Fair Isle Knotted Basket.

 

Back in March, when the program for this year's Shetland Wool Week was released, I ordered a kit for a Fair Isle Knotted Basket, which arrived, along with a copy of Shetland Fine Lace Knitting: Recreating Patterns from the Past by Carol Christiensen. The kit was waiting for a rainy day. After finishing the 2024 Shetland Wool Week hat last night, I decided it was time for a complete break from knitting, but while on a Shetland theme, out came the kit.

Fair Isle currently has a population of about 60. It is the home of a particular Strawback Chair, made from wood that washed up from shipwrecks (there are no trees on Fair Isle) and straw grown on the island, and knotted in a unique way. Through the work of Eve Eunson, Stewart Thomson and the Fair Isle Chairs Project, the chair is now classed as a Critically Endangered craft.

The Fair Isle Knotted Basket kit is a fund-raiser for the Fair Isle Chairs Project. It uses the knot technique used with straw in the Fair Isle Chair to bind together natural rope with jute string to create a small basket on a wooden base. The instructions are straightforward and relatively simple.                                         I made my basket in two sessions - about 5 hours in total. I did not find it easy. The trick is clearly mastering the captain's knot, while maintaining good tension and consistent coiling to build up the sides of the basket.  The knots, while simple, take practice.  By the end I was beginning to get the hang of it, but that didn't improve my somewhat wonky basket. The string, fortunately, comes precut - but still makes for messy work.

It’s also not something to do when wearing black wool, as I realised when I put it aside to go to bed! When I resumed the next morning I donned a cover-all apron.

The morning task was to bind the top ring (provided as a separate piece, with ends taped together) with the remainder of the strings used to bind the sides. It’s done with a needle, no knots involved! It is, however, hard on the fingers.  

The many (24) strings have to be secured by burying deep under the binding using the supplied darning needle in a contained space. At the moment I have one sore arthritic finger. Any more and I might not have succeeded. Even so, I found this easier than coiling and knotting. It’s not embroidery, but definitely stitching.

At the end I did a bit of remediation on the start/finish point. The rope fitted perfectly, but the rough ends didn’t sit well so I secured them more tightly with a couple of ends of string. 

As I was finishing this today, it occurred to me that it is work my father and other seafaring relatives would have been skilled at. As a child my skipping ropes, much the same as provided in this kit, had beautifully knotted handles, my father’s handiwork. I also remember taking my Uncle Phil to the Maritime Museum at Port Adelaide where he lingered over a display cabinet of knotted ropes, explaining them in detail. Most Fair Isle farmers would also, of course, have been sailors.

My finished basket is nowhere near as neat and even as the one in the kit picture, but it holds a small pot plant. Making it gave me much food for thought as I pondered the lives of the crofters way up in Fair Isle, gathering wool, the flotsam and jetsam from shipwrecks, harvesting hay, making furniture and knitting clothes, and the lives of sailors, my father included, using rope and whatever came to hand, to make things to fill in the long days and nights in the North Sea. My father spent time in Scapa Flow and told me the Hebrides were the most beautiful place on earth. He could also make anything from wood or rope.

I can’t see myself making another, but I’m very pleased indeed to have made this one. It was a break I needed.              Now Air ais gu fighe, which, I think, is Scots Gaelic for back to knitting.