nothing and me textiles but it's no maybe me life but for Mom nothing and textiles very much with her life she she netted our life so I think should be really pleased to see some more work moved forward in a contemporary manner because she was quite contemporary thankin we are not where she was never to try something different there was just something in me that wanted to to do something with our textiles and I was very familiar with yarn because I'd done a button nothing when I was younger and so I wondered if maybe I could manage to do the contemporary textiles course and I was quite amazed when it just kept moving on and on and I eventually completed a BA and I still hope maybe to return and do an honors here I've not given up on that idea yet okay so my kimono design I started off with fabric i netted about a lace took it into designer net and then I changed the scale I blew it up and I found a pattern for a kimono doing a Google search so basically it's seven straight panels and that joint together using a flat sewing seam just with a zig-zag stitch and then the kimono was put through the washing machine so that it lightly felts and the side strands the seam and it also changes the texture of the fabric it felts the wool obviously and then the wool felt and moves the masa dice cotton so that it gives it a texture and then I also wanted the reverse side of the fabric to be a fabric of its own and in its own right so so that the kimono could be reversible so it's got a ladder back stitch added to the back to create a fabric and felting process helps secure the stitches as well during second year a hat that my mother had method which featured the Tree of Life I was gifted back to me and I found inspiration in the Hat at the time we were coming to theorems with my mother's diagnosis of dementia and I found working with the textiles away that I could cope with this so I was trying to get the textiles to speak the language and I raised parts of the parchment in the same way as dementia takes away the pattern is not uniform it's it fades away and I was also trying to get across transience of time how time is really quite short so I developed on a range of scarfs and it's knitted on the twelfth gauge machine in a reversible jacket stitch this is a color sampler that I did in various colors and it's also netted in silk so silken merino so it's really soft and very comfortable around your neck I think it's a love for me heritage and how fortunate we were because really being brought up on the island of walls I was really quite idyllic and not only was it a Delic everyone on who else I could net and they're all beautiful nutters so the result is exposure to all this nothing and I I just wanted to take it forward in some way and the contemporary textiles course has allowed me to do that and I I've actually done more than I ever in my wildest dreams thought I would ever manage [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so I've got Andrew helping me unwind because it's very young mind it's it's pretty hang on stop a minute it's pretty sticky wool and you can get yourself in a real tangle so we didn't have time to take any classes this time but the the classes were very successful and popular they do bring in teachers from the UK from Europe Scandinavia and the states but a lot of the classes are actually done by the expert local knitters which is really lovely and this year they involved some of the younger generation to do the teaching and one of those teachers you're about to meet now in the upcoming new releases segment and that's Terry Merkel malcomson so Terry is a born and bred Shetland er she's grown ups totally surrounded we better stop now stop don't unravel anymore she's born and bred Shetland oh she's been surrounded with knitting on her life her grandmother Wilma is the founder of Shetland designer which is one of the early knitwear businesses in in Shetland and we interviewed Wilma and Terry together back in episode 44 so Terry has recently opened up her own design business she's doing a lot of feral creations and she's quite well she's an expert her machine knitter as far as I can see and a very accomplished and neuter so that's very interesting and she's coming up now enjoy it [Music] hi I'm Terry malcomson I'm a designer here in Shetland really enjoying Shetland wool week just now I've just been teaching some classes on design as well as the crown shaping in the top of a fair isle hat today I am going to show you some of my Tina's collection I've got the mitts here as well as the the Hat so I call these this the Tina's hat and Tina's mitts when designing these I was really thinking about the colors that my niece Tina was dressed in when she was a baby so her parents dress and in a lot of pinks moving into pot pots and then into the blue and I just thought it was a really nice combination and I wanted to make a colorway of it I did this about two years ago and then only this year I've come back to use it I used the pattern for an online class earlier this year and then again I used the pattern as part of a competition when I was celebrating the first year of my business starting so as part of the competition the entrants made up their own colorways for the pattern and sent it in and we had a social media competition where whoever had the most likes on that picture one and there was a lot of really good ideas came from that so here on my sketchbook I make sketchbook pages for a lot of the common ways that I do I've got a picture of her as a baby here and next I've got my yarn wrap so I do this for a lot of the designs that I'm doing it's usually my first step is when I've got my colors together and I want to organize them I wrapped the background color around a piece of card and I do it in proportion to how it's going to be knitted so you can see I've got my white in the middle section here and then on each side of that I've got the grave just as the design is when knitted then I put my foreground colors just a couple of strands around that and you get a really good idea of how the colors are going to work together when the method it's so important to make a swatch because sometimes the shapes that you're using can make such a difference as to how the colors work work together the motif that I used is a kind of flower I wanted to keep the girly aspect of it there so some people say it's a flower or a star a butterfly I didn't like that it's all quite girly along with the pinks and the blues and that's really what I was going for the motif was inspired by traditional York pattern we have here in Shetland and I altered it to Nick the colors work as I wanted and to make it fit on a glove as well next year I've got the color side-by-side and it's really good to see the colors on their own as well as in the yarn wrap because you can see how they might have worked in other combinations as well the yarn I'm using here is from Jameson's of Shetland this is their spindrift yarn and it works really well in this because I wanted the colors to show up individually when netted as well as blend and well together so I've used some mixed colors some more solid colors and that really breaks up the pattern so you see the individual colors while still having the motif show through in contrast to the gray and white background that I've got these gloves that constructed very simply we just start at the bottom with the 1 and 1 rib anything straight up and when we get to the thumb then I put in a piece of waste yarn and knit the rest and come back to the thumb and just do that few rows of rib on top there the sections at the top are just split up a little more for your middle finger the same for the index and the ring finger and then a little less stitches on your pinky finger and just again a rip straight up and using any of the ends to fill in any gaps that you might have there a really easy one to knit for the Hat we use the corrugated ribbing down at the bottom and I've knitted this straight up and then all the decreases are in the crown and it's a very simple clone to do as all the decreases are just above one another so it's easy to keep track of this one I did notice when knitting these that your color dominance can be really important so you'll see especially on the crown here the diamonds stand up really well much better than I have in this sample of the glove so with the Hat here you can see the diamonds more clearly because I've swapped the colors that I'm using between my hands so we usually have my background color in my right hand and my foreground color in my left and for the Diamonds section I've swapped that so that the color showing through is the white and you get much clearer diamonds there if you're really focusing on the lines between them so that's something quite interesting about this one because for the main section I do it as I would normally background in my right and then for the top I have my background in my left so I really enjoyed missing Latinas hats and Latinas myths I hope some of these techniques have been helpful for you I would really recommend these yarn wraps they are a good start before you knit your swatch and if you come up with any new colors using this technique I'd love to see them thank you for listening [Music] Thank You Terry for your contribution I'm a really big fan of the yarn wrap technique I'm inside it no I know I'm a big advocate I'm good at telling people what to do without actually doing it myself that's true but a good way to check out your covers before you do a swatch but as Terry says you have to do a swatch and I'll send notice the emphasis on the yarn domination is that's what it's called and domination yarn dominance you hand dominance Eon dominates well yon domination is also important that's true have you got your yarn minutes right I have because if you haven't we can rip it back all right Terry is offering fruity knitting patrons a 25% discount on antennas mitts entertainers hat patterns the mitts are a really simple little pattern so if you want to try some fare our mitts then you could try that and you can include that in our fruity mitts and gloves pattern so thank you very much Terry for that discount people have expressed on Instagram and other places that how much they would love to go to Shetland wool week and that we were very lucky to go we do feel very fortunate to have been to Shetland and we can highly recommend the event and experience to you if you're interested in going but we do want to point out that we did go there to work although there were brilliant classes available we took no time off to take classes and very little time off to socialize or do any other activities so the whole time we were there it was interviewing and gathering footage to prepare content to show you guys and while that is a tremendous privilege because you do get to meet some expert locals and and that's a very interesting experience it's tremendously hard work and we do have flights and accommodations on top of that so we're just calling out to more of our regular viewers to become patrons you can do so for a small amount every month at the moment it's still under 10 percent of our regular viewers are becoming patrons and we really need that to be spread over more regular viewers so please become a paid and thank you so much to all of our generous patrons who have been supporting this content so far we really appreciate it so coming up now is one of the interviews that we prepared it during the shetland ball week and that's an interview with hazel Tyndall we did interview hazel back in 2017 will week and that's you'll find that back in episode 39 and they're hazel talks about her knitting history within her family so she talks about her grandmother her mother her aunts and sisters and how they were all knitting to supplement the family income and how at age 12 she was already designing for our yokes and knitting them and selling them so that's a really interesting interview in this interview we kind of meander from topic to topic it's very friendly and and chatty and hazel talks about some of the more recent projects that she's been working on both knitting and crochet and interspersed in that she she dropped some very interesting historical knitting yeah and there are really interesting points yeah and I also want to mention that hazel has produced two video series and they are combinations of her lifelong experience as an expertise as a Shetland knitter and they also include instructions on how to use the Knitting belt and how to knit more efficiently and one of those video series is 50 tips from Shetland knitters and that's produced in collaboration with the expert spinner and lace knitter Elizabeth Johnston who was this year's patron of the wool week and we interviewed Elizabeth back in episode 40 so this series is a response to all of the questions that they both have received over the many years that they've been giving classes and workshops and there's a tremendous amount of really brilliant information in it and the other video series is the art of feral knitting and here hazel takes you step-by-step through knitting a seamless feral cardigan and that includes instructions on staking and finishing techniques so there is a heap of brilliant information in those videos and hazel has kindly offered routine knitting patrons a 20% discount on both of these video series for a limited time so we think that's a really valuable offer yep that's really great so we hope you've enjoyed our Shetland wool week 2018 special episode and we hope you enjoy the interview which is coming up I think it's really fascinating so have fun with that we'll see you in two weeks time thanks for being with us bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to fruity knitting we're in Shetland for the Shetland wool week 2018 we took the ferry from Aberdeen to lirikd last night and we arrived safely early this morning after a stormy night I'm delighted to see you looking so well yeah we actually slept which was quite amazing we weren't expecting to but we're very excited to be doing a series of interviews here and particularly excited to be catching up with hazel Tyndall who is a well-known chef 'land knitter designer and teacher and like a lot of Shetland knitters hazel learnt to knit before she could read and write in fact I think it was so early that you don't even remember learning to knit no I don't yeah so we were actually sitting together and chatting this time last year for the 2017 wool week so it's been really great to catch up with you again in person so thanks for being on fruity knitting again thank you for asking me it's lovely lovely to be speaking to you again good so I thought we might just start off with you telling us a couple of the things that you've been up to knitting wise over the last 12 months mitten waves have been to Loch Ness net first last October I was in NBN Festival which is always great I just go there to speak mostly and then I've been on a cruise with craft cruises we went from Copenhagen to New York via Norway Iceland Greenland Canada and you were teaching yeah yeah it was a good trip yeah yeah great so I thought recently that hazel had written a very interesting blog post on how she made jumpers or sweaters from triangles and you first saw this technique back in 1998 from an American knitter shoji yeah I think it was when we visited the Atlanta knitter skilled okay and there was somebody they had had a chunky sweater and it was just straight stripes and they came down to the center front I can I can't honestly remember what that sleeves were like but I just thought oh that that looks fabulous and I would like to translate it into some kind of Shetland yeah and the lady kindly shared with me her instructions for chunky and I'm sure I have them in the house somewhere but I've not been able to find them yet but I did net undertook this one yes yes here yeah you've done a lathe one using the old shell the traditional art seal pattern and a fair r1 yes you know it is really an amazing construction so we've sort of got some got it together with a little bit of help from some some triangles to show you how it works she's hazel just talked about it quickly with to me beforehand and I got there in the end didn't I yes it was really tricky to be able to see it I think you have to do it to make it work basically what you're doing is you start in this little coordinate here which would be here so at the side same yeah and your so you start with netting the shape you're increasing here twice and here twice okay so you're increasing four times one year two and another one three in four McCleary and until you should get a sort of a right angle here which would be this is this is the bottom the this but happened afterwards so the lathe band and the calf and the nick all happened right at the yes yeah yeah you start here and you just keep increasing here till you get this width or I should say this for width is half of what you finally need so this would be half the bust measurement usually so unless you have so much much wider yeah so you keep increasing until you've reached from yeah your your centre front to your centre backs and that width yeah and then you have to do the whole thing again for this yet okay this this would be the long edge to the triangle here yeah from the stop this point to here yeah hey so that first triangle was here and then you're increasing your holding this side up until you get to here so jump before this pink line yeah yeah then you do the same there mm-hmm and then you have to do the same for the sleeves so again you start here and you're increasing again four four times so around yeah yeah yeah so here on this side of the mother and the same there and there when we say seems there is actually no seams no there's no see but where the same would be okay so that little triangle comes up here yeah and then you're joining it on one very long rows yes yeah oh you're joining it all the way down here and up and then the same on the backside of it mm-hmm yep and you didn't use um did you go into circular needle thing I might have done but I can't remember this one was made nearly 20 years ago so um that's too long to remember but it's worn so well yeah beautiful it's not one in a huge amount I have a few jumpers that I take out for a few weeks every year and then they get washed and stored away again this is for special occasions possibly okay so once it's on this big big well there's probably how many stitches well I hundred early about nine hundred year roughly and then you're you're working all of it in will yet but you're decreed decrease and yes you decrease in here twice and at the top of the the sleeves twice okay and it's not every row it's I think it's two out of three heroes that you do the decreases until hereafter but you sat every row up here so you can kind of dairy that here on how you want it to fit in the end kind of organic and and after a probably phone it's getting up to about here you could try at iron and see what you thought it's really striking its if youth fantastic colors to show it off when I bought the colors the lady said you sure about this I actually had a fourth one that I didn't use but then I went insured it too and she thought it was okay that's good you got her approval yeah yeah and then right at the end you were done this beautiful right at the end let's just miss it but the way and then it hurted oh yeah and this is also the old shells yes sure a bit of ribbing yeah that'd have been wish to try and pull it in a bit yeah okay and it gives a nice aged a very beautiful edge and up here you've just crocheted an egg it's the back is slightly higher than the front and um yes you've done that very clearly not with short rows no no I'm not sure how much good I would happen it'll just make things up as she goes along don't you well I always tell people that knitting isn't an exact science and and a jumper board works magic profit wool and can can be encouraged to go in where you want directions he won yeah well I think this is really stunning and a beautiful design but then she also figured out how to do it in fair are so we're gonna show you that one next that's yeah I once I've done this one I thought I think it would look nice and fair island and I couldn't figure out how it how I would do it and then I woke up one morning and knew you had a dream a vision like I think it's your subconscious that yeah exciting things yeah that's true yeah and you give them you think about on my liver properly yeah and then and then you get the answer so let's explain the answer because there's a really ingenious so this this would be how I would start for a fair out and this is a sneak that gets caught to open and if we for so the stick is here so this is the sight seam and then this is the the bottom and they were actually making the two triangles together okay so like in the the shell design we were doing it separately for yet and then we join them together but she didn't want to do that because no you don't want to I didn't know I didn't want to be Pauline so this is just a little button color that I did too sure how it starts so it starts again just this I can't remember if it's four or six stitches and then there's increases here here here and here and that little bit here is it's this one corner there yeah and this one is that corner yeah and and you take that it's so ingenious and then you've it sticked at the middle so you can do both at once do you want me to cut this yes then I think might help here we go he's understand so always with a stick you you find the middle here I've got two the same color and and I always have my fingers behind and I'm cutting through knots here so that would be one side and then and this is the other one and I think you get on better if with cutting this if you have big scissors and big big cuts because I've seen people going with tiny scissors and tiny snips and I think you get it untidy rage yeah and and because this is sticky Shetland wool you can give it a good pull and there's no wonderful isn't it and and fords varied cuddles very nicely where you need it too so this would be if I give it a pull there now help it to cuddle and you'll see so that would be that the beginning there and this one and when you cook when you have the joins in the middle these just mostly fall off and you trim what doesn't fall off so this is a smaller version oh yeah he's here listen this is how this one would start so that would be that site yeah so you keep going until again you get this this length here and then when when you finished your triangle it's just a case of of all these stitches but there you can say yeah you can see line all the way through here yeah and I like how you've done this in the dark color and the ferrule is just starting yeah in one year yeah and again it's it's decreases at the centre front it looks like a seam but but it's because of the decreases that they're pulling away so there's no seams no no grafting but you do have to pick up stitches along the edge of the snake you can see this is this tag here yeah and because it it pulls up a little bit in the middle I did do some short drawers here before I did it up and in here I did a stick again for the neck well actually I don't think it is a stick I think I did it my mother's old way which was keep by netting and then thin time when you realized up now when you realized it was going to be too high you just use a needle to pick up the shape that you want and then cut off the excess so that you just thread your needle through stitch again in the shape that you want like you're picking up stitches and then cut it off mm-hmm because if you look you can see here there aren't any straight lines like I would have an estate that that's how my mother very often did an action tree bothered and maybe she forgot and and she would just use a needle to get into shape and then you don't get the bulk of the New Ager this very such a good I don't have to try that yeah and then use your second trick isn't it you just cut cuz then you could do it more like a wider angle if you want or however you want you've wasted a lot of time many are nesting yeah a massive steak yes but it gives you options afterward you've made mistakes to repair things mm-hmm hazel I did remember us when we were sitting here last year you were telling us how much that actually you prefer to knit Farrell that's your favorite to knit yeah because you love the rhythm of working with two hands together and you love the play of the motive colors against the background colors but I have seen that a lot of your more recent projects are lace so I'm just wondering if anything's changing for you well sometimes the lace is nice idiot knitting foot when you when you're tired and and you can just pick it up and go without saying too much yeah like a long store you just keep going just go round and round yeah so you're going to show Hazel's going to show us a couple of her I think there's a crocheted garment that you've made up which is really interesting and a couple of your lace works so we'll get those out this is a piece of Karoshi I sort of urgently needed that top to wear to cover my arms with a sleeveless dress that I bought and I thought oh she was the quickest way to do it a fairly large hook and some self that I've had lying in a cupboard for the teens of years so I started and following this button to give myself ascetical so this is where it starts and I wasn't sure how it was going to hold the stretch when I blocked it so I kept going probably till about here when I got too tired and I thought I would have to go to bed but before I went to bed I pinned it out wet it and pinned it out and so that I could see however it was going to be a success and it did work it blocked out very nicely and then I needed to figure out how I was going to turn it into something with sleeves so I'm at the the circle into quarters I added a few bits down here to get a bit of lens for the back and then the sleeves it was very experimental that was done flat this was joined afterwards and I just went back and forth I was having to write down every row as I did it so that I could match them caught on the other side and if I rap back I had to remember to delete that that row to get it blocked I kept these seams open and then pinned it I fold it so that I would get an identical side so it was fold it along here okay and then hidden flat so I could pin it to the shape that I wanted the last thing I did was just to join join the seam at the side yeah well it's beautiful and then here's a really beautiful shawl design that you've recently done made up again and it's out of the beautiful natural shades isn't it yes I was asked by fuller wolf to test that one ply lace because Magnus doesn't net and his wife Justina doesn't do lace and he was for some reason worried that it wasn't strong enough and he tagged her net on the machine and then he tried to punch holes in it to test it and but they wanted a letter to test it - and I've done net 3 together with us with no breakages so this one I started with the lace this lace edge from here to here so you get a nice straight line yeah so you just keep going it's a bit boarding and and monotonous and you do that all the way all the way around telling me until I have thought that I probably got fade up maybe and then but I think I maybe started somewhere about here and went along here and then like short draws but to keep boredom at bay I needed something here so this is interlace man so this is a very simple diamond pattern we are a or us this is this is I think is a traditional Shetland steek okay a separator between departments and and it just kept getting a bit wider as I went around I also brought this on a hat board I put photos up on Instagram I think it was and it confused people no Wayne because they couldn't really see what it was but literally the construction of it yeah yeah so yeah and the different colors of the Moret yeah and they just they just blend so well and this is all done died young and they sawed it in two colors I'm fuller before it leaves them now you did tell me that you're going to be doing a talk at the Loch Ness knit festival coming up soon and it's going to be on your collection of vintage fare are items yeah yes is this vintage everything I think okay that is some stuff that's not fair right but we've got some fair our garments here that are vintage okay so perhaps you could tell us a few things about them yeah I'm not entirely sure where this one came from because my I had two aunts who's 13 I got when they died and I'm sure it's not one of my mother's I've looked through old photos to try and find somebody wearing it but I haven't it has been well-worn you see they probably didn't have deodorant or antiperspirant but it's nicely felted here and the cuffs have been replaced because this is a this feels like a double Netanyahu doesn't it and it's not not the original the neck is the same height front and back that's really not much shape in there at all and one of the advantages are doing it this way as it can be pulled on either direction so you don't always wear it was this the same elbows of these elbows so I've been worn out okay so that the wear and tear is not always on yes so you can see on the inside here that sticks haven't been used this I think would be you not the yarn together knit the Rope break it and go back to the beginning so you always have the right side facing so you'd have done the back and then the front and it's a three needle bind off up here when you get to the armhole you're putting these on hold yeah and then from the armhole to the shoulder you're knitting across break net across break okay and and this is all just knot it and left and you can see the knots here though he's not knotted with with no it's no no and I think I'll have to check which way their sleeves are going so they've picked up and the sleeves down the way okay so they're just meeting separately he and to avoid poor purling movement and then death knotting at the end to hold it and then picking up stitches where the knots yeah yeah so then letting down and you will see that there's nothing being done about these they've just been this is actually four colors not it together except so I imagine this is knit the same way is this this isn't it it the same way and this one was not it in 1953 a by my mother for my brother and I guess that we probably all wore it and fairly typical child's jumper and opening at the shoulder so that you have a nice cozy neck but plenty of room to get the head and this one I'm pretty sure isn't it it you can see this this this is nothing that's just been cooked and so how you're explained before yeah flipping in the yeah yeah so she's just practice practice line and and I don't have time to look and study if she's got it exactly right but it looks okay it looks good yeah and again this one is just been knitted across and broken and the knots tied so why don't you think she would have used a stake with that was puzzler possible should never seen it okay it's possible that that had never been tried yeah and I don't know where it came from because there are different techniques in Shetland isn't even though she think that's right and this is still how are they netting while say because they think that a stick is too bulky so they bra can eke and and then the they would weave in all these aims now so it's a it's a but they have a ferry to certify every time they leave Ireland and and they have a lot of time yeah even pain ends as a good way of filling in the ferry time well hazel they are really beautiful garments so thank you so much for sharing it with fruity knitting in our audience it's been great to have a look at them just before we finish you've been working on something else haven't you so do you wanna just tell us a little bit about it because I think it looks like this triangle if it's going to be a cardigan this time so I've this is the center front here so you can maybe see it's going up here to the sleeve top down to the center back sleeve top but back to the center front and do you find it easy to do it as a cardigan yeah cuz there's no puddle and you've done you've done got a garter stitch down toilet yeah well but you know I like the garter stitch with the natural shading and at this fine age as well it looks good yeah and you're okay so you'll you'll bring in the I think I'll go back to white okay to finish it yeah and you've done a gusset or something here yes yeah it makes it easier to join and I think it's better to wear with a gusset well thank you so much for showing us this it's great you're always picking up little tiny tips here and as you're creating a garment you're always like you said working on it organically and making things up and inventing new ways of doing things and you're teaching at the Warwick a couple of classes yes I'm doing a couple of classes and I'm doing a talk as well on my mom's day dish that'll be great well we're at the beginning of the wool week now so it's busy for both of us isn't it yeah so good luck with all of your classes I'm sure it's going to be great and your students are gonna learn a lot so thanks for spending time with us today you're very welcome okay we'll say goodbye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Fruity Knitting

Views: 61,212

Keywords: Knitting, Shetland Wool Week

Id: Kl7D1v6smlE

Length: 84min 23sec (5063 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 09 2018