Fair Isles on Display

Lydia, at Spun Yarn Shop in Huddersfield, has revamped her window display this month.  In July and August, it was filled with summer knitting, but now that the school holidays are over, it didn't look appropriate, and so she has switched to Fair Isles in autumnal colours.

I was thrilled to see that two of the garments in the display are ones that I knitted!  I lent them to Lydia when she started stocking Jamieson's Spindrift wool from Shetland - she wanted to be able to show customers some of the things that you can knit with it.

John's pullover (on the stand on the right in the window) appeared in my very first blog post.

On the left is a sweater I knitted for myself.  I haven't worn it for years, but it does look very good - maybe I should reconsider it when Lydia changes her display again.

The patterns for both came from  Sarah Don's book on Fair Isle Knitting, published in 1979.  And I bought Jamieson's yarn for them, directly from the Shetlands (ordered by post, which seems very quaint now).

In the corner of the window are some of Elizabeth Smith's beautiful cushions, knitted in Spindrift and then felted.

And higher up, Lydia has hung a multi-coloured wheel of Spindrift.

You can see how difficult it was to take good photos - the lights and the rest of the shop are reflected in the window, and through it you can see the opposite side of the arcade.  Or v,v. if you stand outside the shop. But I think you can also see how nice the new shop is - when Spun opened nearly five years ago, it was on the 2nd floor of the Byram Arcade, but Lydia moved down to the ground floor a few months ago - so much more accessible, light and spacious.