Design Stories

Inspired by our local eela competition, when you go off in your peerie (small) boats to see who can catch the most fish, the one time I was in the competition I only caught 1 fish and got the boobie prize haha

This design is inspired by my first memory of my dad taking me to the banks ta craigs, we a bamboo wand and feather hook I caught my first sillock (coal fish) I then put the fish in the bucket and filled it with water and seaweed wanting to keep it as a pet, even caught it a few friends until the bucket was to heavy to carry and we had to take them home for tea.

This design is inspired by the wildlife around our shores, seals often pop up to say hello, and if your lucky you might see a pod of orcas. The lighthouse in this design is the Bressay lighthouse.

I love fair isle knit but have not got the patience for making it, so i hand drawn the patterns and print them. Each pattern is my own creation and individual drawing

This design was inspired by a memory of when I was a peerie bairn (small child) going with my aunt to feed her peerie caddy lamb who hated if you got milk on his nose and would go in the dorts (huff) and refuse to drink any more.

This design was inspired by memories of when I was a peerie bairn (small child) going with my family into the hills when they were casting peats and I would play with the dogs and pet the wild Shetland ponies.

Granny's FairIsle This pattern is from the fair isle gansey (jumper) that my granny hand knitted for me when she was in her 90's. I haven't used the original colours from the ganzie but I love the shades she used of blue, white, grey and yellow she wanted to use pink but I was going though a phase of not feeling very girly when she made it but now as a adult I see her choice would have been even nicer. I am the youngest grand bairn of 29 and think I was also the last to get a fair isle handmade jumper while she was still able to see to knit the fair isle patterns. She did knit right up to her passing a few weeks before her 102 birthday

This design was inspired by Shetlands Folk Festival usually on the first weekend of May, always lots of great folk music to keep you entertained all over Shetland all weekend. Shetland fiddle music and dancing has a strong history and culture, it's always very uplifting and lively. 

This design was inspired by the advert Three socks the moonwalking Shetland pony, Socks is a peerie (small) Shetland pony from Shetland who in the advert is dancing to fleet wood Mac. I wanted to recreate the advert with my own design using drawings from my own Shetland pony along with original Shetland fairisle patterns.

This design was influenced by my own Shetland pony 'Donny' I originally did this design for a college project, I reworked the design and added in the fair isle patterns after seeing the photographs of the Shetland Ponies who wore Fair isle Ganzies (jumpers), sadly donny would not let me put a jumper on him, so instead I created this design with him in fair isle patterns.

This design came from my original greeting card collection, the Shetland starlings collection originated from and old colourful photograph of a starling my dad took, along with my love of fair isle patterns I combined the starlings and fair isle to create this unique design.

I designed this floral fair isle pattern as a background pattern for the tirricks diving at the hoab design, however I decided to keep that design in a monochorm and silhoutte style allowing this design to stand out on its own showing shetlands beautiful colourful sunets.

Currently available on my redbubble account 

This design is inspired by the Sunday evenings we spent awer aside da ald folk for wir tuy, granny hed a whistling tyettle (teapot) apon da aga she ay liked stewed tuy. Ald da wid ay sit in but neest ta fire den com troo for his tuy when d ald clock chimed tuytime, I wid aften b made pancakes n Da wid always huy da sayin ‘pancakes and doodly’ i asked him ee day wit da ‘doodly’ wis n he laughed n said ‘am awer 100yrs ald n I duno tyeen’ so ta dis day am stil never fun oot wit da doodly wis?!

This design was influenced by dreams, when your dreams become very surreal and things morph into different shapes or items and it all seems perfectly normal, for example like the man in this design who is knitting instead of fishing and flying fish

Take Dee Sock (take your knitting) design is inspired by my late granny who was rarely without her makkin (knitting) I was her 29th grand bairn and I got one of her handmade fair isle jumpers, the pattern can be seen in the background of this design. When her sight started to deteriorate and she could no longer do fair isle patterns at 101yrs old she still managed to hand knit socks for her ever growing family. My memories of Granny are of her sitting quite composed before the fire makin apa her sock while watching coronation street apa tv.

This design was inspired and influenced from memories of going down to the banks (shoreside) with my dad catching Peerie (little) fish the same as the tammie nories (puffins)

Inspiration for this design came one night when my daughter asked me to tell her a bedtime story, earlier that day we had been doon at the hoab which is one of my favourite places on whalsay to explore, I told her about how her auld da (my dad) used to take me for walks when I was peerie (little) but not in the summer time when the tirricks are nesting as they love to dive bomb you head, so Da used to take wildflowers usually dockens or hogweeds and wave them on top of his head for the diving tirricks to attack instead of trying to peck the top of his head.

This design is inspired by memories of when I was a peerie bairn (small child) watching my aunt and uncle rake and pile up the hay stacks while I played in the hay.

This design was influenced by Shetlands local Up Helly AA and fire festivals which are held every year through out various locations within Shetland each having their own unique acts and performances.

Following on from the ‘Awa Ta Craig’s’ design, there was another time me and dad wis down at the shore when I heard this strange puffing/spraying noise coming up the soond then I saw what I thought was a dolphin and got really excited! But dad giggled and said ‘na Yuns joost a neesick’ (that’s just a harbour porpoise)