Sunday 21 December 2008

T'Mill, blown down barns and well dressed westie and a lamb!






Well what a few days it has been! The wind is scary and I have to check that we are still here and we are although Lamsey's shelter is probably on it's way to St Kilda!
Went out for a christmas lunchy do on Thursday via the mill, it was pretty blowy up over the Clisham but arrived at the mill safely. Lots of lovely yarn for my stash, all in hanks. Asked about roving for Sheila - 'Oh' they said ' we throw that away - it's in the skip outside' Hmmm, so loaded up with wool and tweed and spied the skip - one of those great big ones but open at the ends. Went and had a nose and lo and behold bags and bags of roving type stuff - bearing in mind I was in my 'party' clothes rather than skip raiding gear I hoiked myself in and plodged around found a few bags that looked likely, boy was it cold my fingers had got to that snap off stage, so decided to extricate myself - that took some doing. Always much easier to get into a skip than it is to get out in my experience! Loaded it all and off we went having to use the wing mirrors cos of all the wool. tweed and rovings. Lovely drive over the Pentland road to Stornoway.
Sheila and John Finlay came round on Friday and collected the three bags in exchange for a frozen piece of their lamb/hoggett that had been taken to the abbatoir the last time Lizzie was home in November. I'll cook it slowly with some herbs and red wine and I am sure it will be delicious. Outside it was blowing a hooley and we still had to get to Lewis to take pictures of our blown away barn up in Ness and get Hamish to the vet for his vacs.
The barn in Ness had started to blow away at the end of November, with the roof lifting on one corner. Whilst we were waiting for it to be repaired the rest of the roof lifted and was hanging on precariously which meant the whole structure was dangerous with bits of roof flying around Ness. It was decided by the Comhairle that it had to come down so Danda and his digger went in and did the job.
I have been knitting Hamish a lovely warm tweedy coat in Aran weight tweed, I got the yarn from t'mill (getting in practise for the move to Yorkshire). Here are some pics of him in his new coat - I think his body language says it all! He is probably thinking pleeeaaase don't make me wear this ..... Hamish is very vocal and patrols the garden looking for things to fume at - cats, birds, sheep, anyone who dares to walk around the loch head, Donald John's pick up and of course the working collies, who visit occasionally to see what all the noise is about!
As it was quite fine yesterday I took some pics of Lamsey and here she is looking lovely, her fleece is beautiful. She has to have an eartag for when she moves to Sheila's - apparently a lamb being moved would have two eartags in case one gets lost or falls out. It is like us having our ears pierced so I hope there is local anaesthetic available!
Oh well back to the packing!

1 comment:

  1. In the skip again leda, I can just picture it.......

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