Tuesday 7 May 2013

The Scottish Borders

This was our first "driving through the countryside" day where we spent more time on the bus knitting and appreciating the beautiful rolling hills than we did walking around. Quite a few sheep in those hills with 2 lambs for every ewe. Some looked like they'd hardly had time to dry off.
The Scottish Borders is the name given to the region south of the Glasgow/ Edingburgh corridor, closer to the border with Britain where historically family allegiance was primordial, then allegiance to whichever was the winning side in the "reiving".
Whereas the vast majority of names from the north begin with the letter M, in this region there is more diversity:  Elliot, Armstrong, Nixon, Crosier, Scott, Little, Bell, Graham, Johnstone to name a few.

The first stop was at WOOLFISH, near the village of St Abb's. The owner Louise, her daughter Trudi and son-in-law Nathan run an absolutely magnificent operation. They welcomed us to their home with tea, coffee and hot homemade scones.


From their lovely house in the countryside they run a yarn haven/store, B&B and workshop space for knitting retreats.Lots of hard work no doubt, but everyone's dream job.
Above is only one of the rooms where the yarn stock is displayed. Louise has a history across the needle arts spectrum having taught embroidery, crewel, knitting and lots more. Lots of treasures to be found among the shelves.

This is the town of Melrose where we stopped for lunch. It has the requisite abbey  that virtually every town seems to have (either ruined or defunct), a great pub with fabulous chips, a terrific independent bookshop where I picked up my first Ian Rankin novel, and hundreds of other quaint attractions that call coach tours from all over for daytrips - somewhat like Westport north of Kingston.
Our final stop was at Johnstons of Elgin (although we were in the Hawick outlet) for a tour of the cashmere knitting mill operation. We were lucky that they were working with a skeleton crew, Monday being a "Bank Holiday". In that industrial environment we wouldn't have heard a word the guide was saying.
She explained that all of the adult garments were machine knit but that most of the baby garments, like this little cardigan, are hand knit by ladies in the Elgin area. The cashmere jacket would sell for about $110 and the matching knitted blanket would be $190 for some very special baby.

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