Shetlands - still here

Diz has been and gone, we got some OK walking, but not photographing, weather.  We went into Lerwick and met a woman who even knits sleeves in the round - the most perfect fairisle I've ever seen.  She also used a knitting belt - a sort of pad that she stuck her fourth needle in to hold the weight of the knitting.  It's also supposed to keep the tension even.  They sell them at Jameison's but I didn't see them - just found them on the website.  It was the least friendly shop (the other wool shop was more like a wool shop - it sold loads of acrylic and so Diz could get herself something to knit) but had a fantastic range of Shetland wool.  Maybe they weren't so friendly because they were recovering from wool week, when they held classes in the shop every day. 

This is a pic from their blog of Oliver giving a talk on how they grade the wool.  I think it amazing how it gets from the mucky stuff  on the sheeps backs to knittable.

 

These are quite clean looking sheep, maybe because they are in a field, not on the moor.  Susan dubbed it the sick sheep field because there was always at least one of them lying as if it was never going to get up again.  They are in(memo to self, must photo sheep faces) the running for the title of ugliest sheep in Shetland but they do have lovely thick wool.

Diz and I also made a visit to Frankie's and I tried their steamed mussels.  They were lovely.  They also had something called saucermeat on the menu, but we didn't try it.

 

Then when I went into Ollaberry shop on Thursday, there it was:

 

And I'm now full of saucermeat stew.  It's a shetland speciality.  It tastes most like beef sausage, but not the same.  I made meatballs out of it and we - Angel and I - both enjoyed it.  We spent the morning up the tanner's track playing crofters.  She was sniffing along the sheep tracks and I was jumping streams that weren't there two days ago, but it siled it down last night.