All photos for this trip can be found in our
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 4" tag for photos added this week.
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 4" tag for photos added this week.
Guess what "week" it is... It is...
... and since Kris was pretty tied up in Shetland Wool Week, I, Brian, did all the editing this week so pretty well everything is in my first person tense.
Sunday was a bit of a lazy "see what is around Lerwick" kind of a day. Kris had an afternoon session on "Knitting with Two Colours". After the session, Kris asked me to come into the class and show off my Cowichan sweater (this pic is obviously not from "in the class" but it shows what my sweater looks like)...
Everyone was quite impressed. Sunday evening was the Wool Week opening ceremonies at the Lerwick Leisure Centre so I had scoped out where it was so we wouldn't have to be running around like chickens with our heads cut off later. With only about an hour and a half between the end Kris's session and the opening ceremony, we had to go find a place for some dinner. We settled on the Gurkha Kitchen, a Nepalese and Indian cuisine place where Kris opted for a plate of Kathmandu Chicken and I went whole hog and had the buffet. It was quite tasty and fast so no problem eating and getting across town to the leisure centre with time to spare. The opening ceremony was only a couple of hours so I hung out at the leisure centre, watched some volleyball, some squash games and fiddled around on my iPhone.
Monday morning we tried out the breakfast at the guest house. Nothing to write home about but it was some food. Afterwards we went to the Peerie Shop Cafe for a couple of lattes before Kris' first session of the day "Introduction to Magic Loop Knitting". While she was there I drove around town and took a few pics...
... and in the process learned something new. I did not know that there was a fair amount of warfare in these parts during the American Revolution (expand the pic to see the writing better)...
For the afternoon, Kris had signed up for a tour of the Jamieson Wool Mill out in Sandness, so I decided to do a road trip to the far north of the main island. My route for the afternoon, starting and ending in Lerwick...
... about 120 miles and took about 4 hours. I had hoped to get out to the far north west (Hillswick) and far north (North Roe) coasts but in both cases the roads ended at a locked farmer's gate and since my time would be a bit tight I decided not to try walking the unknown distance across farmer's fields. Typical beautiful Shetland scenery all the way with nary a tree to obstruct the view...
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| Cool vistas over the water to other islands |
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| Lots of single track roads. |
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| Sheep, sheep everywhere |
... where they show the current Anglo-Saxon name and the historic Norse name, with translation. Anyway, not an overly long drive but quite tiring, especially the 8 to 10 miles of single track near Aith that took almost a half hour to traverse. I got back to Lerwick about 10 minutes before the bus returned from Jamieson's. Here's a couple of pics from Kris' visit to the wool mill...
Afterwards we stopped at the Waterfront Bar and Grill in the Shetland Hotel for dinner, a Lamb Chump (similar to Beef Rump) plate for Kris and a Beef and Guiness pie for Brian. Not too bad and quite filling. Then it was back to the guest house where we watched a couple of episodes of Ken Burns very interesting documentary of the Vietnam War.
Tuesday morning we started at the Fjara Cafe for lattes along with egg and sausage sandwich buns. Very tasty. In the morning Kris' session was on "Icelandic Button Banding". While that was on, I did some internet finance stuff then took a drive south to Hoswick, about 12 miles south of Lerwick so we would know where the Hoswick Visitor Centre was prior to the early morning drive down there for Wednesday's Wool Week session. Good thing to do as it was a little hard to find. Back in Lerwick I headed over to the Waterfront Bar and Grill for lunch because I just had to try the "Peanut Butter, Banana and Chocolate Quesadilla"...
... it was quite yummy but it was a tad on the heavy side and I couldn't eat it all. Kris's "Knitting a Hap" session went all afternoon so I took that opportunity to go back to the guest house and have a nap (which I needed after that lunch)!
The morning session turned out to be quite disappointing as most of the time was spent knitting a plain tube (that could have been done beforehand) leaving little time for the real purpose of the session, the "button band". Also the Icelandic wool provided was very scratchy and a dark colour to work on dark needles, whereby Kris ended up with such tired eyes to the point where she had a hard time focusing her vision and had to stop trying in the afternoon session - one of the sessions she really wanted to attend! Very disappointing! Later in the afternoon we went and got some eye drops and headed back to the guest house for a rest. Her eyes feeling quite a bit better, we walked down the hill to the Queens Hotel where we opted for the pub over the restaurant and both had the excellent breaded haddock with chips, along, of course, with some wine and beer. It is a small pub and there are obviously a number of Wool Week knitters staying in the hotel. We had a nice chat with a couple of them.
Wednesday morning we started out at Fjara Cafe again then headed south about 12 miles to the small town of Hoswick and the Hoswick Visitor Centre where Kris attended the all day (10:00am-4:00pm) session on knitting on a knitting machine. After dropping Kris off I continued south about another 12 miles to Jarlshof one of the "most important archaeological sites in the UK"...
Here is a sampling of pics I took with more on our album (week 4) for this trip but likely the best is to go is to their website for more explanations and much better photos...
... a fascinating place. Leaving the site, I drove further south to the Sumburgh Head Lighthouse, where, unfortunately you have to park and walk a fair distance up a rather steep hill to get to the lighthouse. You could drive closer only if you had a "disabled pass". I knew I should have brought mine with me from home! Anyway, the walk did not look like something for bad knees so I passed on that but did get a decent pic of the shoreline below the lighthouse; beautiful place...
Late morning I drove the 25 miles back to Lerwick for some lunch then attended one of the Wool Week freebies, a demonstration on sorting and grading wool put on by Oliver Henry at the Jamieson and Smith Wool Brokers shop in Lerwick. Oliver has been the main "Wool Man" at Jamieson and Smith for over 50 years!...
... Very interesting! During his talk, Oliver referred numerous times to "the nutters". It wasn't until later in the week, after Kris had figured out some of the local dialect that we realized he was referring to "the knitters"!!! Then it was back out to Hoswick to collect Kris and head back into town for a rest at the guest house before walking down to the Queens Hotel pub for another excellent breaded Haddock dinner for Kris and a good Chicken in mushroom sauce for me. Yes there was wine and beer involved as well.
Thursday, Kris had another all day session, "British Fisherman's Knits" at the Isleburgh Community Centre in Lerwick. I took advantage of the excellent wi-fi at the community centre to work on this blog and do some other internet carousing for a bit. I had intended to take the ferry over to Bressay and drive around the island but the wind was blowing so hard and everything was socked in with the clouds that there really would be nothing to see. So after driving around a bit I went back to the Community Centre, had a huge plate of mac and cheese for lunch, had a nice long chat with a woman from Portland, Oregon then went back to the guest house for a wee nap (this could get habit forming) before returning to pick up Kris. By around 6:30 pm the rain had abated somewhat so we bundled up and walked down the hill to the Queens Hotel pub for another excellent dinner, this time Kris had the scallops and I had the haddock and chips (again). While there we had another nice chat with fellow knitters, a couple of women from the Boston area. Pretty nice evening all in all, although walking back up the hill into the wind was a bit of a slog!
Friday was a bit of a sleep in day for Kris as she didn't have a Wool Week session until 6:30pm. Mid morning we headed over to Fjara for our now normal Shetland breakfast of egg and sausage on a bun along with a latte. We are such creatures of habit that the staff there now know what we are going to order when we walk in. On an empty table was a copy of today's Scotland Times. Kris picked it up and after a brief moment laughed and said "look I made the front page"...
... and sure enough, they had picked a photo of two knitters (nutters), one of whom was Kris, for their front page reference to this edition's Wool Week articles.
After breakfast we drove over to the town centre, paid for all day parking, and wandered along Commercial Street looking in numerous shops, including a couple of yarn shops where Kris picked up some more knitting needles, these being types that are not typically found at home. Early afternoon we returned to the car and drove over to the Shetland Museum and Archives where the Wool Week "hub" is located. We hung out there for a couple of hours chatting with other knitters. Late afternoon we headed back towards the centre, parked the car in the same lot (since we had paid for all day parking) and went into the Peerie Shop Cafe where we each had a bowl of "parsnip, apple and ginger soup" and split a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel. This was sort of a late lunch/early dinner as we soon had to head out to Hoswick for the evening for Kris's session "Finishing" which ran from 6:30 to 9:30pm at the visitors centre. Not much to do out there so I hung out in the visitors centre and watched a bunch of watercolour how-to videos on our computer. Not too much of a bugger driving back to Lerwick in the dark :-)
Saturday was the last day for Wool Week and our penultimate full day in Shetland. After breakfast (yes at Fjara) I dropped Kris off at the Isleburgh Community Centre "Makers Market" where vendors associated with Wool Week, and some not associated, had a chance to make some sales before the Wool Week hoards vanished from the island. I went for a drive around Lerwick. Kris can tell about the Makers Market experience in her own words...
When we arrived at the hall the Makers' Market had not yet opened and there was quite a lineup of obsessive knitting shoppers waiting to go in. Let it be said that knitters can be a fairly competitive lot when it comes to the acquisition of knitting related items. When the door opened the line moved in but there was no one on the door to monitor whether it was safe or reasonable for more people to enter. Within minutes it was about as crowded as the subway at rush hour and more people were pushing in. At one point someone pushed me from behind and I almost fell over a table. The table moved back a bit and would have pushed the vendor lady back with it. At this point I said to myself, 'let's get what I want and get the heck out of here before someone (notably Kris) gets crushed.
I picked up a beautiful cowl...
... made by Elaine Nicolson, a local Shetland designer, and got the hell out of there! The cowl is machine knitted (a real art form in Shetland) from scanned images of traditional Shetland lace so it is a combination of traditional knitting and modern design.
After I picked Kris up, we decided it being such a nice day that we should go to Bressay, so we headed for the ferry terminal where it just so happened that the next ferry was leaving in about 10 minutes. Good timing. The ferry ride takes under 10 minutes, then we were on our way. We drove out to the Noss Nature Reserve which is closed for the season but the views from the bluffs overlooking the island were awesome...
... then we headed for the Bressay Lighthouse, trying not to run over sheep on the road, to more great views...
... before returning to the visitor's centre near the ferry terminal. Very interesting. Then we drove over to the Speldiburn Cafe where there was an exhibit of the garments worn at the fashion show at the Wool Week opening ceremonies, some traditional Fair Isle and lace knitting as well as a young lady with a little pop up shop selling her own machine knitting wares. Then it was time for a tea and munchie in the wee cafe which was actually quite full. We shared a table and had a nice chat with 3 American women; 2 from Michigan and one from Oregon.
Back to the ferry terminal, a brief wait and we were back on the Shetland mainland where we headed for the Shetland Textile Museum...
Then to finish off the day's touring we took a quick drive a bit southwest to Scalloway where we had a walk along the downtown esplanade. Everything was closed by now but the view over the town and castle was pretty cool...
Later in the evening we walked down the hill to the Queens Hotel (again mostly because it is the best place within walking distance) where we had the usual breaded haddock and chips, wine and beer and another nice chat with our friends from Boston. We didn't get their names but maybe one of them will comment on our post, with their names :-) As we were getting ready to leave the pub, Kris mentioned that a new episode of the TV series Shetland was showing a little later. Our friend immediately asked if we had seen "Jimmy Perez's" house. No we had not, so she showed us where it is just behind the hotel. The nighttime pic might not show up very good...
One more full day in Lerwick but all in all, Wool Week and Shetland have been a lot of fun for both of us.
| Back to Week 3 | On to Week 5 |
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