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.