Crafting on holiday

We have been on holiday recently to some islands off the west coast of Scotland, known as the Western Isles or the Outer Hebrides.  We stayed in a traditionally thatched cottage on the island of Benbecula, sandwiched between North Uist and South Uist.

If you have a look at a map of these islands, you will notice that from the air it looks like a whole lot of puddles - these are very small lochs called lochens.  Among other things my Mr likes fly-fishing so this was fisherman's heaven for him.  He did buy me a rod but I just wasn't really in the mood for it, so this is what I did, whilst snuggled down amongst the heather:

Crocheted flowers inside hexagons.  I started this little project a while ago and it is perfect to keep me occupied whilst travelling (and whilst being a fishing companion)

Here you can see both Mr and myself happily enjoying our holiday in our own preferred activities!

The ferry ride over from mainland Scotland is 5 hours and in that time I really managed to get very quick at making these up, I even perfected my techniques on the ride over so much that I no longer have to refer to the pattern.  On the ferry ride home I even received a compliment on my crochet work from a stranger who said in a spanish accent "so is a flew-er?  Is buw-tee-foo"

Here is my successful fisherman with a 1.5 lb freshwater brown trout.
He also caught a 1 lb and we had one each for our tea that evening.

Our first week the weather was grey, cloudy, wet and windy.  I wasn't very impressed by my Mister's choice of holiday destination at all - especially when mainland Scotland seemed to be basking in the first spell of sunshine we've had in years.

I'm not a happy holidayer = wet, grey and windy.

But thankfully the Outer Hebrides (and Mr) redeemed themselves when we started to enjoy some of that sunshine in our second week of the holiday.  I did wear some me-made dresses but only in the 3 evenings when we went out, otherwise it was a comfy-clothes kind of holiday, learning the history of the people, exploring the nature reserves and photographing the scenery.
For those of you who may be interested, here are a couple snaps from our holiday:

the many lochens of Benbecula

beautiful and peaceful beaches everywhere

remains of an ancient stone circle

wild flowers are protected, known as machair

Disclaimer for the unscrupulous:  These photos were taken by myself so please do not copy or use them without direct permission from me.  Thanks.

I am on Holiday!

 Just in case you have been wondering why I haven't made any posts this month, it is because I am spending all of December meeting and greeting family I haven't seen in four years! It is a very busy month for us, so no sewing at all to share. But I am getting to wear some of the things I made in preparation for the trip at least, and I've been able to visit two fabric shops so far, so sewing is still on my mind.  I am sure I will be able to share some inspiration once I return in January.

A Wedding

Friends of ours have six children ( I know!!! ) and so money can be a bit tight, so when their eldest daughter announced her engagement, I was happy to say Yes and help them out with the photos on her big day.

Let me say that I am NOT a photographer at all, but I do love weddings. It was really very trusting of them to give such a huge responsibility to an amateur like me, so I wanted to do the photos justice.

My camera confidence is at it's very lowest with the dull interior lights and unfortunately it rained the whole day so the photos had to be taken inside (apart from 10 minutes of light drizzle when we dashed outside for a few portraits of the bride and groom). But I tried my best and have spent the last two week's worth of free time going over them using the magical Adobe Photoshop.

So here are a few of my favourites.

Which one do you like best?