Blog
Yokes
a shetland knitter working on a V-bed machine, photo by Tom Kidd Historically Shetlander's have always had to have a few things on the go, originally we were crofters and fishermen and this meant there was always quiet times, be it bad weather, dark nights or rough seas you had to find something to do. In the height of Shetland knitwear fame many homes were equipped with large v-bed knitting machines like the one you see in the picture above for people to combine machine and hand knitting and to earn a bit of extra money. Prior to the Oil Boom of the late 1970s/early 1980's many homes echoed to the sound of the knitting machine. 'by the mid 1960's, when the local press reported that knitting was beginning to become more profitable than crofting, many Shetland families were encouraged to purchase Passap or Knitmaster machines specifically to turn out sweater bodies, as well as yokes in their own home' An excerpt from Kate Davies 'Yokes' Working in one of the many Knitwear factories. Photo: Unknown With the introduction of oil and all its job opportunities and wealth it was no surprise that locals packed away their knitting machines and took advantage of the Oil Boom and all its rewards. The skills of these cottage industries saw a deep decline, luckily there were still people in Shetland who had these skills and we are lucky to be able to work with some of them. We have designed a range of traditional Yoke cardigans using both our 2 ply Jumper Weight and Shetland Heritage yarns, we have partnered up with a selection of Shetland knitters to help us produce them - The body and sleeves are hand frame knitted for us by a maker in Whalsay, one of the outlying Islands and then we have a number of local knitters who put in the yokes and finish the garments in their own homes. The continuation of the Shetland Textile industry is always very important to us, that's why we are ensuring to pay our knitters a good price for doing the work, we understand and appreciate the skills the knitters have and want to pay them rightly for these skills. We have the initial stock available on the website here but we will be adding to it as colours come back from the knitters. We are very excited about our new range of garments, and we hope you are too! If you don't fancy buying a ready made yoke the pattern is taken from Sandras' Hairst Yoke pattern which is available as a kit. Happy Knitting!
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Crofthoose Hat Kits
So this years Shetland Wool Week pattern has now been out for a month or so, we were out of stock of one of the shades but its now back in (yippee!) so if you would like to knit the J&S colourway of the Crofthoose Hat you can order a kit from our website here It uses 5 shades of Jumper Weight in the colours seen above, if you order a kit we will include a paper copy of the pattern but you can also download it via the Shetland Wool Week website here If you would like to knit the hat but dont fancy these shades just leave us a note in the delivery comments box of the shades you would like and we will put them in for you, there are four different colourways in the pattern and lots of projects on Ravelry if you need inspiration! if you do knit a Crofthoose Hat remember to tag your projects on instagram and ravelry with the #crofthoosehat Happy Knitting!
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peoples friend shawl
It was back in 1968 the Jamieson & Smith introduced knitting yarns to help add value to the Shetland Island clip, as mentioned in the last post the wool was graded and sorted by hand into its various quality's before being sent away to be spun into whichever yarn we specified. Nearly 50 years later we still do the same. Knitting in Shetland has been one of our main industries throughout the centuries* and we are lucky to have patterns passed down throughout peoples families but for those out with Shetland it was tricky to access these traditional patterns. Sandra Manson who works at J&S has been knitting since she was a child, the skill's passed down to her from her Granny and Auntie. Sandra is always on the lookout for vintage patterns and one she has recently reknit in our Shetland Heritage range is a Hap taken from the Traditional Shawls and Scarves book (which we have on our shop here) Some of these vintage patterns need a bit of work so Sandra has made a few changes to hopefully make it easier to knit and you can find the pattern in this weeks edition of The Peoples Friend. Almost since we started doing yarns in the late 60's we have had patterns in various magazines, before the days of Ravelry, Facebook and Twitter that was the main way we could reach our customers all over the world and for many people without access to the internet it is still a way for them to hear about Jamieson & Smith Yarns. If you don't have access to the Peoples Friend Magazine we will be releasing the kit ourselves in the upcoming months, but for this week it can be found in there. Happy Knitting! *If you are interested there is a day all about Shetland Knitting being hosted at the Shetland Museum and Archives this Saturday (March 5th 2016) and it can be viewed on-line, for more information see here
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2358
Sometimes here in Shetland its easy to forget how far-reaching our yarns can be. As you probably know, every year we take place in the Colourbox challenge with local agriculture shows, see posts here and here. Well our friend Mary Jane Mucklestone was teaching at Vogue Knitting Live last week and she had the idea to try a mini colourbox challange with her students, so using this years colours, the students set about knitting their own Fair Isle using the colourbox shades They were very lucky because there were a few Shetland Ladies kicking about New York last week and noted Shetland Designers Hazel Tindall and Wilma Malcomson were both available to judge the entries, just like we do here! After some deliberation (by the looks of it!) Hazel and Wilma chose their winners.. So congratulations ladies! We would have loved to have been there and seen J&S in the wild in New York Happy Knitting!
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Winter Woollies KAL: colour and patterns
Hello! We are so excited as to how many of you have picked up the colours for the Winter Woollies KAL! there is still plenty of time left to get involved so today I thought I'd share some of our thought on the colours and a few ideas for free patterns available on Ravelry. As you know the Knit A Long requires you to use at least four shades so we (Me -Ella, Amy and Kharis) tried to pick 2 lots of four shades of 2ply Jumper Weight that worked together. Our first group is shades 1,203,FC34 and FC41 To us these colours make us think of dark nights, snow, ice, stormy skies and seas.. all typical of a winter in Shetland! our second group is FC43, FC38, 65 and 9113 These colours are more 'inside' inspired shades - roaring fires, christmas trees, baking and mulled wine. We hoped by having these two groups it might give people more ideas - of course you can mix and match to your hearts content, it is just a starting off point and by changing one or more you get a different look - Sometimes it can be daunting to try and come up with a pattern too, even once you have decided on your colours.. To that end I thought I'd show you some fun patterns all available for free on Ravelry - they all call for fingering weight yarn which is what 2ply Jumper Weight comes under and a few even call for 2ply Jumper Weight exactly (Fair Isle Cuffs, Kite Mitts, Shwook hat) so all you have to do is pick your colour arrangement.. clockwise from top left; fair isle cuffs, kites, far me socks, classic colourwork cowl retro sampler, snowflake fingerless mitts, solidago socks, shwook hat sheep may safely graze, tourbillon, stem and leaf cowl, fair isle flower sock You will see some of the patterns only use 2 or 3 shades, all this means is you will have to add a couple more shades in to get to your 4 colours. This is easily done by doing a bit of background shading or foreground shading. If you feel you need to rechart the Fair Isle into your colours there are a few good free options - one is this Chartmaker which is free, there are also a few good tutorials online about using Microsoft excel to colour a chart (like this one) I hope this has given you some ideas! We cant wait to see peoples ideas begin to take shape - remember to tag your project on ravelry and instagram using #winterwoolliesKAL and to share your projects in the group on the Jamieson & Smith Lovers group page Happy Knitting!
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wool week friday,saturday and sunday
On Friday we had another class with Felicity, this time the class were working from another set of inspiration pictures and different shades of 2 ply Jumper Weight. Lots of brilliant swatches again! In the afternoon we had Deborah Gray in doing some drop spindling, we always try and offer at least one spinning class although it is tricky for the space, using the combed tops very quickly everyone was spinning away! All through the week Oliver was also giving his sorting and grading demonstrations which was busy as always! On Saturday morning Kharis and Amy held the fort at the shop and I went for a look at the Marts Flock Book sale I then headed to the Wool Week Hub at Islesburgh Community Centre, where the Makers Market was being held beautiful pouches by Julia Traditional knitting by Patricia Doull Scarves and Snoods by Fraser Knitwear All through the week the Hub was the base for Wool Week and it worked brilliantly as there was plenty of space for people to sit and knit, spin or whatever! This map shows all the far flung places people come from to go to Shetland Wool Week, its amazing! Yesterday to finish off the week we attended the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers Sunday Teas at Tingwall Sunday Tea's is Shetland are a classic and they didn't disappoint! As well as the cakes and fancy's there was a great display of the Guild Member's Work So that wraps up the J&S coverage of Shetland Wool Week 2015, it is a crazy week for us but we always enjoy it and look forward already to next year! Happy Knitting xx
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Vintage Lace Collection Volume 1
We often speak about Gladys Amedro here at Jamieson & Smith, the reason we do so is her patterns continue to be some of our best sellers since they were released over 20 years ago. Together with her we published many patterns in the best way there was at the time - in magazines! My Weekly, The Peoples Friend, Bella.. to name a few. A collection of Gladys' patterns were sold in a book called Shetland Lace which was published by the Shetland Times for many years and went through a few reprints. The Shetland Times currently publishes a few lace books, The Unst Heritage Lace book and A Legacy of Shetland Lace so they have decided at present to not reprint Shetland Lace. As you may know we sell our kits with the patterns, and every day we have kits and yarn going out to knit one of Gladys designs. We have always had our patterns printed here in Shetland using the Shetland Times because we feel its important to support our local businesses so we decided that together with them we would put together smaller selections of Gladys Lace patterns into Volumes, so we present The Gladys Amedro Vintage Lace Collection Volume 1! This first Volume contains the patterns for The Gibbie Shawl, Lace Christening Robe, Fine Lace Stole and Scarf and My Weekly Baby Knits Shawl. We have reproduced the patterns as they were in the Magazines so they are written out line by line, rather than charted. All the patterns are written for either 1ply Cobweb or 2ply Lace but they would work equally well with Shetland Supreme 1ply or 2ply Lace, in the introduction we give yardage to help with substituting. You can buy a copy on our website here!
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Yarn Series - Shetland Heritage
Following on a few years after the successful launch of our Shetland Supreme Lace Yarns as featured in the last post, which was a joint collaboration between Jamieson & Smith, The Shetland Museum and Archives, The Shetland Amenity Trust and our parent company Curtis Wool Direct we developed the yarn we are talking about today, the Shetland Heritage Range. We were approached by Carol Christensen, Textile Curator of the Shetland Museum in 2010, to create a 'wirsit' worsted yarn reminiscent of some of the yarn used in their historic knitwear collection, of which some pieces date back to 1870. We were invited by Carol to view some of their collection held in the museum store at the North Staney Hill. On show was a mixture of distinct Fair Isle 'keps' caps, scarves, all-overs and slipovers all laid out on tissue paper. a piece from the museum collection. Our first impression was the distinct rich colours and how the Fair Isle patterns stood out and were crisp and well defined. Many of the articles were very old, Carol explained the yarn was hand-spun, the wool was combed and not carded, and the dyes were natural dyes. There was little or no wear visible in these garments, testifying that worsted yarn has different wearing properties than woollen spun yarns, a stronger smoother yarn, which retains its elasticity despite being washed and rewashed. We were allowed to handle these precious articles and were immediately impressed by the smooth soft handle. a piece of Fair Isle knitting in our Heritage Yarn Carol asked if it would be possible for us to produce a similar 'wirsit' worsted yarn as used in the construction of their garments. Carol said could we judge the thickness of the yarn by sight and handling the garments, a big ask to get the finished article correct. Having only worked with a woollen spun yarn and also in the days of the Gala cut, a woollen spun count system that was used by our old spinners Hunters of Brora. We settled on a 2/22.5 cut, which was a 2ply woollen spun yarn used by Hunters of Brora. This yarn would be slightly thinner than our present woollen spun yarn 2/8 nm. We passed on the images and information to Martin Curtis at Curtis Wool Direct, who put the process into action, firstly preparing the superfine Real Shetland wool, which they buy from us. Then combing and dyeing and finally having the yarns spun by one of the few remaining worsted spinners left in the U.K. The resulting yarn has a beautiful soft handle, much softer than traditional Shetland or Shetland type woolly yarns. It is perfect for traditional Fair Isle but becuase the yarn is slightly lighter than Jumper Weight this also means it works well for lace. Initially we launched 6 traditionally inspired shades: Indigo, Madder, Fluggy White, Peat, Auld Gold and Berry Wine. We then added Coll Black, Snaa White, Mussel Blue, Moss Green and Silver Grey to round out the palette in 2013, the non marled and matte colours give the yarn a lovely sheen when knitted which looks very traditional. detail from the Fair Isle V-Necked Jumper kit, available here The yarn was described by Carol as perfect, yet again we proved that partnering with local bodys like the Shetland Museum and Archives and the Amenity Trust helps us in recreating our living past in Shetland. The finish of the yarn makes it a diverse fibre and the Coll Black colour way was used by the 2014 Jarl Squad of which Oliver our manager was a member. we have the suit on permanent display in the shop so you can see the heritage yarn used in the Kirtle, the tunic worn underneath the breastplate. You can see from our post about that day here it was a horrible rainy day but according to Oliver they didn't feel cold! There is no doubting the luxury of our Heritage yarn, however most people encountering it today as well as being impressed they have not seen this type of yarn made from Real Shetland Wool, this in itself makes our job of marketing the yarn all the more difficult as it was lost in the age of time and only now has been resurrected, you can buy the Heritage yarn here.
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Yarn Series - Shetland Supreme Lace Weight
Of all the Shetland wool products produced over our long history, this yarn marks the beginning of a new era of yarn development in which we aim to recreate a very important part of our Islands culture and heritage. True yarn for knitting Shetland lace which has played such an important part in Shetland’s knitwear and textile industry. women carding and spinning, Shetland. Photo courtesy Shetland Museum and Archives In 2007 we were approached by the General Manager of the Shetland Amenity Trust, a public body and amongst their responsibilities is to preserve our heritage, culture, and environment. Jimmy Moncrieff, the general manager of the Trust wanted to try and further and develop the one of Shetland most well known crafts - Shetland Lace Knitting. He approached us to see if we could help in developing the main ingredient - the lace 'wirsit' (yarn) used by our predecessors. This product aims to replicate the traditional worsted effect of hand spun Shetland Yarn on a more commercial scale. In order to replicate this intricate yarn, we started by grading and sorting the finest fleece as we have always done - by hand, making sure there was no guard hair in the blend. We has to ensure the fleece had all the characteristics required: a superb handle (softness), strength, fibre fineness and uniformity of quality. The next task was to source a worsted spinner, who were very scarce in present times. When we settled on a spinner in West Yorkshire the next task was to produce a similar yarn to the original hand spun. With the help of local experienced knitters Mary Kay and Mary Eunson of Lerwick alongside one of Myrna Stahmanns groups at a knitting retreat in the USA settled at 16s worsted count for the single 1ply and 2/16s for the 2 ply. Worsted spun yarns differ from Woollen spun (1ply Cobweb and 2ply Lace are Woollen spun) in that the fibres are combed rather than carded. This process aligns the fibres but also removes short and coarse hairs as well as any vegetable matter left in the fibres. This process creates a yarn which is extremely strong but also soft as the fibres are quite aligned and not sticking out (these tiny fibres are what makes wool 'itch') What makes this yarn so perfect for lace is that the worsted spinning process makes a yarn which has very good drape. The 1ply Shetland Supreme is available in 6 shades, Optic White, Natural White, Fawn, Moorit, Grey and Black. The Optic White is a lovely bright white which makes it perfect for traditional lace items like veils, shawls and scaves. The 2ply Supreme is currently only available in the 5 natural Shades, as we explained in our last post this helps strengthen and further the Coloured Shetland clip, by offering the natural colours in more than one weight of yarn this means it can be used in lots of different ways and the strength of the yarn means it can be knitted on a knitting machine at different gauges and be used in weaving. You might wonder why we keep the 1ply Cobweb as well as the Shetland Supreme but we feel they both have something to offer depending on what you are looking for from your 1ply lace yarn. For more information about the cobweb see here. The Woollen Spun nature of the Cobweb makes for a crisper, more cotton like feel whereas the Supreme has more of a halo and drape. It is confusing we know, but we are always able to help you make a decision. We are very proud of the Shetland Supreme Lace Yarns and we hope you like them too, you can see them on our online shop here Til next time, happy knitting!
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