J & D > The Oystercatcher is a wading bird that forages on the shore and on marshy ground nearby, feeding on invertebrates. The English language name belies the fact that it does not dive to the sea bed to retrieve oysters. The Scots Gaelic name for this bird comes with an interesting story attached ; and like all the best stories, there’s a grain of truth.
Continue reading →J > Recently, on a day of strong winds and driving rain, Denise went into the motorhome to find or check something, and came back with the troubling news of damp patches on the ceiling. I had to go out in the rain and fix up a temporary protection, until a better day for me to look into it. Fortunately it wasn’t difficult to find the problem.
Continue reading →D > We’ve been lifting and dividing some too-big-for-their-boots phormiums, including a Phormium tenax ‘Sundowner’. When they are mature, the leaves are streaked with greens tinged with brown, red tinged with gold. Young leaves, however, have brighter colouring : the red is nearly pink, the gold is nearer to yellow, and the green has a hint of blue.
Continue reading →A home-grown, home-made lunch that exemplifies our values, and one that’s profoundly satisfying ; though on this occasion there’s a special reason for posting that’s certainly not every day, but is a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
Continue reading →J & D > It was back in 2017 that we first made use of material from our Phormium plants [Phormium Tenax – New Zealand Flax] for dyeing wool. The results were impressive – as regards quantity of material available, yield of colour, usefulness of colour, ease of use, and – if tentatively, the all-important colour-fastness, too. But we weren’t sure, then, which part of the plant contained the greatest concentration of colour.
Continue reading →D > Thanks to the coronavirus, we’ll not be selling any preserves this year, so no point in making them. What to do with the fruit? Can you guess?
Continue reading →J > It’s getting a little bit competitive! Denise in the Outer Hebrides, and daughter Catherine in Navarra. Sourdough – made with yeasts harvested from the wild.
Continue reading →J & D > It was a long and tedious winter : cold – but never frozen ; windy – but never wrecking ; and never worse than wringing wet. A non-descript, irritating sort of winter.
Thank heavens Spring arrived early, this year!
The Big Garden : A bowl of rocket, freshly picked from the walled garden
We’ve been up to the common grazings a lot recently – whether just for a walk about in the sunshine, or to gather up some goodness of the land. Most recently, that was pony poo – for the compost heap.
Continue reading →Two forms of natural encrustation, both with their uses in traditional crafts : White Crustose Lichen ; Wild Ochre
Continue reading →Denise >
We’ve added a new product to the Hebridean Woolshed’s online shop : Crotal – Parmelia saxatalis, the first in our new ‘department’ of Natural Dyes.
Crotal is a dye that is especially characteristic of the Outer Hebrides.
And it’s certainly as characteristic of our croft as are the outcrops and boulders of Lewisian Gneiss that the crotal grows upon!
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