Friday 29 April 2011

Wedding fever


 A very patriotic taatit rug in the Shetland Museum and Archives textile collection.

Image courtesy of the Shetland Museum and Archives Photo library.

edit: this was meant to go up last Friday, but we thought we'd share it anyway. Better late than never, and all that!

Thursday 21 April 2011

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Woolsack

So you've probably heard of Woolsack by now, a project to knit and gift a cushion of British Wool to every athlete taking part in the Olympics and Paralympics in London, 2012.

Well, we figured that it was only right, in a project spanning the whole country, that the most Northerly sheep were involved. So, in line with the whole loving giving feeling, we're giving a 15% discount on special Lucky Dip cushion packs and Woolsack Cushion Kits made from our lovely Shetland Sheep.


We each designed our own cushion, even the boys (hilarious watching them charting and hithering and dithering over shades in their boiler suits!). Oliver's design, inspired by the iconic image of the London Eye and the meeting of different cultures during the games, is definitely the best one so far. Derek and June's designs are still to come.
x

Monday 18 April 2011

The Final Felt

The felting from our the last of our classes for the summer.

Thankyou to everyone who joined us. 








Clare A, Debbie, Rachel, Claire H, Margaret, Marina, Lois.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Wool Holiday


Fancy coming to visit us in October during Shetland Wool Week for knitting Fair Isle and Fine Lace, weaving, meandering on the beach, visiting a croft and swooning over heirloom artefacts?
If so, have a peep here.

The Centre for Creative Industries are also doing Textile Tours in July and September. They'll be using Jamieson & Smith yarns and visiting us to have a chat with Oliver.Yay!

x

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Felt







I never got the images from the last felting class up because... the camera broke as I was taking them. So, here are the ones we managed to get (excuse the fuzz!).
The last class (until the winter descends upon us again) is tomorrow night. Couple of spaces free if anyone fancies it!

x

Friday 8 April 2011

Friday coincidence







So, I get to work this morning to find an email from a lovely Margaret who was wondering if I, by any chance, had a copy of a Vogue magazine from around 1982 that carried a pattern named 'shawl' she'd spied on another Ravelry user's profile.

A quick look at the hundreds of 40+ years old (unarchived) magazines, pamphlets and catalogues that line my office walls, and began to reply that I couldn't imagine I would ever find it. But before I sent it, I went for a little nosy to see if I could find the image on Ravelry.

Well, lo and behold it's the same shawl that Sandra and I came across a pattern for a couple of weeks ago. The pattern was crumpled, and you couldn't see the detail in the original photo, which had been taken tossed on an old bag of sheep feed! We decided to reknit it in Shetland Supreme 1 ply from the crumpled, badly written pattern. Sandra just brought it back for dressing yesterday. The funniest thing is that up until that point we were all still a bit suspicious of it in its jelly-looking, pre-boarded state. Turns out it is beautiful.

When I mentioned this funny little coincidence to Oliver, he informed me that the shawl was the subject of dispute in the early 80s when Jamieson & Smith's previous owner and manager, Eva Smith, had to battle some designers to have the pattern included in our collection.

The upshot of all this is that we'll be rereleasing the pattern (along with it's sad turned happy little history) as soon as we have it charted and printed, and have some photos that do this overlooked beauty justice after nearly 30 years. And now we know a little bit more about it thanks to Margaret. I'm just praying I don't end up spending the weekend archiving in the hope of finding the old Vogue pattern to find out who the original designer was. I'm sure Eva will remember actually - update soon...

Thursday 7 April 2011

Fair Isle Injection






Some earthy experimentation.

From the rib and up, shades: 202, FC64, 80, FC24, 1281, FC43, back to 202, then the same back out.