We arrived at our home for a week, pretty tired and I was also feeling unwell with a heavy cold. I have picked this up somewhere along the way and my poor sleeping has probably made me more susceptible. Fortunately, I had planned for this to be a lazy day and that is how it turned out.
I had a bit of trouble finding the house because I used satnav that took me too far up the road and I missed the turn. I parked at the top of the road because Dexter needed to allowed to relieve himself having been in the car or on the ferry for 9 hours. I decided to walk back and see if I could find the right road, which we did so then we collected the car.
After feeding Dexter and unloading and unpacking, we both had a rest. The house is perfect – we have a kitchen diner, a separate living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom. There is a washing machine, wifi, a dishwasher as well as things we need in the kitchen, well nearly everything….. I was unable to find a chopping board anywhere or anything to drain rice so I’ll buy the house a couple of presents.
Once we had a rest, Dexter and I set off to walk into town which is a couple of miles away. It was windy and wet, not really raining just wet, drizzly kind of weather with a howling gale so I didn’t bother taking the camera and my phone had run out of battery. Lerwick is interesting and we walked along the main shopping street and then walked on to the Museum to sign in for Wool Week. It turned out that the Museum is a short distance from the shopping area so, despite checking the map a few times, we were on the right track.
I went in, signed in and got my good bag which is a tote bag with some leaflets inside and then we carried on walking. I found a different route back to the road to get back to the house which was quicker from the Museum and we came back for lunch and another rest.
In the afternoon we went for a walk and I took a couple of photos of the view from the end of the road where we are staying ie about 100 metres away. We went for a walk around the headland and then back to the house.
Having made some food, I left Dexter in the house and went to the Wool Week opening which was fun. There were 350 people there, most of them wearing their Bousta Beanie hats. I have made one which I wore all day but didn’t wear in the evening. We had a welcome from the Shetland Islands Amenity Trust and also from the patron of the week, Gudrun Johnston. This was followed by a book launch of photos and poems for the Alzheimer’s Society of Scotland. The poet read out a few of the poems and if she could talk the whole book, I would buy it. Hearing the dialect spoken by a native makes it much more understandable than seeing the words written down. The photos are all about people’s hands while they are knitting and comes from the idea that our hands reflect our lives and many people with Alzheimer’s can still knit. They may not be able to knit the complex patterns that they used to but they can still knit squares and keep their hands busy.
The book launch was followed by a fashion show with garments and scarves by local designers as well as a selection from Gudrun Johnston and Andy Ross. Andy Ross gave the final talk about Shetland Tweed. Actually it was a talk about how he came revive Shetland Tweed and now sells it. It was unclear how many weavers are weaving cloth although he has a loom at his studio on Yell. There was some music from a local group at the end but I left because my cold was getting the better of me.
A good nights sleep has made me feel infinitely better so it was probably sleep deprivation as much as the cold that made me feel so awful.
travellingwiththreads 