ABOUT BEE CROFT
Hello and thank you so much for visiting Bee Croft!
My name is Rachel and I'm a crofter and knitter living at Barkland Croft on Fair Isle, the U.K.'s most remote, inhabited island. Situated halfway between Orkney and Shetland, in between the Atlantic and North Seas, our tiny isle is only three miles long, a mile-and-a-half wide and home to just 45 people.
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I first came to Fair Isle in 2014 when I worked for a season as Assistant Cook at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory. The following year I moved here permanently, taking on a croft and around 40 sheep.
Since then I have grown my flock and now have around 90 sheep - pure Shetlands and Shetland/Texel crosses. In 2019 I bred my first pure Shetlands on the croft - currently the only person on the isle to do so - and it is their fleeces from which my Bee Croft Wool is produced.
For six years I worked as both a knitter and finisher for other island knitwear businesses, learning my trade and producing both traditional and contemporary, authentic Fair Isle knitwear. Bee Croft now enables me to combine my love of creating hand-crafted garments and accessories on my hand-frame knitting machine with writing patterns for hand-knitting and producing my own wool.
Follow me on Instagram and Facebook for regular updates on my life on Fair Isle and do have a look at my YouTube series - 'Fair Isle through a Lens' - which gives a virtual tour of all aspects of the isle, including walks all over the isle, tours round the museum, meeting the sheep on the croft and community activities here such as baling and gathering the hill sheep. Links are available by clicking on the icons below.