UFO?

In this case let me assure you I am not looking at the skies rather at the Un-Finished Object which has now been finished! I have made my very own Fair Isle fisherman's kep and learned a lot while doing so. There are things I will change when I make the next one, different patterns I will use, definitely a deeper brim and different colour choices but here it is all finished...

Choosing the colours is important and for me when I chose my five colours I wanted something that would always mean something so the green and gold of the gorse, the purple of hte heather, the grey of the big stones and the blue of the sky in the woods were the colours for my kep. This past weekend I have finished it and made the tassel for the end. As I said before the yarn is from www.shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk  but maybe, just maybe, I might end up making one with my own home spun wool. If anyone saw the BBC documentary about Fair Isle the keps and the tradition of knitting was mentioned extensively and after watching it I joined a Facebook group specifially for the making of the keps and got my pattern through the Shetland Museum. It is an item and a style of knitting with history. In a way I am doing this backwards as years ago on the island little girls would learn how to knit when their mothers and grandmothers would tell them how many stitches to cast on and they would knit little egg cosies and memorise the patterns which they would knit into keps, mittens and jumpers as they grew more accomplished. Today I will be casting on for some egg cosies with my leftover wool.

JR has found all of this knitting to be great for him as he likes to curl up under a blanket next to me but the spinning he is less fond of as I am two whole feet away from him when I sit in my chair and get my wheel going; how does he cope? As I sit at the big table in the kitchen writing this he has been alternating between sitting on my feet and on my lap.

In case it sounds as though I have been sat inside I should probably add that Friday saw me and my lovely OH trundling off to the woods with our chainsaws and a decent amount of tree has been cut into rounds while the branches have become the start of a screen to reduce the visibility of the hive from passers by. Well it is about time I started on those egg cosies...

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Taking Stock

Amusingly for a lot of people I have laryngitis and have been missing my voice for a few days now. I can honestly say that part of it could be down to chatting away with my fab school friend who came to stay with us for the weekend with her two lads. We went all over, talking about anything and everything and the kids played as they will do. We didn't do hugely pricey things but we showed them some of our life up here and it wasn't long before she said she could see why I love it here so much. I'm not feeling under any pressure to be talking again quickly so it is not exactly stressful. At the moment I am pottering about a bit getting some pre-weekend chores done but I wanted to share something quickly with you. This morning I have been completely bowled over by the fact that this is not some sort of dream and I really do live somewhere as awesome as this. The car was frozen solid this morning and the temperature here has dropped massively as the white fields lined with barbed wire and frozen drops of water told me as soon as I looked outside. It is beautifully clear and as I look  to my left as I stand outside I see the pale sun rising spilling light over the fields, light that stretches and knocks away the shadows while on my right I have the pure white hills (mountains to us English folk) on the West coast of Scotland as they have been covered in snow. It is truly breathtaking.

One side of the cold is thinking 'do I put on the heating?'...well no. I have been out and brought in a few loads of chopped wood so soon I will light the fire and around lunch time I will light the Rayburn so the house is warm when the family get home for the weekend. This is wood that we have cut into rounds from fallen trees, I have split and we have brought home. It might sound a bit crazy but it is a satisfying thought. Even more so to know that tomorrow we will all go out to the woods despite the cold and my lovely OH and I will split some wood while the munchkins climb trees and go looking for things to add to their den (I wonder if they have noticed they haven't put on a roof yet?). It's a little thing but it is what we enjoy.

I need to get on now if only to get some more of my traditional Fair Isle kep finished because I could really do with it when I go outside for now! I will tell you more about my key another time but for now I will go get the fire lit so JR can curl up next to me as I knit.

my Fair Isle Kep 

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Spring?

Recently although it has been cold up here it feels different. There are gorse flowers appearing on more of the bushes by the side of the road, there are more days where the sun has a bit of heat and there are daffodils popping up in the little flower bed by the front door.

It appears that we may have acquired a new neighbour, I won't say pet as he definitely is not domesticated (you'll see what I mean in a minute), but he is here every day. This blackbird is a narcissist through and through and likes nothing more than perching on the window trim of my car and admiring himself in the wing mirror. Naturally the unfortuate result is that he has been leaving 'little gifts' all down the side of the car. The Furry Assassin wants nothing to do with him and has not even tried to bring him down and JR just looks out of the window at things further in the distance. I don't suppose there is any point at all in washing the car seeing as we have been up the woods a great deal. The great thing about having a Rayburn when the boiler decides to take a few days off is that you can still heat the house. When the weather has been a little better my lovely OH and I have been out with our chainsaws cutting the fallen trees into rounds and splitting them. As a result we are both excited to see the clearing appear which was full of wind blown trees and seeing some of the ground cover underneath. We found a little holly tree growing away almost underneath a fallen tree so we took two work 'days' while the munchkins were at school to limb the tree then cut it into rounds without damaging the holly before splitting the wood into neat logs to burn at home.

Narcissistic Blackbird

As the woods are waking up I wonder how many of the wildflower seeds I sowed last year are going to come up but I will have to wait and see. Last year I was baffled to see the sea of blue devil's bit scabius appear until my OH reminded me that I had actually planted it. The honeysuckle is already going green with new leaves although the catkins on the silver birches have barely started to put in an appearance. In a few weeks I will be out again collecting gorse flowers to make more gorse wine. Yesterday I finally got round to bottling last year's batch and we had a little taste of it and it was delicious, far better than any white wine I have ever had but then is there any point comparing a country wine to a grape wine? Our stock of raspberry liqueur has nearly gone so I will be doing all I can to encourage the two stands of wild raspberry growing in the woods and if that means putting a bee hive close to them then I don't see why not. I am prepared with extra equipment, the woven skep a fellow beekeeper gave us for a wedding gift will be used when I catch a swarm. It's all really exciting and in addition to seeing all of the plant life wake up after the Winter I am seeing the bees doing the same. At the weekend we had friends to stay and one of them suited up and joined me as we took a very quick peek in the hive to see if the girls were okay and put some extra fondant on top of the frames. Reading through my bee keeping books is getting me up to speed on what I need to do next and I have plans for the brace comb that the girls made all over the inside of the cover board which I shall tell you about later.

beeswax doodles on the inside of the cover board

I hope you can take time to go for a walk, see some snowdrops, celandines or aconites and maybe listen to a few birds as they go about their business (although hopefully not a blackbird busy going about his business on your car!).

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

I blinked

Well January went by so fast I am not sure I didn't imagine it. We had a jolly old knees up for Burns' night with home made haggis supper (beer battered haggis and chips) washed down with some locally made ale by the Speyside brewery (Dark Sky sold to us by the brewery owner, Seb) http://speysidecraftbrewery.com/ followed by a wee dram from the local Glen Moray distillery. Very nice evening although we didn't address the haggis as is traditional as we were too keen to eat!

haggis supper

Kung hei fat choi!

The following weekend we had a Chinese feast celebrate Chinese New Year but with all of these well known festivals there are two local fire festivals which are well known up here but not so much further afield. Firstly there is the Burning of the Clavie in Burghead which we attended last year. Hundreds of people turn out to watch a group of (possibly crazy) men in wide brimmed leather hats as they cover a wooden barrel with a long iron nail (the clavie) in tar before setting light to it and carry it through the town visiting each well known establishment on the way around. The idea is that each place gets a bit of the burnt barrel to bring them good luck in the year to come. At the end of the tour they settle in a central location and continue to cover the burning barel in tar. Waves of flame whoosh upwards and light up the sky and the faces surrounding the group of men. There is some derring do as the men dash forward, courting severe burning injury, to grab sections of the barrel. At the end the clavie (the iron nail) is removed and kept to be used the following year. Putting it all down here is certainly sounds daft but being there in the cold and the dark with hundreds of other people who are mostly silently watching until the flames blast upwards and the cheers fill the seaside village is an unforgettable experience. I didn't feel like an outsider looking in. It was an all inclusive experience as we all watched the men in leather hats, held our breath as they narrowly missed the flames which shot outwards and pushed the ring of onlookers outwards slightly.

Another local fire festival is Up Helly Aa held on Shetland, one of the Northern most islands in the cluster of Islands off the coast of Scotland; closer to Oslo that Edinburgh. I get some of my wool from there and it is lovely knit with. The festival is said to be amazing although I have not, as yet, witnessed it. Here is a link to the information http://www.shetland.org/things/events/culture-heritage/up-helly-aa/

my wool from Shetland

I know I said I blinked but lots of things have been happening. Over the next two months we have two sets of visitors coming up so plans have been made (exciting!) and I have been spinning more and more. As yet my wheen is still being run in so my spinning has been on the drop spindle including, would believe it, dog hair. A friend in the nearest town is a dog groomer and gave me the fur of a samoyed (woolfy type of giant dog) and it has spun really quite nicely. It is hanging up on the up-and-over above Mrs Jones drying off with a weight.

spinning the Samoyed hair

Mini skeins of home spun yarn

This afternoon I shall be off to the woods for a walk with the munchkins and JR and in between a mini scavenger hunt I may day dream about what to knit with it...

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Slainté

Let me spin you a yarn...

Among the many wonderful gifts I received for Christmas was a work of art which took many, many hours to create; a hand made spinning wheel. I have been so very thrilled about it that I almost did not want to say anything because it might sund a bit much like bragging. Let me just take you back to when this began...

...I vaguely recall discussing over a bottle of wine how my father-in-law was planning to take up wood turning and how he had found a class to which my mother-in-law had said he couldn't do unless he got rid of the boat that was in his garage (she later said she didn't think he would do it but anything was better than the boat!)...and I said something like 'well, then you can make me a spinning wheel!' Not for one second thinking this would actually happen. Since then when we have visited and I had asked to see the lathe and whatever he had been working on there have been a series of reasons or interruptions so when he took me to a big box and handed me a knife on Christmas morning there was no way I could have known there would be a spinning wheel inside.

It is beautiful.

I mean stunning.

see what I mean?

So far I have sat in front of it for hours trying to get my hands and feet to work together but as yet I had not produced any yarn until my spinning class...

*Quick side note* when I told my friend about this she thought I meant the spinning which is done on stationary exercise bikes. The laughter that followed must have travelled across most of the village.

On one of my wanderings about a craft fair or something similar I remember picking up a leaflet about a local lady who spins and offers classes. After much rummaging through my craft stuff I found the safe place it had been put and gave her a call...

  My drive to the village where the instructor lives was beautiful and passed three of the distilleries on the whiksy trail on which I live. Come one, how brilliant is it that the directions were given mostly by distillery?!? There were some lovely views and if I wasn't so excited about getting to my lesson I would have stopped to take pictures...maybe next time.

I learned a lot about my new spinning wheel and what needed adjustments before I can do any spinning then for the second half of the lesson I used one of her spare wheels to spin some yarn. It was thick. It was thin. It was what we yarn crafters call 'slubby' and right now it is hanging up in my kitchen as I am setting the twist (wash then hang up with a weight attached until it is dry). Since collecting munckins from the bus stop and getting home I have been working on my spinning wheel doing all the things my instructor said so I can get another lesson booked. Every day I am now going to sit down for an hour or so just treadling and getting my wheel running smoothly.

after it dried

my first skein of yarn spun on a spinning wheel!

This has also brought me a little more insight to my drop spinning so each day I have been doing a little more of that and finally it isn't overspun or really thick. I cannot say how happy this makes me.

my top whorl drop spindle

Ashford Student Drop Spindle
In between spinning sessions I have been out in the woods with JR. He sits on the log pile and stares at me while I am splitting wood and at home he sits on the sofa and watches me using my spinning wheel.

Happy JR and happy me x

I would write more but it is cutting into my time where I could be practicing my treadling!

Hugs from haggis land,

Jx

Happy Hogmanay

                                           

Happy New Year to you all, or hogmanay as they have up here. Our Christmas was a very good one then we had a few quiet days with new board games and bike rides. This year the munchkins sat up with us to see in the New Year and we played a new game which was very addicitive. It has been quite a gentle transition to reality for us as the munchkins are back at school and the house is back to the undecorated state. I miss the sparkly lights and decorations but then they wouldn't be so special if they were up all year round.

Things are very busy here now with new plans but more about that another time.

At the moment I have been knitting down some of my stash which has been fun sorting it all out but a bit shocking as there were things I had almost forgotten. Here are some pictures of the projects I have made since Christmas...

classic sea farer's hat made with locally produced wool

hand dyed 100% wool

fyberspates cumulus knitted up in old shale pattern (originating in Shetland)

                                                    Fyberspates Cumulus 912 Camel

self striping yarn in a fisherman's net pattern

As we have woken up to a snow covered vista I will be mostly curling up and knitting today...looks like JR got there first!

view from the kitchen window

he snores

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Deck the Halls

Today has been a busy day of Christmas prep as the munchkins and I, accompanied by the ever present JR, went off to the woods to gather greenery to make a wreath for our front door and one for OH's work. Here is how I did it...

coat hangers, secateurs, string, florist wire, gloves, moss, ivy, pine from my Christmas tree, holly and poinsettia

* note I used poinsettia as my holly was lacking in the berry department but you could use red carnations, red ribbon, wired up pinecones or even red roses if you want to push the boat out.

Pull your wire coat hanger into a round wish shape. As you can see you don't have to be exact because the greenery covers it up so perfection is not required.

Bundle up the moss and use the string to tie it all around the wire. 

Add the greenery in layers. I started with the ivy then added the pine and finished with the holly.

Secure the greenery by folding the florist wire in half then push it through the moss to the other side so it pins down the stem. Twist the two ends of the wire the tighten then bend safely out of the way.

Wrap the wire around the flower of your choice then add that where you want. I did two separate designs...

for my front door

for OH's work

Always take care to wash your hands thoroughly after arranging flowers.

  So because tramping through the woods then making a wreath for the door is not Christmassy enough the munchkins and I put on some festive tunes and baked some biscuits. It is an old favourite recipe, tried and tested, which I have written down in my Christmas Almanack. After wasting time year after year of trawling through recipes trying to find one we had enjoyed there was one year I forgot to make something we all really enjoyed and the munchkins were disappointed so I decided to write it all down, every last little thing we like so there is no chance it will be forgotten and I cannot recommend it enough. Find a nice notebook and start one this year.

Our biscuits have cooled down and are in a tin some are ready to be put into cellophane bags and given as gifts while others will be available to nibble after school or with a cup of tea.

Whatever you do in the week running up to Christmas I hope you enjoy it.

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx