But Shandy, could you see Muckle Flugga through the mist and rain?

On the last full day of the Wool Adventure, we started off with another workshop with Donna Smith, this time to learn the construction of a simple hap. I finished the knitting of it – it’s in the upper right-hand corner of the suitcase above.

It started with a lace edging which we had prepared as homework. Stitches were picked up from the flat edge; four trapezoidal borders knit separately; then a central garter stitch square. We kept being told all week how economical Shetland knitters are – purling and sewing avoided at all costs. But this construction means that all four corners must be sewn. The task can be reduced by knitting two borders at once, and then the other two – leaving only two open corners. That’s the way Madeline Weston does it in “The Traditional Sweater Book” – the first hap I ever knit. Is the book called something else in the US?

If I ever knit another hap again, I’ll knit all four borders at once, with a wrap-and-turn at the end. Whether or not they approve in Lerwick.

After lunch we were bussed down to the southernmost point of mainland Shetland for some fresh air and scenery, then to Neilanell’s studio. She is an eccentric former barrister (and I’m pretty sure she used that word, although the appropriate term in Scotland is “advocate”) who now designs extravagant and unusual knitwear which is produced for her in a small manufactory nearby.

Then on to a class on Fair Isle colours with Terri Malcolmson. There had been advance homework for that one, too – ten rounds of ribbing in a harmless colour which would blend with anything else we chose. I did mine in grey; it’s in the upper left-hand corner of the suitcase. But I decided to abandon it altogether. I started again in the class, and did ten rounds of corrugated ribbing. That’s the sample just below the grey one, in the picture above.

One thing I have certainly learned from the Adventure is to bring very short circular needles, if I am ever involved in such a situation again. I don’t like them; they hurt my wrists. But dp’s around a small circumference are intolerable.

It was here that I succumbed to my most foolish and extravagant purchase. I love it:

It’s not even a kit, just a selection of harmonious yarns. I can’t imagine what I’ll do with it.  It’s in the picture at the top, under everything else.

Cats

Things are somewhat better. They’re no longer shouting obscenities at each other. But they’re still not eating properly, and Perdita is still skulking in corners.