All week we'd been hearing from fellow Wool Weekers about how great the Jamieson's of Shetland Factory Tour was, and from the day we'd seen it listed as an event, this was what I'd most looked forward to. And it did not disappoint!
We boarded the bus at the Welcome to Shetland sign in Lerwick for the drive out to Sandness. Jen and I had already traversed much of this route a couple times (once by ourselves and once on our croft tour day), but our tour guide Lyall made it a whole new experience. He told us a lot about life in Shetland and how it's changed over the decades, especially once oil became a top industry. He also explained how knitting (makkin') became vital to supplementing a family's income in the mid-1900s (before oil) and said that everyone in the family knit items to sell; however, for a long time knitwear was undervalued. That has changed.
Lyall works part-time on the set of Shetland, so as we passed by buildings used in the show, he had stories to tell. We saw Tosh's and Calder's houses, the inn where the human trafficking had happened, several crofts that had been murder scenes, and more. That was fun!
And some of you will love to know he was part of the Tartan Army in Boston for the recent World Cup. He also was the Guizer Jarl at Up Helly Aa in 2017. So he had lots of stories to tell!
At the factory, Garry Jamieson took over the tour. This family-run business opened in 1890 and is now in its fifth generation. Garry's dad is still involved, and the next generation is working there, too. Until well into the 20th century, all the garments Jamieson's sold were hand-knitted by Shetlanders. Now the garments are all machine-knitted, including that beautiful vest Garry wore.
The tour started near the entry doors, where we saw piles of wool still to be graded. Jamieson's inspects all wool it receives and grades it on a scale of 1 to 5. Anything not in the 1-2 category gets sent to auction to be made into carpets, a lower-grade knitting wool, or other things. Jamieson's is looking for fine, soft 100% Shetland wool with long fibres and nice crimp. Garry said some cross-breeding happens, but the 100% Shetland wool usually is top grade, whereas the cross-bred fleeces generally aren't as nice. You can readily see the difference between these two fleeces: On the left is a grade 1 (lots of fine strands) and on the right is a lower graded fleece (which Garry joked was a sheep bred with something???) that will go elsewhere.
He explained that merino doesn't have nearly as long a staple as Shetland wool, which I believe is likely why we saw so many old knitted Shetland garments with no pilling. A long staple does mean less pilling.
We then walked through the factory and saw the machinery at work. A fleece breaker gets rid of most of the foreign material in the wool. Then a big machine heats water up to 50 degrees and cleans the wool with detergent and soda ash to wash away the lanolin (which is the black coating the walls). A rinse with citric acid follows, which will make the dye take.
Once clean and dry, the wool is put into a dye tank, heaping full, and then squashed down. The temperature gets up to 98 degrees to set the dye. We saw the colour Highland Mist being dyed.
The dyed wool is sucked into a different fleece breaker, which it goes through three times. The final time adds mineral oil, which I guess is what I felt softening my hands when knitting with it (not lanolin). Once dry, the wool "snows" down into a room nearly two stories high (behind Garry in the photo below), filling it. In total 80 to 100 kg of wool is processed in a day, and one dye lot will take two days to finish up. Then the machinery has to be thoroughly cleaned not to contaminate the next colourway. (They work through the colour spectrum.)
The heathered colours are created by taking, for example, 40 kg of colour X, 13 kg of colour Y, and 4 kg of colour Z and blending them in what I'll call the "snow room" before they go through the carding machine, followed by the process of spinning and plying. The strands move so fast through the machinery that you can't see them, but this is where the spun wool is getting plied.
We watched the yarn then going from skeins onto cones and then balls getting labelled with a relatively new machine Jamieson's bought from Germany.
Then we got to see sweaters being made. The Jamieson's machines use up to 13 colours and will knit a Fair Isle sweater in 45 minutes(!). Another machine makes the necks, and then the seaming and finishing are done by hand. The sweaters are then machine washed on a wool cycle and (gasp) tumble-dried! (They are knitted a little loosely to account for a wee bit of felting/fulling.)
Jamieson's Shetland-wool sweaters are exported to countries around the world, with Japan being one of the biggest purchasers of them.
Once back in Lerwick, Jen and I went for lunch at No. 88 and then back once again to the Jamieson's store, where I bought a couple balls of the main colour in Garry's vest (Sunrise). We had agreed neither of us needed more wool, but I couldn't resist getting that colour! Nancy, the shop clerk, and I had become quite friendly by this visit (there were A LOT of visits to Jamieson's), and Jen and I heard about her wedding in Vegas in 2019. (I, too, was married there, but in 1994.) She was just lovely!
We went back to the flat to begin packing things up and figuring out how to make it all fit. I'd calculated that I had accumulated 1.5 kg in wool weight, so I knew my suitcase at least wouldn't be overweight--and fortunately, wool is squishy. But it was a tad tight. Jen had a little more than that to add to her stash, but she squeezed hers in, too!
For our last meal in Shetland, Jen opted for one final serving of yummy fish and chips at The Dowry. She said it tasted as good as it looked! I'm not a big fish eater myself but had really enjoyed Shetland's fish and chips when I had it.
We had one more sleep in Shetland before flying out the next morning....
