Westfield Croft

It’s not often things just click easily and animals fall into a happy routine.

A little bit of context. We had two rescue ducks, called Monica and Rachel who came from a neighbour who could no longer look after them. They were bonded females, very bonded. Sadly, in early June, a delivery driver ran over one of the ducks. I was gutted, for the duck but mainly for her partner who was distressed her pal was gone. The ducks were probably about 3 or 4 years old.

When we got home from holidays, I found a post in a local page with Young ducks to rehome. I chatted with the lovely lady selling the ducks, called Jen, and in the discussion we realised there might be a solution. She had a four year old duck, called Fawn, who was kind of on her own, with no male partner and no duckling family. I collected Fawn on Sunday and hoped it would work.

Two days later, Ducky (cos I don’t know if she’s Monica or Rachel) and Fawn are following each other, feeding together, sleeping together. Awwwwwwww.

And Lili the kitten is growing daily!!

Tickets are available for The Scottish Yarn Festival at Errol show ground this September. A must for yarn lovers.

Tickets for our 2024 Festival at Errol Showground , Perthshire, on 7 September (and presentations at The Royal George Hotel, Perth, on 8 September) are now live here: https://thescottishyarnfestival.com/2024-festival-tickets

Please note that tickets will only be available on the door if we run out of advance tickets by the time we remove them from sale.

Please take a moment to read the information on our ticket page and the Ticketing and Event Policy on our website before buying your ticket.

Our craft business has two strands: wool and willow. Wool for yarns and handwoven rugs is supplied from our own flock of Scottish rare breed sheep and by collaborating with friends who have small flocks of sheep or alpaca. Our yarns are 100% Scottish wool or alpaca, in small batches of hand spun and larger selections of mill spun. Our yarns are predominantly in natural, undyed hues. This year we have added a collection of hand dyed yarns to complement the natural shades we already produce, with colours inspired by our croft.

We grow, harvest, and weave with willow from our coppices on the croft producing useful and beautiful handmade baskets.

Westfield Croft are making a welcome return to The Scottish Yarn Festival. Tickets go on sale exclusively on The Scottish Yarn Festival website on Saturday.

This Saturday!
I’ll be bringing yarns, yarn bowls, baskets, rugs, carded alpaca and more!

Not long to go now!!!

Thank you to everyone who came to our open day and purchased plant supports 🤎
Your customer is most appreciated and I hope your gardens thrive!

I looked up a definition of provenance and it said ‘the place of origin or earliest known history of something’ and ‘a guide to authenticity or quality’.

Lofty attributes indeed!

Let’s start with the yarn I produce from our own little flock of rare breed sheep. This lopi style, undyed yarn is produced from fleeces shorn from our Boreray and Icelandic sheep who live on our croft in Aberdeenshire. Every summer my friend Pam comes to shear our sheep, the raw fleeces are skirted and rolled and sent for spinning in the UK. Every step of the process has quality control, from selection to skeining. Provenance is spun into the fibre of this yarn 🤎

A new batch of lopi style Boreray yarn is winging its way from mill and will be ready for upcoming markets, starting with the Scottish Wool Producers Showcase, March 23rd.

Alpaca yarn ready to label up for upcoming sales Wool Producers showcase.

These are 100g balls (usually over 100g) of naturally coloured Scottish Alpaca yarn, expertly spun in the UK by the

The colours of the finer yarn (bottom photos) are: rich black, dark grey, light fawn, mid brown and chestnut brown. These yarns come out as 16WPI (4ply). They are incredibly soft but also very strong as I have handled them for de-coning.

The thicker yarns (top photo) are Aran weight (11WPI) naturally coloured light grey and rose grey alpaca.

I am looking forward to sharing these special, Scottish Aloaca yarns with customers this year! Alpaca is a super warm yarn and also suitable for people with lanolin intolerance.

5 years ago….the first yarn I had spun.

When I say my sheep being shorn by Pam (Shearing crafts), I knew I wanted to do *something* with them. I selected the best colours and what I thought were the nicest textures and found on social media. Toby did an amazing job spinning the fleeces into a set of textured Aran weight yarns. The skeins were knitted up by friends and family and lots were sold on to other knitters. I realised this was a way to de value to the wool produced by my sheep.

Beautiful sky this morning but foreboding a change back to colder, wintry weather. 🤎🖤🩶

Pam is a shearer based in Aberdeenshire, specialising in pets and small flocks. These fleeces that she gathers are the raw materials for her wet felted rugs. They look like traditional sheepskins but are 100% wool, made by hand using soap and water. They are sustainable, eco-friendly and washable. Shearing Crafts will also have local raw fleece and carded batts at our Scottish Wool Producers Showcase.

Tickets for this event - which takes place on 23 March 2024 at the Dewars Centre, Perth - will go on sale at 8pm GMT on 19 February on The Scottish Yarn Festival website.



Perth City & Towns Perth, Unesco City of Craft

In preparation for spring 2024 shows, firstly the Wool Producers Showcase.

100% Scottish alpaca yarn in natural (undyed) colours and two weights. I’m currently measuring, weighing the yarns off the cone into 100g balls for sale. The colours are: black, fawn, chestnut, dark grey, mid grey and rose grey. I also have some ochre colour from last year giving us three browns in total. These yarns have to be felt to believe how soft they are, but also incredibly strong as I’ve found handling the yarns for de-coning.

has been making a new basket style, an oval basket with ‘slewed’ weave. They are perfect yarn storage size!

There are eight beautiful, handmade, unique ceramic yarn bowls coming to the wool producers showcase March 23rd. These have been designed and made by especially for

There are eight bowls, three different sizes and all uniquely glazed. They can be used for one ball of yarn or colour work as they have holes to feed the yarn through. Gorgeous!

From underwater photos from our time
Stonefish
Moray eel
Some sort of flat fish
Red toothed trigger fish

This is the first year we’ve managed to be systematic at all stages of the willow coppice harvest. has done all the cutting and we’ve labelled and sorted by rod length. Properly bundled and away in the airy shed to dry out. There’s a couple more rows left to sort and one to cut but it feels very good to get this much done.

Frank has used pretty much all of last year’s willow coppice harvest in baskets and obelisks over the last year.

Pam’s rugs are stunning! If you are looking for a felted rug, follow her page to see where her events are:)

Collaborations and preparations 🤎

My friend and wonderful potter Helen is making yarn bowls for me to bring to yarn events. These are handmade, unique and will be in a variety of sizes and colours. Glazing going on today and we’ll have finished photos soon!! Will be coming with me to Wool Producers Showcase.

And wonderful hand spinner is sending me some very special handspun Gotland yarn from Aberdeenshire Gotland sheep.

As I continue to work on the alpaca yarn preparations too.

My work for the next while is to turn these beautiful cones of Scottish alpaca yarn into 100g balls in time for the at the end of March. The alpaca fleece came from a farm near Alloa, was skirted and sorted here then sent to to be further skirted, sorted by colour and expertly spinning these beautiful, naturally coloured yarns.

Rose grey, mid grey, dark grey, black, fawn and chestnut brown. Stunning colours 🤎🩶

I’m aiming ti have these for sale Wool Producers showcase March 23rd. I’ll also have carded alpaca for sale for spinners and crafters :)

Hello!

I’m new to sourdough baking…can anyone share their sourdough ‘discard’ recipes please? For days when I have too much starter made.

I’ve made raisin oatmeal cookies from Gartur Stitch Farm A Life in the making.

Any pancake recipes? Other easy cookie recipes?

Today we’ve been sorting materials, the willow uses for his baskets. We took everything out of the stable block storage, re-tied all the useful dried willow and re-stacked the storage with the dry willow.

The vibrant, fresh willow is still being sorted, then will be labelled and stored to dry out. Immensely satisfying to harvest and store our home grown willow for use later in the year.

Aberdeenshire friends
Just before our holiday, Banks passed his first three modules of the British Mantrailing Academy skills for justice course. Training significantly ramps up now until our next assessment in March. This qualification, if we pass, enables Banks to be an operational search dog, to look for vulnerable people in urban and rural locations.

So I’m looking for help again!
Message Me or comment below!

Wanted: people to volunteer to be missing persons. Wednesdays (daytime, morning or afternoon, stretching to evening when we have some light). Saturday or Sunday daytime. As the training progresses we will be looking for folks to hide out for longer periods of time, from 30mins up to 1.5 hours.

If anyone has time to help, please let me know:)