Fair Isle in Stitches

Sorry for the lack of posting !

Between multiple BBQ evenings, Music evenings at the obbs, dances in the hall & birthday parties, time doth runneth to short.

I.S. Ive had to put stitching to the side for the moment, I just never get a quiet moment any more to be able to do anything, they joys of summer !

Changes Afoot and allllll dat.


I'm taking a peerie swing the other way regards to blogging.


From now on, despite the fact that you know we live on F.I. I wont be blogging F.I. much at all. Instead, all that will be blogged will be us & our tiny wee parcel of fenced in grunn, which could as well be anywhere.

Himself is away at the moment, went off a member of the coastguard team, part of the ferry crew, road crew, wind mill (ok split hair then ! ) Aerogenerator engineer (that better !) and will return all that +++ Fireman.... We need a bigger porch to fit all the uniforms in !

It gets seriously quiet, in fact deathly quiet here when himself is away, the phone never rings, unless its himself that is, no one comes round & if it werent for my having to take the kids to & from school & visit the shop, I'd have no contact with the outside world other than the puter at all. I've reached the point where, due to the horrible wet, windy & cold weather, I cant do anything outside because Robyn does not like wet, cold, windy & furthermore hates to be bored while mum trys to catch up on weeding the tatties & the walls are starting to close in on me.

More and more I'm starting to find this a very hurtful place to live in, I've lived in far far smaller populations & had more contact with those around me. Living here really does make you question yourself, whats wrong with you, why are you so socially un-acceptable, its not a nice feeling to face up to the fact that in reality, you may live in the midst of 70 odd people, but your on your own.

The Citril Finch seems to have gone, It was around ours late yesterday afternoon & hasnt been seen since, but as im not a fully fledge member of the klu klux twitcher scene, my sighting was discounted (as a figment of my imagination no doubt), but if no-body tells you its been lost then how the heck are you supposed to know that they want sightings called in straight away.

I'm sitting here with winter on my mind.. Yeah I know, send us all into fits of manic depression why dont ya.... Its summer, we have to budget for winter. Now that we're no longer doing B&B we're only using half the house (13 rooms remember) and we just cant do the massive cost of heating all the house, so, the west wing will be shut down, heaters turned off, doors closed etc.

Anyhoo, I'll go take my misery back to conversations with the walls.

Citril Finch !! Auld Haa this afternoon.. Excited yet ???

Ok , so for none birdy types.. Its a first for Fair Isle & it looks like its also a first for the UK.

Lots of these in this week, over 600 visitors all expecting tea & homebakes, my life has become an endless round of batch baking scones, bannocks & oatcakes for the moment.


Anyhoo.... Dems growing !

Look what I found this morning !

An eventful morning thus far.

While feeding the chooks I discovered where wee noisy duck is nesting, down among the old midden & she's sitting on at least 12 eggs, will have to erect a cat proof fencing frame over the nest by the end of the week so that kitty isnt having young duck for breakfast & lunch once hatching starts.

And our first lamb has been born, a massive lamb which had to be given a wee bit of help getting past its shoulders, no idea what it is yet, just relieved that mum & lamb are both fine & bonding.

Nothing from Suzie as yet, although she has bagged up, being her first litter of piglings, it could be up to 10 days before she farrows, poor thing, I think Suzie is feeling very big & cumbersome.

Suzie pig was moved into the maternity unit yesterday evening, not even a slight show of stress from either Suzie or our boar Doodles at being seperated, they can still see & speak to eachother freely so seem to be very content with the setup. Suzie upon entering her new house, got straight into the business of re-arranging the deep straw bed to suit her.

It shouldnt be none to long before things start to happen for her, she's very bloated, uncomfortable & her rear end is swollen, a sure sign that we are on the verge of piglet arrival, so until then its a case of checking on her every hr day & night.


No sign of any lambs yet but a few of the ewes are bagged up & not far off, but in the meantime, half of the veg garden has been ploughed & rotovated so this week it will be the planting of 100kg of seed tatties & the preperation of quite a few seedbeds.

Its sunny ! the ground is seriously starting to dry out, & today we got the midden spread on tattie & veg patch no1. Finaly it feels like we are getting some place this year, although not without its frustrations. The 160 blocks that were supposed to be delivered to the ferry so we can finish the new pig run, did not appear, yes, as you can imagine, phone calls were made and the air turned slightly blue. We need this project finished within the next 2 weeks.


Anyhoo that Aside, I recieved a tip off that the program of events for this years fiddle frenzy had been posted. On checking it, I can only add that I am so glad I opted to camp for the 10 days that Im out (along with 4 others from various parts of the world) as the camp site is a mere 5 mins walk from where most of the workshops are held. It looks like Im going to return home pretty knackered ! but, with late night sessions at least someone had the brain wave not to start the daily tutoring workshops till 10.30am !

Even though we may only have the sun for just one day..

Movies.. We went to see Underdog ! Amber laughed so much right through it that come the end of the film I was laughing so much just at her.

Grand day today, brilliant sunshine right the way through, nipped up to a neighbour with one of my blazzin fiddles cd's, Lise is one of these brilliant folks who can play by ear, so she's going to learn a track called Catalina & the write down the score for me so I can learn it. On top of that I had an afternoon playing with Lise's grandfather working on the 7 step polka which they set me to on monday, almost got it just got to speed up the lillty bits a tiny tad, had a stab at The new rigged ship, but the ole 4th finger on the E string is still letting me down, getting that ole pinky to move with the dexterity needed to play this track is beyond me & im begining to wonder if it will ever not be so, ive just not got any lateral movement in my pinky when playing fiddle. Im working on it, drove everyone to near distraction this afternoon by doing an hr of scales on the E string to try and get some pinky response, hopefully if I keep doing that every day then one day, thine pinky shalt respond with light quickness.

But that aside, we had a stab at Maid behind the bar (which is a grand name for a tune of course) and ive got the 1st section note perfect & up to speed now, the 2nd section im working on (T Break ! ) It makes all the difference just being able to go play along with someone else & being able to watch how they finger & bow.