For weeks I have been pleading with Michael to send me some of his many, many excellent photos from Orkney and lo and behold this morning I was rewarded! Some of these are just plain better shots than those Lynn or I took. (Jill as driver didn’t get a lot of time to take pictures.) Others show a location, an event, a piece of Orcadian life from a slightly different perspective. I was going to try to insert them into the earlier posts at their appropriate places but who has that much time? Really? So instead I will put them here with labels and if you haven’t previously read some or all of the posts, here’s your opportunity to visit…or revisit…the sites.
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Above are some scenes from Stromness–a vivid blue door and a periwinkle one–Michael and a curious puss, Michael and Lynn and a couple of seascapes. I’m not sure where the bas relief plaque was.
Boats in the Stromness harbor…and one that has been beached behind a house. We all took pictures of the turquoise hull, Michael’s I think is best. Quilters, take notice. Wouldn’t some of these brightly painted boats be wonderful subjects for piecing?
We certainly did a lot of knitting and if Michael had had his way we would have spent even more time at the cottage knitting! Many an afternoon around 3 o’clock he would wistfully say “We could go back to the cottage now and knit.” But we were unmoved by his pleas. No, we’d say. “We can knit later. There are too many sights to be seen!”
The real Jill having her excellent cuppa’ This picture more than any captures an elusive part of Jill’s psyche.
We did a lot of toasting–every meal provided an opportunity
The site of the infamous “Sunday morning ‘J…F…C..!’ fallen ice cream cone” scene in front of St Magnus Cathedral and across the street from Judith Glue’s
These three shots are at the Earl’s Palace in Kirkwall, right across the side street from St Magnus. Check out that beautiful stone spiral staircase
Finding the perfect cabbage at Tesco’s
From time to time Michael passed his camera to one of us to capture the essence of Michaelness–a long-distance, by proxy, selfie I guess you could say. The last is best; he looks about 14–and I have to say, endearingly cute!
Scenes too beautiful to miss. The middle one is from the entrance to the Cuween Hill cairn…and look at the light of the setting sun on those stone walls
These too were taken on Cuween Hill (remember…where Michael sang an aria). Jill coming out was one of our favorites!
Thank goodness Michael got the photo of the Dounby butcher with her award-winner’s plaque
Jill enjoys a contemplative moment by the cairn on the beach
Some of the inventory at the Harray Potter studio
A Kirkwall barrister returns from lunch or is he perhaps making a plea bargain deal ?
And finally the perfect shot of the gulls who came to grab the lamb chop remains
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For those who perhaps wondered if I ever conquered netzpatent, if I…and even more, Michael…had had the patience to stick with it, here’s the proof. Jill made the excellent suggestion to finish up with something different so the scarf wouldn’t end abruptly with a blunt edge. Skeptical as I was, I added several rows of garter, then some stockinette, then doubled the number of stitches. It looked great so I picked up the stitches at the beginning and repeated, more or less, the same ruffled pattern I had created.
Today I suggested that we all begin to plan our 2016 trip to the Shetland Islands!