FO: Elizabeth Shawl from North Ronaldsay Sheep

I have probably noted before that sometimes yarn must sit in stash for a while before it tells you what it needs to be. Such was the case with this yarn purchased on North Ronaldsay. It was sheared from North Ronaldsay sheep ON North Ronaldsay. The yarn was also processed and spun on North Ronaldsay.  The sheep are special and supposedly their wool is soft because they eat seaweed.


 I went to Scotland 10 years ago...I've been waiting THAT LONG for this yarn to tell me what it wanted to be.  It has been cast on and then frogged for perhaps 5 projects before this one.

North Ronaldsay is one of the islands in Shetland.  We took a day trip there during the tour, taking a small plane from Lerwick. The pilot looked a bit like Clooney.

When I buy a yarn from a different country, I want the yarn to speak to me, and either the yarn or I express the need for it to be something related to that locale.

I ran into Dee O'Keefe's Elizabeth Shawl a while back. I actually first tried this yarn in Dee's Elizabeth Wrap, but it didn't seem right. (A triangular shawl, while not traditional, always seems right.) The shawl has traditional Scottish lace patterns.

The yarn is soft and has the usual nice wooly spring to work with. I started it before a trip to England in May. Perhaps I was inspired because I was with the same tour guide as on the Scotland trip!

The yarn is a two ply fingering weight with a gauge of 4 sts per inch. I love this shawl.

Old Shale

I hope my readership isn't getting tired of reading about Scotland, because I'm not tired of writing about it... When in Orkney, I bought, as I have mentioned prior, hand dyed bumps, in both North Ronaldsay and Shetland wool, dyed by Pam Murray.  I spun up the North Ronaldsay in what I could create as a laceweight, with I hope not too short runs of color. 

Pooling of color in knitting variegated yarns is an interesting phenomenon that  I don't  understand it, and I don't really like it, so it's just a chance I take in case it does...

I am not big on combining a variegated color yarn with a complex lace pattern.  I chose to do Evelyn A. Clark's Old Shale Lace Shawl.  It's a garter shawl with old shale lace at the bottom, probably with origins as a working woman's shawl.  It's not a shawl that I would  buy yarn to knit, rather, it speaks to me as what this yarn that I've created needs. It also seems appropriate to the Scottish origin of my fiber. (Plus, I'm trying to graph a shawl that I designed, which incorporates old shale, and this project is helping me on my learning curve to understand how to manipulate and chart the old shale lace.)

Old shale is an interesting lace pattern.  It involves the right leaning knit 2 together (K2) with the left leaning slip slip knit (SSK).  Here's a graph snippet

o

o

o

o

o

o

\

\

\

/

/

/

 

E.g., from right to left K 2 tog 3 times, SSK 3 times, yo, k1 yo 3 times.  One could do more k2 tog/ssk/yo's to make wider border repeats.

For most of my life, I've been a slob, and anytime I needed to knit two stitches together, I knit 2 together thru the back loops (K2 tog TBL), just because it's easy and fast.  I am trying to rehabilitate myself from this sloppy habit, pay attention, and take a little more time.  With old shale, this is important to get the stitches leaning the correct way in to the yarn overs.

I often lose or gain stitches with this lace and I don't often frog back to fix it (yeah sloppy here too, but I can get lost in the frogging), but if I get lost, I look for the center stitch in the yarn over section, shown here with the top yellow headed pin, to reorient myself:

This center stitch goes straight up which makes it easy to find.

Evelyn says that this is a good beginner lace pattern;  I'm not so sure.  A novice knitter friend of mine tried it and gave up.  I find it can be difficult.

FYI, Liz Lovick does a very nice job of explicating old shale versus fan and feather at her blog, here.  Liz says that "old shale" is really "old shell" but acquired the name "shale" as that's how Shetlander's pronounce it.  So now you can pronounce "shell" like a Shetlander.  And you can add "peerie" with a rolled "r" and say "little shell"  "peerie shale"!  (OK, OK it's an in-joke).

British Sheep Breeds, Wool Week, Hap Shawl Update

About a  year ago, I noticed in one of my LYS that Rowan was producing a line called "British Sheep Breeds."  Coincidently, in the last three years or so, I am interested in the wool that come from specific breeds of sheep, and their qualities.  This may be a result of starting to spin and produce my own yarn.  I spin from roving that I purchase (no, I don't yet work from fleece, maybe that will happen when I retire and have put my two sons through college...and have lots of time).

Rowan has three products in their line:

DK Undyed which is Bluefaced Leicester
Chunky Boucle which is Bluefaced Leicester (available only in natural ecru)
Chunky Undyed in varying natural shades, including Bluefaced Leicester, Shetland, Black Welsh, Jacob, and Grey Suffolk

I have not used any of these, only fondled them!  I am considering the BFL Chunky for my next Rogue

However,  I'm also interested in the local produce/products concept, and am very interested in less emphasis on production and more on sustainability.

I'm also interested in what might be considered somewhat less, uh, overproduced? Not that I don't like a Debbie Bliss purchase, and honestly, at this point, I  still like knitting a sweater out of a commercially produced yarn from a carefully blended and produced fiber, that is a little more predictable than my handspun.

Issue 23 of The Knitter features an article on   Britain's sheep breeds entitled "The Return of the Native."  Because the price of wool is so low, farmers cannot afford to maintain wool flocks for fiber, rather, they are focusing on meat production.  Indeed, non wool bearing sheep breeds are being developed!!

To maintain the traditional wool breeds, Prince Charles launched the Campaign for Wool this year. Ironically, wool week is commencing as I write this (not planned)...wool week has many relevant activities in case you live in the UK or are lucky enough to be visiting this week!

The article has a shortlist of British sheep breeds, of which there are more than 60, as well as a list of producers of yarns made from these breeds.  I don't know how many of these are raised in the US.

In my travels last year to Scotland, I encountered several of these breeds.  I was lucky to travel in a very small plane to North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island in Orkney.

Here's the extremely small aircraft, with an ad for Highland single malt scotch (don't know which one, there are lots) on the side:

That is my dear friend Debbie from Ohio on the right.  Here is a photo of our pilot, whose anterior view  bore a very strong resemblance to Clooney.  Naturally, we assumed that he was not partaking of Highland single malt or any other, single, blended, or otherwise, while reading the safety instructions (which he did with Clooney's grace and je ne sais quoi {well, I do but can't quite express it in English or French}) and subsequently while flying.  Actually he was better than Clooney, as he had a lovely Scots (NOT Glaswegian) accent.  (If you're from Glasgow, sorry about that...). That said, I wouldn't have minded meeting him in the bar while drinking some sort of something...perhaps single malt, which is a big stretch for me...I would even have put my bar knitting aside...

AT ANY RATE we flew to see the seaweed eating North Ronaldsay sheep where they live (Fair Isle was in the distance but you can't see it here):

I purchased North Ronaldsay roving and yarn while there, it's just buttery-soft, supposedly because of the seaweed??  No idea what to do with it (yet):

Pam Murray is the dyer.  The natural color has the North Ronaldsay label.  Amazingly, there is a mill right on this little island, which I hope to blog about in a later post.

I also spied Scottish Blackface sheep while on a bus tour through the Isle of Skye (I thought this was a pretty great photo if I may say so, myself):

Of course, Shetlands were in view in Shetland:

Speaking of Shetland, here's an update on my hap shawl, originally documented here.  I am currently spinning the yarn for this, and I have several shades of the natural Shetland so it will have the authentic stripe-y effect.  I have finally finished the square with the exception of a couple of rows:

and am about to pick up stitches for the fan and feather edging.  It's taken me several years to get this far.  This is the only one in my "free patterns."  Once the edge is done, I will update it.  In the meantime, if you've tried this, keep track of the stitches at either side;  I did not and had to make a wee correction!

Coming up soon...a post on bar knitting.  My friend Jennie from Cheshire denies that it exists, and she would kill me if I did it in her company...