Here at Keldaby we raise the beautiful, gentle and shyly friendly angora goats that provide Moonshine Design with the cloudsoft and highly lustrous mohair used in our fine selection of hand dyed, hand woven goods. Wrap yourself in a throw, toss a scarf or shawl around your shoulders or luxuriate in our fabulous ruanas. Step back to a more romantic era in a Western Isles hood. Discover the magic of mohair socks dyed in every color of the rainbow.
Today I began to arrange my studio so visitors will be able to come here safely and spend time properly distanced! I spent part of the afternoon tying up dozens of pairs of socks which will be set up in baskets under the two tents leaving plenty of room inside for everyone to look at the rest of my items. And I am hurrying to finish one last hat–it’s a beauty–before Saturday morning. The goats were shorn last week during our lovely late Indian Summer days and will have enough fleece grown back before the really cold weather arrives.
Here they are just before shearing
If you are planning to visit the farm this weekend I recommend that you arrive by 3 in the afternoon. Keldaby Farm lies below Catamount Hill–a feature we failed to notice when we were buying the farm–and the sun is already sinking below our horizon by 4 o’clock this time of the year.
I’ll finish this hat tomorrow. Look at these beautiful ringlets from our little flock of colored Angoras
Too bad it wasn’t the weekend for the CRAFTS OF COLRAIN TOUR but it was a time for getting so much accomplished in the dye studio. I spent two full days in the beautiful Indian Summer weather dyeing mainly yarn but also quite a few socks. And here’s the proof!
I can’t wait to weave these yarns into throws and shawls. And knit with them too. And of course, I do sell the yarn, which is made for us at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney VT –65 percent our mohair, 35 percent wool, both single and two-ply–as well.
Fenris, our perfect Keeshond
and our crazy terrier-corgi Elli
Our super friendly pooches are ready to greet you!
What a spectacular day today has been!! Bright blue sky, gentle breezes and prospects for a happier future. I am already planning how I will set up under my tents so everyone will have plenty of space for social distancing because we’re just one week away from our CRAFTS OF COLRAIN STUDIO TOUR–oh please, Lady Luck, let next weekend will be as beautiful as this one! I decided to take a few photographs of my latest work, several nuno-felted scarves. As you probably know already, this is the process of felting wool and mohair onto silk, creating one pattern on the front and an entirely different design and look on the back. Here are my three new scarves:
There are so many changes as we segue from Indian summer to late fall–standard time arrived early this morning and now it’s dark at 5, closing us in next to our trusty woodstove which is throwing out many, many BTUs, making us very happy. And now it is truly MOHAIR SEASON here at Moonshine Design and we are waiting for your visits either online or in person (masked, of course!) at the Crafts of Colrain Studio Tour, November 14th and 15th.
Just two weeks out and I’m trying to finish up several projects. Yesterday was a glorious fall day–we’ve had so many this year!–so I decided to work out in my dye studio. Also I had to finish up a special order hat. Aced it!!
Our annual studio tour here in Colrain Massachusetts will go mainly online this year, Saturday and Sunday, November 14th and 15th, from 10 am to 5 o’clock. And if you haven’t, be sure to go to the tour website at https://craftsofcolrain.com
HOWEVER, weather (and we’ve nearly always been lucky) and COVID restrictions permitting Moonshine Design at Keldaby Farm WILL BE OPEN for visitors. There will be baskets and baskets of socks set out under our tents!
A limited number of people will be allowed at a time into the studio to see the rest of our items. All the studio doors and windows will be open and everyone must be wearing a mask.
This morning we decide to make a real Scottish breakfast–minus the haggis and black sausage–and we sit around with cups of coffee enjoying our good cooking and scanning the sky for weather signs. It’s a cloudy grey but it looks like it will be just fine for our afternoon cruise up the western coast of Mainland on the Hamnavoe ferry. This is Nature Week and we’re already ticketholders for this trip.
At noon we head to the pier and are soon in line to join all our fellow travelers. We’ve never been on this ferry; it is more elegant than I expected, with lounges and bars and dining facilities. Exhibits have been set up by various nature groups and there are speakers discussing various aspects of island life. I listen to one from a birding society–she talks about the precipitous decline in the seabird populations–kittiwakes, skuas, fulmars, razorbills, guillemots and puffins–all of them have lost between 60 and 80 percent of their number. Climate change, of course, is the principal cause–from the bottom of the food chain (cold water plankton replaced by inappropriate warm water plankton) to the loss of other food sources which either no longer exist or appear too early in the season to be available when needed. We watch the birds dip and then soar above the water. It makes me sad. Everywhere as Neil Young sang “nature is on the run” and that was in the 1970s.
We pass Yesnaby and see the sea stacks, sail past the Bay of Skaill–Scara Brae just out of sight–around Marwick Head and the monument to Kitchener, then recognize the lighthouse on the Brough of Birsay. The boat about-faces at Eynhallow and we can glimpse Rousay not far off. I pay more attention to the shoreline on the way back trying to picture some of our drives along this coast. Without a decent camera I feel stymied but take many shots anyway–they are all terrible, unsurprisingly! As we head back into Hoy Sound however it is a perfect time to photograph Stromness for sketching later. We’ve never had the chance before to see the town from the water.
Near Yesnaby
Approaching Stromness
And to starboard, Graemsay
From the ferry
Back on land we buy Orkney ice creams, then head back to the cottage where we watch Four Weddings and a Funeral–still funny.
It’s a grey rainy day so we’re spending the morning knitting and drawing and then as the weather clears a bit we walk into town checking out a few stores, some of which we had never been in before.
After lunch, Jason Scott, Rosemary’s right hand man, renovation carpenter, fixer-upper and general manager, stops around so we invite him in for tea. We had met him two years ago during the clogged water pipe, drainage, no hot water crisis when he had twice performed miracles to get us back on track. He told us all about his trip last winter to stay with the Andersons at their home in South Africa and we learn a bit more about Rex (Orcadian) and Rosemary (Africaans, I think). He shows us photos and then tells us that Rosemary has bought another Stromness house that he will be re-doing. Although from the outside it looks very substantial and well-preserved he says it will take a lot of work to restore. No one has lived in it for years and before that it had suffered from neglect. Then he pulls out photos of the cottage we’re staying in so we can see what it had been like before the renovation. He’s definitely a talented guy!
Here’s a photo of the new house Jason will be redoing this year
At 3 o’clock we walk down to the little restaurant near the ferry terminal, Julia’s, to meet Jen and Jill’s friends from Vermont, another Anderson couple–no relation–Rosamund and Julius. We had met them at Jen’s for lunch before our first trip in 2014 when they had given us much information about places to go, where to buy supplies, good restaurants. They have owned for a number of years, maybe 20 or so, a house and forty acres on Egilsay where they spend a good portion of the year. Now they have finally acquired an old pick-up which they leave in Tingwall so they have transportation for Mainland shopping. We could actually see (we think!) their house when we took the ferry to Rousay. We discuss the persistence of the Pictish body and facial type in Scotland and even on Orkney while we drink our coffees and enjoy the pastries.
It’s too early when we leave Julia’s to pick up our dinner of fish and chips from the Peedie Chippie van parked right next door on Saturdays (Fridays it’s in Finston where we had bought our dinners on our last trip) so we head back to the cottage for a bit of knitting, then drive back to pick up our dinners later. It’s official, at least to me, that we are now on the downhill slide toward the end of our adventure. I’m trying not to indulge in premature nostalgia! I finish the scaruffle I’ve been knitting, we watch Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicolson…and so ends the evening.
Jen has once again found something new for us. (We keep telling her that she would make a terrific tour guide for her own company–thorough, organized, enthusiastic, people-oriented, reliable–in a word or two creatively professional. She isn’t tempted!) Today we will return to the Tomb of the Eagles because there will be a guide there who does story-telling. The site is at the south end of South Ronaldsay, the most southerly of the Orkney archipelago and connected by way of Burray to Mainland via a couple of bridges and the Churchill Barriers. Our storyteller is a young German woman who is okay but not totally scintillating. Perhaps the story she tells isn’t one of the better ones. We skip the milelong walk out to the tomb (we were there just two years ago) and have our lunch on the beach followed by a bit of beach-combing. http://www.tomboftheeagles.co.uk
Then it’s up to St Margaret’s Hope at the north end of the island and a visit to The Workshop and Loft Gallery. www.workshopandloftgallery.co.uk I have sworn off buying any more Orcadian sweaters and so of course immediately find one I want. So does Lynn. We buy them and then head to Robertson’s (where last trip we couldn’t have a dessert while others were eating lunch–“That’s not how it’s done here” she had said.) Fortunately that waitress was not on hand and we happily had our cappuccinos and beers. https://www.orkneyfoodanddrink.com
Next on the agenda is Kirkwall, not easily achieved as there is a stretch of road with construction happening–no sign of this when we had headed out this morning. Slow going and so unusual–generally it’s sheep in the road that tie us up. Lynn had ordered a thumb ring at Aurora and we pick it up now and then Lynn and I find a shop that sells real flags–heavy-duty, double-stitched, not printed Orkney flags for home. We each buy one; our first ones are tattered and faded after two New England winters. There is nothing on the notice board at the Reel to suggest our musician acquaintances we met in Rousay would be performing that weekend.
Here’s one of the new flags behind a very serious Lynn
Back at the cottage I make Jazz Chops, porkchops that have been browned in a salted cast iron skillet then braised in white wine with sliced apples, sliced onion, garlic, honey, and nutmeg until tender. After dinner we stroll down to the Ferry Inn where we think, we hope, there may be live music. The bar is packed with regulars but no music. We have beer or soda, Jill enjoys a mild flirtation and then we head back home feeding all the cats we encounter from our stashes of kitty treats.
Knowing that we will be spending a long time on Hoy, and because it is definitely cooler today, we have oatmeal for breakfast before heading off to catch the ferry at Houton. We’re on our way, and even before we dock in Lyness it is immediately clear that Hoy has a very different geology from the other islands. There are real hills here and the land lies differently. https://www.scottishgeology.com/best-places/hoy-orkney/
Catching the ferry
We start off widdershins around the coast stopping, of course, for coffee and scones at the first little restaurant we see. Disappointing it is, the coffee is weak and scones unremarkable. We continue on over the top of the island to the town of Rackwick, right on the bay at Rora Head, at the end of the divide between the two high hills of Hoy. The Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack, is nearby, but not nearby enough! so we walk south instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_Hoy
We first encounter a building which had been a shepherd’s bothy but is now a hostel where today a half dozen bright orange tents have been pitched. Boy scouts we’re told. We enter, there is a peat fire burning and a very rudimentary communal kitchen; overall it looks much like the farmhouse at Kirbister or Corrigall except for the intrusion of a number of well-worn mid century chairs.
Then we follow a sheep trail right along the beach side and look out on to the still-brown heather covered hillsides. It’s very windy. We are all bundled up and the trail is tight so we don’t walk very far and soon turn back first to see a bit more of the town and then to eat our lunch in the car. (We are repeatedly glad to have our boxy, roomy Tepec as it is far too windy to sit outside today.)
This is the Nature Week in Orkney and so on our drive back toward the east side of the island we stop where there is an eagle watch in progress. White eagles have been reintroduced and this pair, nesting high up on the hillside, have two chicks. We all look through the telescopes set up by the roadside but truthfully I can’t say that I have seen them. This is the same place where we walk up to the Dwarvie Stane. There is a small group with a tour guide so we informally join them to listen. Why it is there, how it got there and what it was used for or meant, even its age is mostly conjecture.
When they call it Dwarf’s Stone you can see why. It’s pretty tight, trying to get in to see the two hand-hewn chambers
The afternoon is passing quickly. We come across a sad little gravestone with its story of a young unmarried woman who killed herself after becoming pregnant and being shunned by the villagers.
On our coastal drive we see a bay filled with fish farming sites.
We stop at another tea room cum gift shop, Emily’s, and indulge in more cappuccino. (Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s wrong to drink cappuccino after breakfast!) and this one was very much better. Then we try to find some of the WWII sites–Lyness was the home base of the Royal Navy–but the museum is closed. We do find the building that was the communications center (Wee Fae). I’m sorry to once again miss seeing some of this history. English TV shows like A Family at War and When the Boat Comes In with their references to Scapa Flow have always fascinated me.
But now it’s time to get back on the ferry and it’s home again. Lynn’s pork stew has been slow-cooking all day–its aroma hits us even before we open the door! It’s delicious and very welcome after a day of bruising winds. Later we watch the rest of RuPaul’s Drag Race to see who won.
