Getting ready... Nice Day in December

Sunrise 9:00am on the golf course

A peaceful sunrise.

Pink December morning light on the South Lighthouse - Fair Isle

The light & colours changes so fast at that time of the morning

We had had several wicked storms! the wind and salt has burned all the Sea Ivory Lichen a rusty red.

Robin & Tailless Dunnock (ringed) in the garden.
The Dunnock is so funny it looks like a tiny Water Rail

This Blackbird was eating this unwanted present that someone left in my Garden...
Illustrating quite well that many migrant birds have a hard time finding a decent meal this time of year.

I found this Viking figure on the South Harbour beach at the bottom of the cliff where it is said the 50 Spanish Armada crew are buried. OMG! it's Ivory! I thought... only to pick it up and to realize it was old plastic. oh well... it's still sort of a cool thing to find. I would guess it was made in the 1970's and lost by a local boy? Let me know I you have any claims for lost toys?

Plenty of coal for my stocking being unloaded from the Good Shepherd

& the Christmas Trees have arrived!



What's that on the Horizon?

The Russian Navy passing bye...
 Battleship and Aircraft Carrier in this photo
 but also a supply/research ship? and what looked like a Submarine on the surface trailing behind them. 



A bit of a green flash to get into the holiday spirit!

The above Photos have all been taken in the past few days... Cheers!

Snow Day - Fair Isle

South Lighthouse in Snow

Photos taken on Dec. 2nd - The snow was mostly gone the next day. 

South Lighthouse & Muckle Yui Geo
(saw a Black Redstart here today)

Purple Sandpiper

Snow Snow Bunting







Snowy Sheep at Leogh

Whooper Swan foot prints as compaired to my boot print...

View from my South Lighthouse Studio

An order of Christmas Hats I made in the studio that are shipping out soon.



Annie's Hat! Historic Fair Isle Knitwear

A nice bit of Hand Knit Fair Isle History in the making...

Annie (Wilson) Thomson's Hand Knit Fair Isle Fisherman's Kep

Annie's kep has a bid of £500.00 with 1 day left to go in the Fair Isle Museum's fundraiser!

The first 6 keps raised £1000.00

at present with Annie's kep giving so much respect a total of £1500.00 has been raised with still time to bid.  

Check out the bidding and all the knitting

http://fair-isle.blogspot.com/2011/10/traditional-hand-knit-fair-isle.html

Thank you everyone!

added after auction closed
Final bidding for Annie's hat reached £755.00

Sailing the North Sea - Framstig Video

Sailing the north sea from Petter W. Sele on Vimeo.

The 100 year old boat from Norway adventures to Shetland, then on to Fair Isle. Followed by travel to Orkney and back to Fair Isle then Home to Norway. Along the stormy way I mended thier sail which you can see in this earlier post: http://fair-isle.blogspot.com/2011/07/mending-sails-well-this-is-something.html

I have a brief apperance in the video mending the sail after it being ripped in a gale coming back from Orkney. I must of done an okay job as it held in a much larger storm on the way back to Norway.  The video is pretty cool check it out!

Baking up a Storm - Turtle Cake & Octopie

Henry's Turtle Cake
Jr. Ace of Cakes



With the winds reaching 90 mph on Sunday morning - Storm Force 11 that's like a hurricane...

The rattling of the roof slates made quite a noise most of the night. We woke in the morning to find our chicken coup blew over and part of a stone dike came down. Very annoying damage was found around the hole island with more set backs to the wind turbine. 

So we stayed inside most of the weekend and nothing fights cabin fever like baking!
Henry is a big fan of the American TV Show "Ace of Cakes"
Charm City Cakes - http://www.charmcitycakes.com/gallery
He had been wanting to try his hand in the kitchen. So we had lots of fun & yum!



Mmmm... Chocolate Turtle

Good to the last bite!

Here is my creation...
Octopie

Rare Bird for Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving?
It 's okay with these Turkeys if you want to wait til Christmas.



Some of the 16 Bean Goose I saw on the way to the "Shop" yesterday.
I saw one White Fronted Goose among them and a few Greylag. plus 5 Barnacle Geese still present

Barnacle Goose

2 of the 3 Swans hanging about the Isle.

Little Auk & Scaup found washed up on the South Haven Beach

Raising the wind turbine, man power for wind power!





It is times like these when all the young able body men get together that you quickly realize we are all over 40

The Reed Bunting from a few days ago... but I did not see it today the crop is all cut now and it my have moved on?



Dunnock (ringed) still hanging around... could stay for the winter?



Large flock of Snow Buntings viewed from my garden.

In the South Harbour?

What's that?

Little Gull  Hydrocoloeus minutus

2 Little Gulls probably the best rare birds that I have blundered into in the past few days...
I found them in the South Harbour driving back from the "Shop" yesterday.
Two is a good record for Fair Isle.
 I made special effort to make a record shot with both birds in frame for any of you doubters out there.  

Plenty of Purple Sandpipers like this one.

Welcome home & Happy Thanksgiving from Fair Isle.