Roadside Beanie

Hello everyone, today is the first day of the Edinburgh Yarn Festival marketplace, Derek and Sandra are there (if you are going we can be found at stand K8) but Oliver is also down because he has been announced at this year’s Shetland Wool Week Patron!

We are very excited of course as Oliver was instrumental in organising the first Shetland Wool Week 10 years ago as J&S founded the event. It has gone from strength to strength every year so for the 10th anniversary, it’s great to see such an important figure in the Shetland Wool Industry as the patron.

Oliver’s design – the Roadside Beanie has been launched today and you can find kits here on the website and the pattern here on the Wool Week website. The design features common motifs for a Shetlander, sheep and fishing boats! To learn more about the Roadside Beanie have a read of the pattern.

We are extremely proud of Oliver and look forward to seeing all the Roadside Beanies this year. Happy Knitting!

Shetland Wool Week 2017 at J&S

Hello everyone! thank you for your response to our last post, we are so pleased with how many of you are picking up the book, the digital PDF version is now online too.

Today i’m back with some photos from Shetland Wool Week, every year that it gets bigger I get less photos but I still got a good selection from what was happening in the shop.. We had classes every weekday alongside some free drop in events and it worked really well. We always have an excellent response to Hazels Fair Isle class..

Fair Isle with Hazel Tindall

knitting, cutting and steek relief!

And Felicity Ford was back again with her inspirational Mitts-a-long, this year everyone left with a full 8 balls of Jumper weight to finish their project started in the class inspired by a group of photos and a colour palette picked by Felix

Mittsalong Class with Felicity Ford (and a fetching neepheid!)

more nice knitwear in Felix’s’ class – a Cruden and Laebrack

We tried to fight the losing battle of keeping shelves filled up (if anyone can do it, its Sandra!) And we had more classes like Drop Spindling..

Drop Spindling with Deborah Gray

And a great evening event which was a trunk show for Jen and Jim Arnal Cullifords new book – A Year of Techniques which features a couple of projects in J&S yarns. It was great to see them again and celebrate the new book!

A Year of Techniques Trunk Show

We loved this hat which features the motif’s from the Baable Hat, Crofthoose and Bousta Beanie!

Felicity and Sandra say cheers to J&S!

We also had a launch event for our new book, and had all the designs on display. It was so good to finally have all the projects out and the book available. yippee!

Friday Morning was a bit quieter which was good as we had a lace class with Elizabeth Johnston, something which needs a bit of concentration I reckon!

Shetland Lace with Elizabeth Johnston

Felicity’s amazing wedding bunting!

Oliver’s last tour of Wool Week

But Friday afternoon was so busy! We had Oliver’s last tour of the week and a trunk show for Felicity’s next book, and everyone seemed to come for a look.. I don’t know how I had time to get the above pictures!

The Hub

After work on Friday I crawled to the museum to visit the Hub and admire the knitwear on display and the merchandise, I love the sweatshirts! (I bought one, of course!)

On Saturday Me, Kharis and Sandra were at the shop but i nipped over to Gremista farm where we were holding an event together with Eric at the farm and Vispring. Unfortuantely the Flock Book event fell outside Wool Week so we decided to have an event with sheep, food and farmers which went down really well and we are already thinking about how to make next year better!

Aah, all in all another successful Wool Week. There is such an amazing range of events on all week and this is just a small slice of what happened at J&S, happy knitting!

Wool Week at J&S

Hello! I’m so sorry we haven’t been able to update you this week of all the happenings at J&S for Shetland Wool Week, I’m afraid it has just been so busy!!! A great problem to have of course, We have just about managed to get some snaps here and there during the week so this post is all about what we had going on in the shop

fair isle knitting with Hazel

lace with Elizabeth Johnston

On Monday we had a Fair Isle Class with Hazel Tindall in the Morning and Shetland Lace with Elizabeth in the Afternoon, we always have these classes and they are always some of the first to sell out, Hazel and Elizabeths years of experience make them excellent teachers!

Drop Spindling with Deborah

On Tuesday Morning we had a Drop Spindle class with Deborah Gray, I always think this looks like a really fun class to do!

Tuesday night we had a trunk show for Monique Boonstra, Monique is a fabulous lace knitter and she had samples of her lovely patterns and knitting

Haps with Gudrun

Wednesday led to more lace knitting, Haps with Gudrun in the Morning and more lace with Elizabeth in the afternoon. Gudruns Hap class is always very popular and she has the students make a mini version of her Hansel hap, it’s very manageable for the length of time of the class and gives everyone a taste of all the elements of this traditional Shetland garment.

This is the only photo I got on Wednesday of Elizabeths second lace class but it looks like they are learning a lot! Elizabeth is always great to have at Wool Week and she teaches lots of classes in Hoswick also.

Of course, we have spent the week spotting crofthoose hats too! It’s great to see all the different colours people have chosen.

Thursday morning had Hazels second Fair Isle class, she had the ladies knit in the round and then steek! Everyone seemed to have a great time and I loved the samples at the end.

Friday morning we had no classes so we got caught up on our post and then in the afternoon Monique Boonstra was back with a class using 1ply Shetland Supreme

Oliver has been doing his tour this week too, and yesterday was the last day of that, he has it down to a fine art and we always get lots of people coming for the tour.

photo by Scott Goudie

Today is the Makers Market and Flock Book and tomorrow is the fabulous Sunday Teas hosted by the Guild so I’ll be back next week with a few photos from that. It’s been a great week and as always we are so proud to be involved in Shetland Wool Week!Save

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Shetland Wool Week booking

Are you ready? The programme and bookings for Shetland Wool Week open today (Tuesday 24th May) at 1pm BST, we have lots of classes again at J&S and cant wait to see everyone, for more information and to book online see here!

Happy Booking!

Crofthoose Hat Kits

So this years Shetland Wool Week pattern has now been out for a month or so, we were out of stock of one of the shades but its now back in (yippee!) so if you would like to knit the J&S colourway of the Crofthoose Hat you can order a kit from our website here

It uses 5 shades of Jumper Weight in the colours seen above, if you order a kit we will include a paper copy of the pattern but you can also download it via the Shetland Wool Week website here

If you would like to knit the hat but dont fancy these shades just leave us a note in the delivery comments box of the shades you would like and we will put them in for you, there are four different colourways in the pattern and lots of projects on Ravelry if you need inspiration!

if you do knit a Crofthoose Hat remember to tag your projects on instagram and ravelry with the #crofthoosehat

Happy Knitting!

wool week monday and tuesday

Hello! I cant believe we are already on Wednesday, things have been nice and busy in J&S so far for Shetland Wool Week! We have been blessed with lovely weather too which makes things feel even better.

On Monday we only had one class in the afternoon, Elizabeth Johnston of Shetland Handspun was in doing her ever popular Shetland Lace class, Elizabeth is a brilliant and calm teacher so before long everyone was planning out and knitting their lace..

On Tuesday morning we had another Fair Isle class with Hazel Tindall

As always it was a great class and soon everyone was knitting their bookmarks

In the afternoon we had a lace class with the brilliant designer Ysolda Teaque, Ysolda always come up to Wool Week so we were so happy to have her first class at J&S

Ysolda shared some of her tips and tricks for planning lace motifs within knitting and everyone then charted out and knit some lace patterns.

You can see from the photos we do all the classes at Wool Week in the shop so these kinds of classes are great. They give people a taste of Shetland style knitting and the chance to take classes with some brilliant designers but they are all about having fun and enjoying the atmosphere of Wool Week in Shetland.

Ill be back soon with more pictures from Jamieson & Smith at Wool Week!

wool week 2015

The shelves are stocked and we are ready for Shetland Wool Week 2015! The event starts today and goes on until next Sunday. We have classes everday in the shop and there will be lots of people in shopping! As it will be so busy there may be delays in us getting back to you and dispatching orders so please bear with us.

If you are here then enjoy Wool Week and if not dont worry we will be blogging  here throughout the week showing what has been happening at Jamieson & Smith!

Til then happy knitting!

Wool Week Monday and Tuesday

So we began Wool Week at J&S with a class from our Wool Week patron Hazel Tindall, Hazel designed a bookmark which involved a bit of Fair Isle and steeking! the perfect small project which everyone made great progress on in the 3 hour class

We even had some finished ones by the end!

In the afternoon we carried on with the Fair Isle with a class on Colour knitting by English designer Mary Henderson, Mary has designed lots of things using our wool and her use of colour is fantastic!

Of course the shop was busy all day with lots of wool being bought so I only took photos when I got a chance!

Today we had another two classes with the US based dreamteam Mary Jane and Gudrun who are both here with a tour group. First off Mary Jane took a class on Fair Isle socks

of course she brought her suitcase of Fair Isle swatches and soon everyone was knitting away!

In the afternoon we had a bit of Lace with Gudrun Johnston, Gudrun who was born in Shetland has a great pattern for a Shetland Hap, she had the knitters make a mini Hap which was a great way to try out all the elements of the shawl

From the initial triangle, old shell pattern and the edging, in the mini-hap the students were able to try out all the things you need to know for a full size Hap!

Today the shop was very busy with knitters buying basketfuls of wool, Me and Sandra were serving all day!

and lots of decisions to be made!

Ill be back with more pictures from Wednesday and Thursday on Thursday night!

Happy Knitting! xx

Wool Week 2014

After a lot of organising, the full programme is now online, you can find it here!

We have a full diary at Jamieson & Smith with classes every weekday and a few trunk shows at night.. as well as Oliver’s daily sorting and grading demonstration. It looks set to be a brilliant week again!

Shetland Box Office Bookings will open on Monday 28th April at 10.00am (BST)

To look back at some of our previous Wool Week Posts, click here

Jamie Smith waiting patiently for the visitors last year!