My Connection to Shetland Wool
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November 2024.
I was driving my mum home from hospital. She had just been told by her consultant in no uncertain terms to get her affairs in order, she had weeks to live. So I had to have the awkward conversation about what she wanted to happen after she died. Where did she want to be buried?
She said, Shetland. I said, riiiiiight, OK, so do you mind being cremated then? She said and I quote “no way, I will come back to haunt you if you cremate me”.
So, she died only two weeks later and we of course, followed through with her wish. Her boat builder cousin found her a plot next to her house. The funeral directors said they would use their “man called Frank” to drive her body up. We handed Mum’s old dog’s ashes to them (the dog’s ashes had been on the bookshelf for a year or so) with instructions to put her in with Mum and we set off on this mad odyssey to bury her.
We had to decide what she would wear in her coffin: a dress she’d had made on Portobello Road, a hand knitted Shetland hap and her brogues. There was some debate about tights or no tights. I didn’t want her to get cold. My sister said “she’s dead!”. Funny what you come out with in these moments.
We took two cars to avoid family fighting and after stopping in Yorkshire, took the overnight ferry from Aberdeen. When we got off the boat in Lerwick we met the local funeral director; a teeny tiny wiry woman who had a a humungous greyhound and two WHOPPING great big sons. A family run business. We discussed the order of service. Made sure she knew about the dog and Frank’s arrival and carried on. I still wonder about that woman. It reminded me of something out of a film. Like she was some sort of mafia matriarch.
My Mum had bought a tiny croft house on a Shetland island, having spent many summers there. Another cousin had traced family roots to that island and had insisted on a trip. She went along reluctantly but after that she was hooked. We didn’t get it. It was SO far and so remote, what was the pull? She said she hadn’t felt at home like that anywhere else. She was planning her, presumably, fairly permanent relocation when she was diagnosed with cancer. It was one of the most upsetting things about her diagnosis, her disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to fulfil her Shetland plans.
Though we had always knitted and worn wool, this is how I came to know about Shetland wool. I would visit Mum up there in the summer and mostly just read, go for slow walks on beaches and watch mum grapple with various knitting projects. I still didn’t really get it. It was too far, the journey was ridiculous. But it was peaceful.
In the years after her death I bought antique maps of Shetland to hang on the wall which made me feel, when I looked at them, that I knew where she was. It is comforting to know she is in the soil there, with her dog.
Anyway. The wool, is world famous. They have a wool week in Shetland, loads of wool tourism and the mill I get my Shetland wool from is grown, cleaned, spun and dyed all in one place. The mill say the wool is waterproof and wind proof because of the climate it is grown in (wet and windy).
It was my first choice of wool when I started making jumpers simply because I knew where to get it from 😂 but since then I have tried out other wool. There seems to be a trend in fashion at the moment towards Blue Faced Leicester wool, this breed traditionally produces very fine wool. I love the look of the sheep and you do find them in sheltered parts of Cornwall, they look a bit like rabbits with their big ears, but I find the wool a bit like hair, rather than wool.
So that is how I came to start using Shetland wool. I am not a knitting fanatic. I have always been more interested in sheep than knitting but the Shetland connection I suppose is a bit sentimental. And now I am convinced (just like many knitting fanatics are) that it is really the best wool.