14 Oct. 2025 (SWW1)

As soon as we found out we were coming here, my first thoughts were not of the many related tasks that would have to be completed but "I'm definitely going to Shetland Wool Week". I was very excited but also felt a low steady thrum of anxiety about what a schlep it was going to be which proved, for once, not unjustified. But it was heaven, as any "Meeting of the People Exactly Like Me" club would be.

To get there, first I took two trains to Aberdeen, a journey of around 6 hours. On my first train I sat across the aisle from what seemed to be two American coworkers who cordially loathe each other ("Oh, did you not see my email?"). Everything in Aberdeen is made of rough gray stone that gave the buildings an unfinished and carceral look.

But I had a nice Indian lunch at a place I learned about from this blog by a guy who is spending his retirement reviewing pubs. As I approached the ferry terminal for my 5pm sailing I heard what I thought was a piece of straining machinery. Nope! It was a truck full of cattle being led to their own boat ride, very much against their will.

The NorthLink base fares are reasonable but extremely low on frills. I got lounge access for £20 so I had snacks, beverages, breakfast, and a relatively secluded place to hang out. For another £18 I got a sleep pod (instead of an unreserved non-reclining seat) which I was very glad to have. I don't get seasick, but when I went up on the deck I felt an intense surge what you could call awe of the power of the sea but registered as simply "Holy shit what am I doing here". I could still make out an oil derrick and the wink of flaming gas, and I was glad I was going to be asleep when land was totally out of sight.

The pod seat also entitled me to a 6 minute shower, activated by feeding a token into a box on the bathroom wall. After sleeping in my clothes no shower has ever been more restorative. At breakfast I met a mother and daughter who were also on their way to SWW. Because it really is the People Exactly Like Me Club, the daughter was my age, also had a nose ring and two small kids, and I'm sure we have all the same Wirecutter stuff in our homes. We established that the father of this family grew up about a few streets over from my mom's current house, and that he and I had gone to the same elementary school. The town I grew up in is split in two entities separated by a large road (there's also a third extremely fancy part where Kevin James lives). The north half is predominantly Black and Latino, while in the south half, that elementary school I attended probably had less than ten Black students the whole time I was there. Isn't it funny how it could just spontaneously work out that way, totally randomly? You'd sure hope there would have been some consequences otherwise! Anway, when I say the name of my town to someone who knows of it, there is always a little twitch in their face when they are wondering which part and are trying to figure out how to ask, and that is what happened here! Wherever you go, there you are!

We docked around 7:30 and I made my way to the hostel to drop off my bag. After 30 feet or so I realized I was going the wrong way and doubled back. A pricking in my thumbs told me that one of the people at the bus stop was going to remark on it. Sure enough. "Did you go the wrong way?!" the man said jubilantly as I passed for the second time. Breakfast was the first of many bacon sandwiches I was to eat over the course of the trip which revived my wherewithal.

I took a 10 minute ferry to Bressay for a croft tour where I met two friends, S and R. They were SWW pros and took me under their wing. There were also two Oregonians who were so inseperable that R referred to them with a portmanteau of their names (Bonna). We walked about a mile in wind and rain past some seals in the harbor and Shetland ponies in someone's yard. There was a cafe in some kind of municipal building where I had some very nice curried squash soup. It was full of middle-aged women in rain gear wearing very similar hats so the staff behind the counter was becoming overwhelmed by the task of keeping track of whose order was whose.

Heads up: All these pictures are blurry. It was raining SO much.

It was with some reluctance that I began the 35 minute walk to my croft tour. I'd packed rain paints but never used them because I couldn't figure out whether I'd want to wear them all day or do I try to find a place to change but then have to carry them around? That was silly and I should have put them on. It was a very hilly road and I didn't want to slip into a ditch, so I stayed on the road, walked as far to the side as possible, and periodically crossed to the other side depending on whether I was more worried about being run over by people driving up the hill or down. After about ten minutes, a car pulled over occupied by two women who were also wearing The Hat. They pointed to mine and said "You're probably going the same place we are, do you want a lift?". If I was ever going to hitch a ride, people going to a knitting event seemed as safe a bet as you could get. They were sisters who had grown up in Suffolk. One is now a lawyer on the Isle of Wight and the other lives in Yorkshire and during the tour she displayed an impressive knowledge of animal husbandry. They also drove me back to the ferry after our tour (at no point of which was it ever not raining) and I will forever bless them.

We got to the farm where I and I think all the other guests were surprised to encounter...an English guy who looked like Matthew Goode's twin brother. He had come there to work as an archeologist for the Shetland Museum and Archives and occasionally gets called to check a bone someone found in the peat to make sure it's from a cave man and not the result of a recent crime, and eventually started raising sheep. It was very informative, but the equivalent would be if you went to see a cattle ranch in Wyoming and the person showing you around sounded like, well, me. I'm sure it is meant with great affection but I would LOVE to know the nicknames the neighbors have for him.

After the tour I did a lap through Lerwick and had dinner, another bacon sandwich. It was listed on the menu as a BLT wrap, and the waiter who looked about 17 looked astonished when I asked that since they had gluten free bread perhaps they could just take the contents of the wrap and put it on the bread instead? This was Plan B after discovering that burger patties and sausage in Britain often have breadcrumbs in them. Anyway it did the trick, accompanied by half a pint of cider which is really all I can handle these days.

Jimmy Perez's house for murder mystery buffs

Back to the hostel. Many SWW attendees book their accomodations a year in advance. I had not, and every dollar I spent on a hotel was a dollar less to spend on yarn. I was able to get a six person room with its own bathroom in a hostel that was very clean and pleasant, although I can't speak to what the crowd is like when Lerwick hasn't been invaded by a bunch of middle aged women who go on knitting vacations. Great British Bakeoff, which they are allowed to call Bakeoff here, and bed!

13 Oct. 2025

I studied abroad at the University of Sussex back in the dark ages of 2005, when a pound was worth about $1.95 and GWB had just won a second term. I had a friend A, another American down the hall (not much of a coincidence, since only first years and foreign exchange students lived in dorms), who eventually married the English guy she met while we were there and has lived here since we finished school. This weekend we met up with her and her family in Buxton, a former spa town. She expressed doubt that it would be worth the train ride for us, but "worth a train ride" is an extremely low bar for us at this point.

Buxton's chief attractions are the fancy hotel pictured below, the Thermal Baths which are now a shopping center, and an opera house. As a socioeconomic reference, we went to a coffee a note saying that they make coffee the right way so please don't get snippy if it takes a while (it did). After a brief stint at the playground we had a very good roast for lunch at a brewery, although this is a little flag for future me that I will always regret not getting the beef. We saw a little museum in one of the preserved bath houses. I was not brave enough to drink from the St. Anne's well, although I might have if I had know that's what it was called. There were some people in bonnets and top hats in front of the hotel, but it was not clear whether they were there in some sort of official ornamental function, cos players, or the equivalent of the guy dressed like Bumblebee who charges to take pictures in Times Square. We did not approach closely enough to enquire.

The hill of heartbreaking loss

My friend's kids are a little younger than ours, and seeing them made me realize how much of my kids' earliest years I've already surpressed. The 5 or so hours we had planned between arrival and departure may as well be an eon for them. After they went home we had some time to kill and it was like 4:01, which meant every single place of business seemed to be closing. Earlier in the day N and B had asked if they could go up a very steep hill and we put them off, but now we didn't see how we could refuse without admitting the extent to which we did not feel like going up this hill. As it turned out we were able to summon the will to get up there and the kids had a spirited romp. It later transpired that during said romp they had both managed to lose a prized possession. From the heights of a pleasant day, a sudden plummet into grief! The lesson: never go up the hill!

We'd had lovely weather for most of the afternoon but from the train I could see a few wisps of fog in the valley below us. A few minutes later when I looked back it was so foggy you couldn't see across the street. Then our train from central Manchester back to our house was canceled, so we had a damp and chilly twilight walk to the bus stop. The bus took us down Wilmslow Road or Curry Mile, which is chockablock with desi and Middle Eastern restaurants. Their bustle beckoned and the dang hill had burned off our lunch so we got off and had dosa at Chit n' Chaat, which was everything you want when it's cold and dark, Monday is looming, and you are feeling a little frayed after a journey.

7 Oct. 2025

We went to the Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent, an event so aligned with my mother's interests that I felt somehow guilty for going without her.

The kids were unexpectedly interested in the exhibits which was nice but also a little nervewracking, as their exuberance in the presence of all that very fragile art seemed likely to end badly.

Part of the "Domestic Rituals" installation by Biba Klico

Luckily there was an interactive piece, an activity for kids to make a rammed earth brick ("Very thorough" said a nonplussed volunteer who was taken aback by how much B likes banging on things with sticks) and a "playscape" made out of said rammed earth which we were told "We're not actually allowed to call a playground" but that the kids were welcome to climb on. OK then! If they had their way, they probably would have stayed in the sand pit for the whole afternoon.

Just Be There by Johnny Vegas and Emma Rodgers, "an invitation to those experiencing anxiety, anger, grief or any other strong emotion to express their feelings through free mark-making" or just squidge your hands in while your parents are taking their sweet time

SoT's heyday was when Spode and Wedgewood were booming, and the gentrification machine is still working its way through all the factories and warehouses. There was a football game scheduled for later in the day, and there was a sign up on a pub door saying it was for HOME FANS ONLY and directing the away fans to a more hospitable alternative location.

Hell if I know.

But there's plenty going on. We spent so much time at the Biennial we didn't even make it to the main pottery museum in town. We saw the small Spode museum where an artist in residence was painting a portrait on a platter of a painter working in the factory in Indonesia where Spode is now made. So meta, as we used to say in 2003! There was a gift shop selling a lot of very reasonably priced vintage china, but if you've seen our house in Medford you know I cannot adding so much as a saucer, and it seemed a shame to buy anything for here that I'd get attached to. But I was tempted by some of the pieces made for airlines back in the day when we traveled like civilized people. There was a set of salad plates made for Nigeria Airways that will probably tug at me for a while. We also did not go to the Wedgwood factory which I'd visited with my mom when I was studying abroad in 2005. That facility is closed until January to "rebalance our inventory due to lower demand in some of our key markets", and apparently the outlet is not quite the bargain it once was. The relentless wheels of capitalism grind on, which could probably serve as the title for every post I'll make in the next year.