Taigh Mòr Fain

Good morning, it’s Friday, and it’s time for another design from Knitting Wester Ross.

One of the things I have often found myself reflecting on while working on this project is the inseparability of places and people. The stories of the landscapes to which we travel in order to experience what, for us, might count as “wilderness” are also the stories of the people who have lived and worked there. There are very few places, globally, where this is not the case, and when we are “getting back” to nature we are always, in one respect or another, getting back to culture too. This is particularly the case in a grand landscape like that of Wester Ross, which the majority of us will first encounter from the window of a swiftly moving car.

We look out of our vehicle windows, enjoying the sweeping beauty of the glen before us, the distant peaks, the misty loch, but we very rarely think of the human hands that built the thoroughfare along which we travel at such speed. But imagine the work of constructing these roads, in this place!

By any measure, the 1840s were a terrible time in the Scottish Highlands. Whole areas were depopulated by brutal clearances which divided families from their land while the cumulative effects of poor harvests drove communities to famine and destitution. During this decade, many roads in this part of Scotland were built by men so impoverished that they were willing to exchange a day’s hard labour for a meal. The roads of Scotland’s immensely popular NC500 – are also its “destitution roads”.

Wester Ross Club members will hear more about the destitution roads in this Sunday’s essay, and those of you attended my “Stranded” webinar earlier this year may remember me talking about the development of this design during our time together.

OXO patterns in the colours which dominated nineteenth-century Scottish colourwork are divided by narrow bands of directional arrows suggestive of the movement of the destitution roads themselves. These motifs adorn a simple design with much the same function as a Highland plaidy (cloak) . . .

. . . .traditionally, a large piece of cloth that, in inclement weather, you can really wrap up in.

Taigh Mòr Fain is named for the abandoned bothy, whose familiar red tin roof has made it something of a local landmark . . .

. . . and which stands in an exposed location beside the A832.

Worked all in one piece from the bottom up, Taigh Mòr Fain is knitted as a large tube with three steeks.

After grafting together at the shoulders, the steeks are cut open and ribbed edgings are worked around the front opening and each side . . .

. . . to create a large, cosy wrap which can be worn in many different ways.

I styled it on KC as very much an outer garment, which can be thrown over an outfit.

. . . joined at the front with a single large brooch or pin (I found these gigantic kilt pins Polish seller on Etsy)

There are very few places on earth where this is not the case, Nature is almost always culture, in other words.

human habitation and intervention.

the story of a landscape can very rarely be told

story of place is inseparable from the story of people.

. I suppose interesting things working on it is how much place is the story

The stories of these places

all about finding connections between places and people, and feed our creative work. For Tom, documentary photography Ootlier 6

For me, object in museum, inspiring person. Today place, and people