Category Archives: Hobbies

Free wheeling

Growing weeds and building a potters wheel

Things are growing. The fruit bushes are doing well, and potatoes and other vegetables are starting to look very good, and weeds are doing the best of all!

Unfortunately our strimmer was a little worse for wear at the beginning of the season, which meant that nettles and other nasties managed to get a bit of a head start. More than a head start in fact, but after enough new parts to equip a small shop, the strimmer now seems to be doing OK. That’s why we know the fruit bushes are doing OK – we can actually see them now…

Indoors, we haven’t had a great deal of time to ourselves, but we did manage to build a small potters wheel from odds and ends. It isn’t the smoothest piece of machinery you’ve ever seen, but it just about works.

Going potty

We take up an exciting new hobby

At last, we have started our latest practical hobby: Pottery.

We’ve had our name down for a local class for ages, and finally this month we ‘got the call’ and our first sortie into the world of pottery has begun!

Our aim is to be able to make practical items to enhance our life at the croft, but we couldn’t resist this slim blue vase – the first item to be fired and glazed so far.

Plenty more work on the wheel we hope – great fun, and the opportunity to paint ourselves with flying wet clay! At least, that’s our experience so far…

Looming on the horizon

Lambing and weaving

Just recently we were fortunate enough to secure a table loom from a friend of ours that no longer uses it. It seems quite big, with lots of levers and winding bits, and we haven’t got a clue how it works!

Once lambing is over and we can start sleeping at night again, we should be able to stay awake long enough to do some research on it.

The lambing itself has been hard work, but very rewarding nonetheless. We’re half way there at the moment, and looking forward to the end. With only six ewes, you might wonder what all the fuss is about, but six or sixty, you still don’t know when the lambing will actually take place and we prefer to keep an eye on them if we can. We actually think that some of the ewes hold there lambs in so they can enjoy their hotel-like accommodation for as long as possible…

Still, if we want to have some wool for our new loom, we do need to put some effort in now!