For the Love of Textiles

As promised I should write a post about my knitting adventures which I had the last summer-holiday in Shetland. On one of the first days (maybe it was the first day)I walked into Tesco and suddenly out of the blue I got a Big Hug and a Hey Jan...and there was Connie promoting salmon at the entrance of the supermarket. Connie used to work at Jamieson & Smith (The wool-brokers) but changed job. She is a half-Kiwi and half-Shetland girl and is now living in Lerwick for the time being before going back to New Zealand with her husband (who comes from Shetland ofcourse!!) She immediately told me that Jared Flood (yes: THE Brooklyntweed!)was coming to Shetland with another bunch of knitters and the Parents of Ravelry: Jess and Casey. And the next question was: please do come on Thursday for lunch in the Shetland museum and you can meet up with them. So I went there with my dear friend Birgit (who was my girlfriend long, long ago, but we are still very good friends) and we had lunch with...

Yes, December has arrived in full swing. It is really winter with loads of snow: >Love it!! And I am enjoying my 2 weeks holiday. So, the plan was to write a blog-post over things happening over the last weeks. In the beginning of December a new school-project did start and to get inspiration my students and my colleague had to go to Museum Twentse Welle in Enschede to get an insight in the textile collection. They need to design a man or woman winter-coat for a competition. The inspiration needs to come out of traditional textiles. So on a cold and snowy winter-morning we went there. The collection is not that spectacular but worth while to see.One of the reasons is that the region Twente was a very poor region. Originally there was a lot of textile production, but most of that has left and garments are now mostly made in the much cheaper Far East. Most of the garments from the collection are worn by richer women or men and all from the workers has disappeared. So there were ...