As you know, I have two Scotties – Scottie, the staid 5 year old and Ben, the mad pup who came to me a year ago.  As you also know, son Nick has a Border Collie the same sort of age as Scottie, and Steve has a very, very old collie cross called Taz.

All were here this morning and Nick, at Ben’s insistence, embarked on a game of dog curling.  He started this game several months ago, and now Ben wants it every time he sees Nick.  By the time someone suggested a camera, they had been at it for quite a while.  This was the result. I stress that Ben goes back for this treatment time after time after time after time….

Note that the file is big and takes a while to load….

Despite my intention of doing slightly less, I seem to be doing even more…

Over the past week I have been beavering away at getting everything ready for the NIFA trips.  The details are now all on my website and one day soon I will even get the pix up….

These trips are going to be fun.  They always are.  Take a group of fibre fiends, add and R and you have a group of friends.  This house is made for workshops (OK – the refurbishment WAS designed with them in mind!) and it is going to be even better than before as I will have all my books, fibres and yarns to hand, so that when someone asks me a question or wants to try something the stuff is there to hand, not several hundred miles away.

I also enjoy the mix of folk.  Take the March adventure, which has Northern Isles knitting as its theme (Fair Isle, Shetland lace and ganseys).  So far there are people coming from Sicily, Yorkshire, the States – and Burray, the next island along!  That is pretty typical.  It is so nice to be able to have time to chat over lunch and coffee about knitting and life in different parts of the world – that is one thing you don’t have time to do in a ‘normal’ class where you don’t have the luxury of evenings….

And in case some of you haven’t come across this animation from Pringle, the knitwear manufacturers.  For those of you who don’t know Scotland in general and Edinburgh in particular, the narration is done in a very ‘igh class Morningside accent – the poshest area of Edinburgh’s posh bits.  And some of the expressions are those of the lowest type of Glasgow ’schemes’ (as council estates are known up here).  There has always been a tension between Glasgow and Edinburgh…!!

Watch and enjoy!!

I have been having a finishing binge!  I have FINALLY got Mum’s jacket up on Etsy and Ravelry, under its Sunday name of Ruth’s jacket.  As you have probably forgotten what it looks like, here it is again:

It is made with ColourMart’s 20% silk, 20% cashmere, 60% merino.  I used 4 strands of the 2/28 to make a DK.

I have also got the Gansey Workbook on Etsy, and hope to be  putting it various gansey patterns in my Ravelry store over the next few days.  I need to get the individual patterns up first, and finding the info is the hold up!!  I DID find all the pix this afternoon – I had taken them off the computer ages ago and this afternoon finally found the disc they were on.  I have now transferred them to my external hard drive.  Isn’t technology wonderful?!

While I was putting the jacket in my Ravelry store, I noticed again the option of selling in aid of Haiti.  There have been a lot of initiatives like that over the past couple of weeks, but I will not be joining in.   All my giving is done through the bank by Gift Aid, so that it is traceable and the charity gets the extra 28%.

Between stressful things, like the radio and doing the numbers for a fitted raglan Fair Isle in 10 sizes, I have been playing with beads and charms.  One thing Barbara taught me to do was to deal with dangles – so I have been having fun:

Some have a theme suggested by the beads – like the sea or the autumn leaves.  Others have a theme with the charms – like the dogs and cats.  Others are built round the knitter’s charms:

I buy my beads and charms from quite a few different sources, all through the net.  There is no one place that has everything I want, and another mindless occupation is trawling the net for more.  They don’t take up as much space as yarn, but they do weigh heavier….

I have been knitting, too.  The red gansey has both sleeves done and the neck on the needles.  The idea is to do the maths for that this weekend, so that I can wipe my subconscious mind clear of the FI’s numbers.  Then on Monday I can check the FI and get that off.  That is the theory….

There is due to be a discussion about knitting on Radio Scotland’s Radio Café tomorrow (Tuesday, 19^th Jan).  It will be based on the Scotland part of the British Museum’s initiative ‘A History of the World’ launched today.

Scotland has 60 or 100 items (depends on who you listen to!!) including Sanquhar gloves in the ‘collection’.  The discussion will start there and go on to knitting today, probably including next year’s Knit Camp and Ravelry – as it will be live I don’t know exactly what will come out of it.

The people involved will be Kate Davies (http://needled.wordpress.com/) , the presenter Clare English and myself – there is also another person whose name I didn’t catch who will be in the studio with Clare for something else and who may take part.  Kate will be in Edinburgh and I will be in Kirkwall.

The programme starts at 13.15 GMT, and we are due to be ‘on’ at about 13.30.  The producer, Carol Purcell, went to a knitting group in Edinburgh last week and there will probably be clips from that too.  The discussion, or bits of it, will probably be on Radio 4 at some point too.

To listen in real time, go here and click on listen live.  To listen at a later stage before next Tuesday go here .  If they change that link, go to the Radio Scotland link above and click on R in the programme finder, then Radio Café….

The collection is online here and the page for the gloves is here!

I don’t usually moan here, so I have not mentioned that I came back from India with a cold, and went straight in to another between Christmas and New Year, which turned into a cough.  That would not go, despite my patent remedy of a good single malt with hot water and Lemsip.  As a result I have had no energy, and didn’t want to do anything I should be doing.

So as usual, I played my psychological games with myself, and for every couple of hours knitting the gansey, I allowed myself to play with beads for a bit!!  Yep – I know it is silly, but it WORKS!!

While South I had ordered a good selection of beads from Jilly Beads. I have used them several times before, and they are excellent – fast service and extremely good prices for the UK.  Almost as soon as they came home, I was sorting them to see what I had got – their mixes are particularly good.  And then it was not long (another hour at the gansey) before I was sorting ones out to make myself a hand bag charm…

I was given a lovely purple bag for Christmas by my brother (I suspect his wife chose it!!), which had some deep aqua embroidery – exactly the same colour as the cashmere scarf I got in Mumbai.  The other colour in the embroidery was lime.  So I put together a selction of possible beads.  Some were new and others I had had for a while.  I also found some charms – flowers and stars as they follow the embroidery, plus a couple of others that went..

Then came the playing….  What fun!  I fiddled with the beads and made up 7 dangles before joining them together with jump rings to make a chain.  As ever, there were some beads I didn’t use – I like to have too many out so that I have a choice right to the end.

And the finished article in close up and on the bag with the scarf:

Now all I need is to be able to go out with it…!!

I have hardly been out in the week since I have been back, but I did remember to take the camera the other day.  It was mid afternoon, and the sun was setting behind the hill.  The ferry had just come in (or was just about to go out – steaming anyway!!)  (The island in the background is Burray.)

This is the new ferry, The Pentalina, which came in to service last summer.  She is a catamaran, and runs from the ‘Hope to Gill’s Bay, just near John o’Groats.  I haven’t been on her yet, but I am told she is very nice.  She is owned by a local businessman, Andrew Banks, who battled against all odds, the Council and the Government to get her going.  She runs without subsidy – unlike the Northlink Ferries – and Andrew says that if he got the subsidies Northlink get the service would be free….

Andrew also owns an old ferry moored in the bay.  She was once the mail boat, which came several times a week from John o’Groats to South Ronadlsay, to a slip on the Dam of Hoxa.  From there ‘green roads’ went straight over the hill and into the ‘Hope.  Those ‘roads’ are still there, and make a lovely walk in the summer.

Turning round, you see the village of the ‘Hope.  My house is not visible, but is behind the white houses arrowed.  As it is an old house, it is not as high as the later ones, so cannot be seen.  Those houses on the sea side of the road were built in the Nineteenth Century.

I always say there is never a day when there is not something in flower along the verge.  That day there were some wild garlic flowers out – why?? – and as ever, there was the Veronica, a purple Hebe shrub which grows everywhere here and flowers all year round.  With its glossy dark green leaves and purple flowers, it should be prized, but because it grows without care it tends to be considered almost as a weed…

…and I have an exhusting, if not bad, couple of days!!

But the big thing is, I GOT home.  The flight I was on from Bristol to Inverness was cancelled on Saturday and Monday, but went on Sunday.  And the flight from Inverness to Kirkwall was almost the last which got out of Inverness before more heavy snow caused chaos.  They have all the right stuff there to clear the runways, but when the snow is actually falling fast they can’t keep up.

After leaving in snow, having a journey in mainly clear skies over snow, I got back to snow in Kirkwall.  But none here in the ‘Hope!!  And over the past couple of days there has been more snow over most of Orkney – only South Ronaldsay has missed the showers….  There is still hard packed ice on the side roads, but where I am there is nothing – the wind and cold has dried up all the moisture….  (Takes me back to my Chemistry teaching days – water goes from solid to gas directly at about -5 C, and it has been below that…!!)

I have been working none-stop since I got back, but am not yet on top of things.  I have dealt with most of the post and most of the emails, but not all.  I have started my tax return (which has to be in by the end of January) but not finished it.  I have, however, finished a tea cosy for  my friend Ruth….

The story behind this goes as follows:  One day back in the autumn, we were talking and she was saying that these days you can’t seem to get a proper tea cosy – one which will actually keep the tea hot.  her partner Tony likes his tea stewed – but HOT!!  I remembered a pattern I had in a pre-war booklet, and decided to make her one for Christmas.

The pattern called for 3 ply yarn, but I decided to use odds and ends of J&S 2 ply jumper weight (ie 4 ply/fingering).  I picked out twice the weight it said, in colours which would not show the tea stains, and took it away with me to knit in Inverness before I left the country.  However, I didn’t take quite enough wool, so I posted it home to myself, and in the past couple of days I have done the final bits, made a huge pom-pom to go on the top, and finally wrapped it in bright pink paper!!  If you are going to do OTT, do it properly!!

The purple (the bottom strip) and teal (the brightest one) are colours which do not photograph well, but here it is.  I don’t HAVE a teapot to use for modelling, but the right hand one is over a jug to show the handle:

And I will tell you about the tea towel it is modelled on another day….

That was 2009; what about 2010??  One thing is certain – I will not have time to be bored…!!

For a start, I am going to be doing some teaching holidays from home.  Some of you may know that in the past I have led fibre adventures under the title Northern Isles Fibre Adventures, or NIFA for short.  The doctor stopped such jaunts a while ago, but this year I am going to be doing some more, albeit scaled down.  The transport links have changed, so the Faro islands are out of the question, and this time the Shetland end will be led by Kathy Coull, who is based on Fair Isle and who has a flat in Lerwick.  That leaves me with Orkney!

Each trip will have a slightly different focus, and will be built round a week in the ‘Hope based at The Old Harbour Master’s House.  Now that I have the place up and working, I have a big studio upstairs for spinning and photography etc, and a big table downstairs for knitting.  My books are now all out, and my stash of fibre and yarn is all easily get-at-able, so that I can accommodate people doing different things at the same time.  I have a wheel on order from Hamish Polson, so that I will have 6 different wheels of different types to suit different abilities – there should be something for everyone.  Oh, and the kitchen was designed with dyeing in mind!!

I am very much looking forward to the May week, when Margaret Peterson is coming down from Shetland to teach alongside me.  She is a very well known lace spinner and knitter from Unst, and that week will focus on spinning and knitting fine yarn for lace.  The timetable will be arranged so that folk can do all spinning, all knitting, or some of each.  Margaret has a great sense of humour, too, so plenty of laughter is guaranteed!

At times I will be teaching south as well.  A couple of things are not yet fully organised, but I am definitely doing the Knit Camp and Ravelry Day in Stirling in August (mainly Fair Isle, with a bit of lace design), and then, with Connie of J&S,  leading a trip up to Shetland straight after that.  I am also going to be teaching at the iKnit weekend in September, but we haven’t yet decided exactly what!!  I will also be going back to The Wool Shed near Aberdeen – dates to be arranged…

What with all that and my parents’ diamond wedding in early September and helping take Nigel on holiday later that month, I am going to be busy!  As always, I will be knitting, writing about knitting and designing all year.  All I need is more time….

So thank you for all your good wishes, and here is to a very good new year for one and all!!

Like the rest of the world, I tend to spend some time in this dead week between Christmas and Hogmanay  look back on the year that is nearly over.  And for the first time in 6 years it isn’t all doom and gloom!!

For a start, this year I have neither moved house nor had the shadow of moving hanging over me.  I have had a whole year back in my house, and am beginning to get it the way I want it.  No, it isn’t finished yet, but it is very definitely getting there!!

Work-wise it has been a busy year, with a couple of teaching trips south – both very enjoyable and both leading to other things.  I have continued my work with Yarn Forward magazine and with ColourMart, and have done more stuff for Jamieson and Smith.  (This is beginning to sound like an advert – sorry!!)

Behind the scenes, I have had a new computer and a new camera.  The computer is very fast indeed (don’t tell son Ben – it is faster than his!!) and that does make a difference when you do as much work on it as I do.  Photo editing is probably half as fast again – it might not seem much, but that can mean an extra hour a day to spend knitting or spinning rather than in front of a screen.

The camera is still very new.  As an ex pro, I have been very much missing my SLRs, but my hands cannot cope with the weight.  My new  beastie is a type known as a bridge – it has most of the features of an SLR, but it doesn’t take interchangeable lenses.  That means that the weight is kept right down.  I only got it a couple of weeks before I went away, and have so far only done one proper shoot with it, but those results were excellent.  (I didn’t take it away with me – brand new Leica optics and dessert sand don’t mix!!)

As well as new patterns, I have brought out the series of CD-roms.  The impetus for this was a combination of Ravelry Day and folk wanting more pix of places like North Ronaldsay, Fair Isle and Unst.  The results are selling well, and one of the jobs when I get home is to arrange for another batch of all five titles to be made.

Another new venture, and one only in Orkney and Aberdeen so far, is stitch markers.  I just love making these, and I have been selling loads through the shop across the road.  I mount them on cards, and some folk are just buying them as cards.  In the house, I also sell them on key rings and stitch holders.  I have got as far as taking some pix for putting them on Etsy, but haven’t had time to get any further – they just keep selling!!  But this winter I hope to build up a stock…

Away from work, the new man in my life arrived in February.  A friend noticed him advertised in the paper and that was it.  When he first came to meet me, it was clear that he had a very sweet nature, but was totally un-disciplined.  But he learnt fast and now is a pleasure to be with.  Scottie and I do find him a bit bouncy at times: he MAY calm down after his second birthday – we will see.

And then, of course, the year ended with my first proper holiday in nearly 4 years.  I do love the Middle East…  Hopefully I might get back there before too long…..