Home of BOO! Naptown Purls and The Village

My students’ willingness to experiment and try new things was contagious and I found the courage to transition from traditional sculptural techniques and materials to fiber. My love of engineering structural pieces from metal was transferred to knit garments. I decided to learn how to create historical knits after seeing a shawl pattern on a now defunct website called Craftsy. I discovered it was a traditional garment originally worn by women in the Shetland Islands, and was intrigued that I could learn how to make something people had been wearing for hundreds of years. I started a deep dive on the web, trying to find out where I could get yarn for this project, and what I discovered was really amazing.

First, yarn from the sheep that originally inhabited Shetland is still available.

Second, the history of hand knitting is intense. In Europe, knitting of all kinds was a cottage industry for hundreds of years, and women either bartered their knit objects for goods, or were paid tiny wages to produce wool items that were sold in cities. Stockings, undergarments, hats, shawls, and sweaters were a necessity for people who spent a lot of time outside and didn’t have central heating inside. Not all wool or knitwear was created equal, and different areas gained renown for the quality and softness of their wool and the fineness of the designs being produced.

Shetland and the neighboring Fair Isle islands was an area with a reputation for fine wool and amazing knitting techniques, and things like colorful Fair Isle patterns and intricate lace shawls were the local specialties that ended up all over Europe and eventually, the world. The Shetland hap shawl I found on Craftsy was a struggle for me knit, and I was amazed to learn not that long ago, girls as young as five learned to knit by making this exact garment. This was preparation for knitting lace shawls so fine they could be pulled through a wedding ring, prized possessions of wealthy women and royalty throughout Europe.

The people who knit these garments were tenant farmers on small landholdings called crofts, where subsistence farming and fishing were practiced. The knitwear produced was a much needed supplement to family income, and they had to find time to produce these luxurious items while also taking care of farm and family. As a point of reference, these islands are located in the North Sea, near the Arctic Circle. In Shetland, the shawls were sold or traded to the farm’s landlord for food not grown on the Islands (flour!), fabric for clothing, and tea. Left over yarn from shawl knitting was held double and used for sweaters, hats, gloves, and stockings decorated with an all over pattern, and they were never for sale, they were gifts for loved ones.

Third, the farmers and their families had little control of their lives. They spoke Gaelic, not English, and suffered a great deal of discrimination because of this fact. Many were tenant farmers, they could lose their land and their livelihood at the landowners whim. This article about the Highland Land Clearances is a great explanation of an important historical forced emigration event.

Finally, I learned before the 20th century, the patterns for lace shawls and Fair Isle garments weren’t often written down, they were taught generationally through families, and shared with friends. Some of these patterns had songs attached to them, and women and girls would sing songs while they were knitting as a mnemonic device. This makes sense to me because they spoke Gaelic, not English, and consequently, many were illiterate because of the discrimination they faced at the hands of their British landlords.

This research opened my mind and my life. I discovered more than yarn, shawls and garments, I discovered a fundamental truth that changed my core–creativity and beauty transcends time, culture, and social situations. Creating beauty through life’s disasters is what creates culture. It’s one thing to know this intellectually, and another to witness it happening in real time, and feel it through my being. My students, graffiti artists, generations of hand knitters and myself have a lot in common–we make beautiful things because of difficult circumstances.

All of these things resonated with me in a personal, familial way, and it resonated with the current lives of my students. I think about contemporary graffiti and the music and culture connected to it and can’t help but see correlations–the only thing separating us is time, and seriously, what’s time anyway? It’s a cultural construct; everything is connected whether we see it or not.

Below is the image of my traditional Shetland Hap Shawl in progress, with coloring sheets I made on Adobe Capture from the word “boo”, inspired by my time teaching young artists in South Indy.