Shetland Designer

One of the best things about doing a knitting tour with Gudrun and Mary Jane was that they had arranged for us to meet with and learn from some of Shetland's most talented knitters.

One such lady is Wilma Malcolmson, owner of The Shetland Designer . We visited her shop and studio and got to speak with her about her design process, as well as drool over some of the most beautiful Fair-Isle knitting I've ever seen.

Here's Wilma explaining where she gets her colour inspiration. In this case it was a photo of old painted barrels.

All these swatches were knit with the same yarn. So fascinating to see the difference depending on what yarns were used for the foreground and background motifs.

Here, Wilma showed us swatches she worked up for the Shetland Museum. The staff that greet visitors wear beautiful Fair-Isle vests designed by Wilma.

If you ever find yourself in Shetland, you must visit Wilma's shop and studio. As you can imagine, we all left with lighter wallets and lovely woolens. I'll try and take some good photos of the goodies I brought back to show you in another post.