Knitting the archive: Shetland lace and ecologies of skilled practice

Abstract

Conjuring up images of fine openwork shawls, Shetland lace knitting might seem to be the very essence of ‘tradition’. Although contemporary scholarship is increasingly noting the diversity of knitting practices and practitioners – from stitch ‘n bitch to yarn bombing – accounts of Shetland lace knitting often convey a sense of a skilled practice which has remained unchanged since time immemorial. In this article, I illustrate and unravel how the skill of Shetland lace knitting has become seemingly sedimented by telling its story through a series of innovative archival explorations and engagements. Using ‘making’ as method, I employ the skilled practice of knitting as a means by which to investigate the question of skill itself. By putting the anthropologic work of Tim Ingold into conversation with contemporary geographical theory, I advocate an ecological consideration of skill which is able to account for the economic, cultural, geographical and material threads of practice, while undermining any notion of skill being static or given within a situation.