OoieOllie – Summing up my Year as Wool Week Patron.

I was greatly honoured and humbled to be selected patron for Shetland Wool Week, especially being its 10^th anniversary. I cannot believe how time as passed so quick since that first, short but sweet, email from my employer mid- September 2010, “I want you to set up a Shetland Wool Week, you have one month “. In my lifetime in the wool industry this initiative has had the single biggest impact on marketing crofter’s sheep & wool, textiles and the wider community of Shetland in general. We have been united as an island group to showcase ourselves at the highest level on the global stage.

I was very apprehensive and unsure of taking on the role of patron 2019 (which involved a social media presence writing blogs and Instagram posts as well attending the official launch at Edinburgh Yarn Festival and public speaking). I have had a great deal of help and support from Victoria Tait from the Shetland Amenity Trust organisers of the event. I would not have been able to carry out these tasks without the help and advice from my wife Catherine, and two very special people our granddaughter, Lynsey, and (someone I call my publicist) Leon Riise. I am indebted to them for all their hard work and putting up with me, it cannot have been and easy journey for them, thank you so very much. Also grateful thanks to my designer and knitter for creating my Roadside Beanie Sandra Manson and Ella Gordon for charting my design, also Wendy from Burra Bears for the special gift Peerie Olie o’ Roadside. I would also like to thank all the people who have followed my blogs and the support and good will shown toward me from around the globe, I appreciate this greatly. I would like to think I have shared with you part of the journey I have taken in working with one of the finest fibres in the world, Real Shetland Wool.

Below are some of the images from my year as patron, I will continue to have a social media presence perhaps but to a lesser degree. Thank you all once again.