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