Ropography

Morning. The weather reports were increasingly dire. Bacon sandwich. I went to yet another yarn store because I had left a double-pointed needle in Medford that I needed to finish the socks, and the Macguyvered approach I used to get through the class wasn't cutting it. The store was run by a woman from Arizona who had moved to Scotland with her husband, worked as a research scientist in Aberdeen, then moved to Shetland after he died. I bought a skein of a local lace wei

I saw on FB that there was going to be a sheep auction. "Get there early!" the notice said! How early though? Definitely don't want to miss a moment! I walked to the livestock center at the edge of town and the further out I got, the less recognizeable the surroundings were as part of Britain. A theme we kept hearing is that Shetland is geographically, aesthetically, and culturally closer to Norway than mainland Scotland. No clans, tartans, or bagpipes. Shetland was part

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