What's Hap?

As part of my longstanding appreciation for Shetland knitting, I have attempted to make a hap with DK weight yarn that I purchased from Bee Croft, the online shop of a crofter on Fair Isle. Having followed barkland_croft on Instagram for the last few years, and meeting the crofter, Rachel, at a knitting group in Lerwick in 2019,  I was delighted to learn that she is producing yarn from her Shetland sheep flock and did not hesitate to order a skein of each solid color (Barnacle, Butterscotch, and Busby) as soon as it was available.  After about a month of wool huffing, fretting about my inability to keep Old Shale on track (please don't look closely), and wondering if I would have enough yarn to finish the lace edging, a hap emerged. 

The challenge in designing the hap was to make sure I would be able to use as much of the yarn as possible on each layer.  I initially mapped the pattern out on graph paper and aimed to have equal amounts of area for each color, but lace has a mind of its own, and I had to use my best judgement as the hap grew. 

All that's left of my skeins of Busby, Butterscotch, and Barnacle.

It is only appropriate that this hap will get used regularly.  That's what I find so appealing about this Shetland lace tradition: it's EVERYDAY lace.

 

Color blending update

I got busy with swatching after the Shetland Wool Week workshop with Tracey Doxey.  A follow-up workshop is scheduled this weekend, and these are some images of the swatches and projects I completed since the first workshop to show at this next meeting.  

I finished the first hat, and it has now reached its recipient.  Just in time for our daytime temperatures to get back to 70 degrees!

I made a second swatch using another combination of neutral and botanically-inspired colors.

This did not get translated into a hat, yet.  I was not happy with the swatch, but when I showed it to the Camel Knitters they were all impressed.  Which of the three combos do you like best?

I opted instead to go back to my Lerwick Flower Park design and used some of the same neutrals and greens for that.  Both the swatch and the hat are made with Uradale wool from Shetland. 

There's a third swatch:

Which I used as inspiration for this hat:

Since I finished these items, I've been focused on using my Bee Croft acquisition of three skeins of DK weight in natural colors which are named after some of the sheep: Barnacle, Butterscotch, and Busby.

From top to bottom: Broken Acre in Barnacle, Old Shale in Butterscotch, and Vandyke Lace in Busby.  

It's a massive project that I hope will serve as a hap when it's done.  It's so big now that I can't conceal it under the computer camera and it won't fit into my school bag, so I've had to use other knitting for all those Zoom meetings!  Making lace in DK weight yarn is a bit unconventional, but I expect that it will look much better when it's blocked.  I only swatched the center pattern, and it looks great, so let's hope blocking does its magic on the other sections, too.

I hope that your knitting projects are going well and keeping you happy!