It was a blustery one! Some ferries were cancelled, we heard, and while flights weren’t cancelled in the morning, according to one guide, it was borderline—if it got any windier, they would be.
This was our Old Scatness and Laxdale Farm tour day. Because we wanted to visit a couple other farm yarn shops in the south of the island, Jen and I took the car and followed the bus.
Despite the weather, we enjoyed roaming the Iron Age wheel houses and hearing about the discovery of the site in the 1970s and the way the settlers there had lived. There are three replica roofed buildings added to the site, too, that we were able to go into for a better idea of what the buildings were like in their time. It is truly amazing to think of the labour that went into constructing these homes.
After leaving Old Scatness, we moved on to Laxdale Farm, a much more commercial farming operation than the croft visited the previous day. Laxdale is run by Douglas and Sheila but was started by Douglas’s parents. His mother in one year recorded having knitted 146 pairs of gloves to sell. Could you imagine?
We loved the feel of this wool. It is certainly softer than either of the Jamieson shops’, and as we learned, they have their softest fleeces milled for their yarn and then sell the rest to a wool broker (Jamieson’s or Jamieson & Smith).
The sheep here were not as comfortable with people as at Breckenlea, as they spend nearly all their time roaming fields and not interacting a lot with humans. No scratching of heads or chins here. The farm has over 700 sheep, in all different colours.
We’ve learned that Shetland sheep are more independent than some other breeds. They are quite small, and they birth easily, without the issues some other sheep have (they can get up off their backs).
We got to see a sheep be hand-sheared. It was expertly done and didn’t take long. The sheep was very docile through the process.
After that, Douglas showed us how a fleece is judged, and we got to feel several different fleeces.The fleece is about 10 micron near the sheep’s neck, 30 micron by the rump, and 20 micron in the middle. The staples are long and very strong (both of which help them score higher)! (On a side note, in one of our classes, we saw a baby jumper knitted by the instructor’s great-grandmother and passed down for generations, and it looked brand-new—if you want non-pilling wool, Shetland wool is the way to go!)
The tour done, Jen and I went for lunch at Da Moors Cafe in Cunningsburgh and then set out for Aister’Oo and Uradale Farms. Neither was super-easy to find, but we did eventually make it to both (and spend some money!).
Back in Lerwick, we decided to tour the Shetland Museum and Archives. They have fantastic displays showing the way of life for Shetlanders. Of course, fishing, sheep farming, and knitting have long been main industries. (The island has 23,000 people but 230,000 sheep!) Since the 1970s, oil also has provided work for locals, and in more recent years, wind farms have provided energy that goes all the way to mainland Scotland. But the textiles are what most interested me….
We then drove over to the police station and courthouse since we have both binge-watched the show Shetland. Our guide Anita from the day before let us know that the interior police station footage on the show is shot in a TV studio in Edinburgh (if I remember correctly!). A lot of locals, including some people in Anita’s family, have been extras in the show.
We ended our day with takeout pizza from The Nomadic Pizzeria (highly recommend!) and an evening in spent knitting!
