Voe Show 2019

Hello everyone! this past weekend saw the first of this summers agricultural shows here in Shetland and it was the Voe Show, I (Ella) headed up to judge the Colourbox Competition – this is something we do every year with some of the shows, we choose a selection of 8 shades of 2ply jumper weight and then people make things using at least 5 of the 8 shades. This years shades were: 5, FC44, 16, FC46, 32, 23, 91 and FC47

As always the standard was extremely high and it was very hard to judge, its amazing how much the way the colours look changes depending on how they have been put together. I took lots of pictures at the show so here are some of the Colourbox entries:

You have to choose a trophy winner from all the firsts and I chose this allover, I loved the corrugated rib collar and cuffs and thought the colour use and pattern were really excellent: The rest of the knitwear entries contained a huge variety of different styles from Fair Isle and Lace and everything in between – you always see amazing uses of colour, design and finishing. After I had finished in the hall with the knitwear I had a wander around the rest of the Show – the sun had come out and it was a lovely day. Apart from knitting, there is all the sheep, cows, horses and ponies, baking, plants, wool, hens, ducks etc etc.. there are also lots of places to get food, ice cream and stall selling things so it’s easy to spend a lot of time (and some money!) I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at some of the things to be seen at this year’s Voe Show, Sandra will be judging at Waas and Cunningsburgh in the next week so keep an eye on our Instagram for some pics from those shows, happy knitting!

Voe Show 2018

Hello everyone, this past Saturday saw our annual visit to the Voe Show – the first agricultural show of the year in Shetland. I (Ella) headed up to judge the Colourbox Competition. Every year we choose a selection of 8 shades of Jumper Weight which are used by people in a category on its own in the knitwear section of the show. The entrants must use at least 5 of the 8 colours – this year the shades were: 3, 53, 66, 72, 87, 366, fc37 and FC56.

The allover on the left was the Trophy winner for this year.

It is always very difficult to choose the winners as the standard is extremely high but I was really pleased with the entries. This is the Show where I have the most time so I helped the other ladies with laying out the rest of the knitwear and as a judge I got to help with choosing the trophy winners. There is everything from lace, handspun and machine knitting to yokes, all overs and hats.

This 1ply Shawl by Kathleen Anderson won lots of prizes – very well deserved! It was beautiful.

I then spent the rest of my time at the show looking at all the other entries. At Voe there are Cows, Sheep, Horses, Chickens, Ducks, Goats, Dogs… the list goes on.

The sheep are probably my favourite as the amount and variety of breeds is always so interesting but I also like to have a look at the flowers and vegetables too…

I didnt get any photos of the baking or other handicrafts but I can assure you it all looked great too! The rain came on just as I was leaving but I had a great day at the Voe Show, this week sees Cunningsburgh on Wednesday and Waas on Saturday so we will be back with more photos from those shows too, happy knitting!

Walls Show 2017

Hello everyone, happy Friday! I’m back with the final installment of our trips to the Shows – this time the Walls Show – there are others which we wont make it to but these are the three which have the Colourbox in it so we always go! Last Saturday was not too bad a day weatherwise, there were a couple of showers while we were there (you can see some offending clouds above!) so me and Sandra had a fine drive out to Waas.

Me and Sandra judged the Colourbox and the most of the knitwear at the show, this is only the second year we have done the Colourbox at Waas so it is still small but growing so we were pleased to see the entries, there was a good amount of entries in the other knitting so we had our work cut out for us.

There were lots of amazing Fair Isle and Lace to be seen..

Again once we had done our judging thing we went for a look around at all the animals and other entries..

This was a very friendly kitten in the pets section..i think Sandra would have taken it home if she could!

And then we also made friends with the Goats (there is another version of this photo in the Shetland Times today – just know I set it up and the photographer swooped in!!)

I really enjoying going to the different shows and seeing whats similar but also different about them all. We were quite lucky with the weather this year but for our judging we are always inside so its fine for us! I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos from the shows, we have already chosen the colours for next years Colourbox and people have been buying them already so it bodes well for next years entries. Happy Knitting!

PS>> Have you started your Bousta Beanie yet? We are 5 days in our KAL and lots are on the needles on Ravelry already!

Cunningsburgh Show 2017

Following on from Voe, last Wednesday was a bit brighter and Oliver and Me (Ella) headed down to Cunningsburgh for the Show, I was judging the Colourbox again alongside some other knitwear and Oliver was Judging the Wool.

I was put to work and worked my way through the Colourbox and other categories, there were some beautiful items in the Colourbox as always and the rest of the knitwear was of an extremely high quality too. The tropy winner for the Colourbox was the vest in the first picture, I loved the way the colours were put together and it was beatifully knitted. You can see above they also had a Bousta Beanie section!

The Wool is usually in another shed/tent but this year it was in the same shed as me so I was able to keep and eye on Oliver and his judging and after he was finished we started to make our way around all the other bits of the show.

There was a bit of a surprise arrival as you can see in the photo below!

This sheep obviously was trying to get on Oliver’s good side…

and this duck was interested in making friends too!

We had a great time as we always do at the Cunningsburgh show, the Colourbox is growing every year and I love to see all the animals. Cunningsburgh Show allows entries from the whole of Shetland whereas the others are all more area specific so there is always lots to see, it had 2841 entries in total this year!

Ill be back at the end of the week with our last show trip – to Waas, Happy Knitting!

Voe Show 2017

hello everyone, happy Monday! We have had a busy time of Shows this past week or so, I thought I’d begin with the first one we went to last Saturday which was Voe! it dawned a bit damp but we are pretty used to that around here..

The main reason I (Ella) headed us was to judge the Colourbox Competition we now host every year with the Voe, Cunningsburgh and Waas Agricultural Shows. Each year we choose a selection of 8 colours which must be used to make something using at least 5 of the 8 colours. This this then broken down into categories within that. Voe has the most entries and they have lots of categories for the Colourbox, this years shades were selected from the Heritage yarn so it was really interesting to see what people made with the more traditional colours.

You have to choose an overall trophy for the Colourbox and the cardigan below was the winner, it was beautifully made and I thought the colours were expertly put together..

The Voe Show has lots of other lovely knitwear on display, from Lace to Fair Isle with everything in between. I always love to see all the skills we have in Shetland and its so inspiring to see it all together.

After I had done my judging I went around and looked at everything else, they’re is so much to see from animals to flowers and you can spend hours wandering around.. quite happily I add!

I hope you enjoyed this peerie peek into this years Voe Show, I’ll be back in a couple of days with the round up from the Cunningsburgh Show, happy knitting!

Waas Show

Hello! last Saturday dawned a bit damper as me (Ella) and Sandra headed out to Waas for the Walls Show.

Spirits were not dampended however and we soon got to work (after a cup of tea and a bacon roll!) judging the colourbox. This is our first year having the colourbox at Walls so there wasn’t too many entries but next year I’m sure there will be more!

As with all shows in Shetland there were plenty of animals to be seen..

and lovely knitwear..

We weren’t able to stay until everything was fully set up but I’m glad we got a few pictures! Thankfully it dried up and the rest of the day was much better than the morning.  We were amazed on the way back to town how lovely the heather is at the moment in Shetland..

You can see why we have so many heathery shades in our Jumper Weight range (FC55, FC56. FC14, 87, 133 to name a few!) FC11 and FC12 are good matches for the grass too!

There are a few more shows still to come (Yell and Unst) but we probably won’t make it to those so I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip around the mainland Shetland Shows!

Happy Knitting 🙂 xx

Cunningsburgh Show

Our tour of the Shows continued this week and we headed to Cunningsburgh on Wednesday. It was a lovely day, the only one of the week so it was great to be out!

Again I was judging the Colourbox Competition and Oliver the Wool so we headed to our respective huts to get judging..

After I’d done my bit I went to see how Oliver was getting on with the raw wool

As it was such a nice day we had a good wander round and looked at some of the Sheep..

and I was amazed at the amount of dogs..

Before heading back to the Knitwear to see the finished displays, as always the skill and amount of Knitwear entered was brilliant and it was very hard to judge the Colourbox, I did a few of the other category’s too but the I’m sure the other knitwear judges would agree the standard was very high!

As we had a tour in the afternoon we headed back to town so we didn’t get a look at everything but just like the Voe Show there were Cows, Poultry, Horses, Vegetables.. lots of things to see!

The Walls Show is this weekend so after that Ill have another post to round up the J&S tour of the Country Shows!

Happy Knitting!

Sometimes here in Shetland its easy to forget how far-reaching our yarns can be. As you probably know, every year we take place in the Colourbox challenge with local agriculture shows, see posts here and here.

Well our friend Mary Jane Mucklestone was teaching at Vogue Knitting Live last week and she had the idea to try a mini colourbox challange with her students, so using this years colours, the students set about knitting their own Fair Isle using the colourbox shades

They were very lucky because there were a few Shetland Ladies kicking about New York last week and noted Shetland Designers Hazel Tindall and Wilma Malcomson were both available to judge the entries, just like we do here!

After some deliberation (by the looks of it!) Hazel and Wilma chose their winners..

So congratulations ladies! We would have loved to have been there and seen J&S in the wild in New York

Happy Knitting!

Cunningsburgh Show 2015

On Wednesday Me (Ella) and Oliver headed down to Cunningsburgh in the South End of Shetland for the annual Show, Oliver was Judging the Wool, and I was judging the Colourbox Competition we hold each year with some of the shows.

When we arrived we had a peerie look around and then headed into the tent where the Wool Judging was to take place and Oliver begin judging the wool people had entered into the show.

Beginning in the late 1980’s they developed a Judging sheet for the wool, there are 5 or 6 categories which Oliver Judges each fleece against and gives them a mark out of a set amount. This is beneficial as it gives the entrants some explanation as to where they placed and how it can be improved for another year.

 

As well as the trophy fleece seen above, Oliver also judges a few other categories such a most commercially saleable fleece, which may be different to the best fleece!

While Oliver was doing the most of his judging (I took these photos at the beginning and end of his part) I headed over to the shed where the knitwear and crafts were

For the best few years we have done a competition with the rural shows where we chose a group of 8 shades of 2ply Jumper Weight to be used in Fair Isle knitting, the entrants then must knit an item using at least 5 of these shades. It has its own category and that’s what I was there to Judge!

The entries as ever were extremely strong and it’s always great to see how people have put the colours together, some colour selections are more popular than other years but as always we like it to be a challenge!

Unfortunately due to poor weather the Voe Show was cancelled this year, very kindly the Cunningsburgh Show committee decided along with the Voe Committee to show the Voe entries also so I Judged that too, there are always some extremely beautiful pieces of knitting in the Voe Show so I am really happy they were able to be in the Cunningsburgh Show!

Of course alongside the Colourbox Challange there is a huge amount of knitwear entered into the showFrom Lace to Fair Isle there was a huge range of items to be seen

The fineness and skill in knitting Shetland Lace never ceases to amaze me and I was happy to see a few of our patterns knitted up, I spotted a Sheelagh and a Gibbie Shawl.

Understandably the knitwear was very busy with people coming to see how they and their friends had fared as well as just coming to see the skills on show.

Of course as it was a rural show there were lots of animals there too, obviously we spent a fair amount of time looking at all the sheep!

But as well as the sheep there were dogs, cattle, horses, ponies and poultry to name a few!

It was a very busy but great morning, as judges we were also treated to a lovely dinner at the hall! Of course I always have my eye out for nice knitwear..

I hope you enjoyed this peek into the Cunningsburgh Show! Til next time, Happy Knitting!

PS. remember there is still time to vote for Jamieson & Smith in the Best Brand for British Yarn category in the British Knitting Awards, if you like what we do at J&S you can vote for us here

The Cunningsburgh Show

    

A mammoth photo post of the Cunningsburgh Show this Wednesday. 

1.Entrance to the Wool tent  2, 3, 4.Oliver’s fleece judging skills put to the test again 5, 6, 7. Some prize winning Shetland Sheep 8. Charlie Simpson and a herring feast 9. Cool footgear and a woolly dog 10, 11. More beautiful Shetland Sheep posing for the camera 12. Tractor love 13, 14. Elizabeth Johnson of Shetland Handspun’s beautiful things 15 and 16. Yummy wool in the sun (which decided to make an appearance after weeks of grey, woop woop). 

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