One half of our croft is brimming with flouncing lambs and proud, sometimes panicked mums, but the other looks something like a Hollywood care home for fallen Divas. At this time of year Shetland sheep teenagers (hoggs), start to lose their winter locks, often leaving them with just a boa style ruff around their fairly…
Read MoreSEO v Baking Bread
I remember in college, with dissertation looming large, the back of the oven and the sticky bit under the fridge became vital preoccupations. So did eating chocolate and smoking rollies. Today’s “dissertation” is Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as SEO. For those who have managed to avoid the dreary art of marketing online, it is…
Read MoreA Willow bower for the ladies
A mysterious lull in orders has given me the opportunity to revamp the ailing hen shelter with an extra course of living willow. This is all in a bid to lure them out of the vegetable garden where they have been strutting and fluffing and dusting to their hearts’ content, eating slug eggs and pecking…
Read MoreHoof Rot and Spinning Lamborghinis
Just returned from a mid field, blizzard buffeted hoof clinic. Hands now mottled with iodine yellow and blue from the cold, but at least Ruby’s painful foot has been trimmed and dosed and will revert to smelling earthy and normal again rather than like halitosis. I must tell you about my new toy, on loan…
Read MoreKeep Shtoom
I have loads of pictures of personalised baby cushions that never see the light of … a screen. Annoyingly, but understandably I can’t go plastering pictures of them on social media until I’m sure the recipient has received it and by then the moment of marketing motivation has long gone. However, today I stumbled across…
Read MoreTime Out
The island can be a bit of a womb; Comforting and consuming but hard to leave . However, we managed last week and bolted down to Edinburgh for a city stint with scraggy dog in tow. Great to have my Damon Buzz (aka Phillip Pullman Dark Materials) nearby, however dogs in cities do cramp ones…
Read MoreGrass and Sky
Hold onto your chair and take a deep breath, for the moment has finaly arrived for a Mogwaii shade without beast, bird or bloom. It feels almost meditative to attend to theĀ washes of sky and the linear blades stitched around the base without beady eye or beak. I’ve always enjoyed zen simplicity, Wabi Sabi…
Read MoreHello Etsy my old friend…
It has been a while since I fretted on pan Atlantic forums about immoveable displays, deactivated listings or convo’d with customers about this, that or the next crafted ditty. Once again, I have been lured back into the Etsy marketplace. Two reasons: I am determined to up my visibility and consequently sales from comfortably occupied…
Read MoreTwigs, sticks and random squiggles
I have been pondering more abstract lampshades, roughly landscape lampshades but more about light and texture than hills and glens. However, I keep being distracted by birds and strange animals. I believe it is time to out my latent cravings and get chaotic. This afternoon’s walk to clear my head of product listing madness also…
Read MoreApplying some Mussel
So, it turns out I’m not the only one feeling the freeze from notonthehighstreet.com curation team as they attempt to purge the site of anything they deem to be un “trendy”! A short time spent on the forums shows that there are throngs of great makers spitting with fury as their cleverly executed and designed…
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