Tag: Hebrides

  • “picnic at Pigs’ Paradise”

    “picnic at Pigs’ Paradise”

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    by

    Kate Davies Designs
    in ,

    a magical spot

  • make / mend: Collingwood-Norris

    make / mend: Collingwood-Norris

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Kate talks to Flora Collingwood-Norris about mending, Scottish islands, and how colour makes you feel

  • Birlinn Yarn love

    Birlinn Yarn love

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Hello! Friday is project reveal day, and today I wanted to show you a new iteration of one of my favourite designs of 2019 – the Udal pullover, designed for and with Meg Rodger’s Birlinn Yarn Company. Inspired by one of my favourite Hebridean places, and using Meg’s own fabulously hardy and beautiful Hebridean wool…

  • Crafting Futures: in the Hebrides

    Crafting Futures: in the Hebrides

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Today I’m sharing the first of series of images and recollections from the Applied Arts Scotland residency I was part of last September – which seems, for so many reasons, like a very long time ago. This residency was part of the British Council’s Crafting Futures programme, bringing makers from Scotland and Mexico together, to…

  • Shilasdair: isle of Skye natural dye company

    Shilasdair: isle of Skye natural dye company

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    On our way to North Uist and Berneray a few months ago, we stopped off in Skye to say hello to Kirsty, who now runs Shilasdair, the Isle of Skye natural dye company. I first visited Shilasdair – when it was run by natural-dyeing legend, Eva Lambert, in its old home on the Waternish peninsula…

  • Away to Berneray

    Away to Berneray

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    Kate Davies Designs
    in

    Hello! Tom here. Kate and I spent all of last week away in Berneray and North Uist, where I’ve been working on a new photographic project (more of which later). Late spring and early summer is a truly beautiful time of year in the Outer Hebrides, and we feel very lucky to be able to…

  • Light and lambs

    Light and lambs

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    Kate Davies Designs
    in

    Hello everyone, it’s Tom here. I thought I’d pop in to share some of my photos from our recent Hebridean trip to the isle of Berneray (Eilean Bhearnaraigh). As a photographer, I find the ever-changing weather and shifting quality of light in Scotland’s Western Isles really stimulating in my work. On this trip we were…

  • at lamraig cottage

    at lamraig cottage

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    We’ve just returned from a very relaxing break in Berneray and North Uist, staying in lamraig cottage – a beautiful Hebridean blackhouse: carefully restored, formerly occupied, and now run as a holiday rental by our friend Meg (of Birlinn Yarn fame). If you’ve read the Shieling section of my West Highland Way book, you’ll know…

  • croft, craft, creativity

    croft, craft, creativity

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    One of the many things I really like about the communities and cultures of crofting is their distinctive effect on the way people work. What I mean is this: in towns and cities, jobs tend to become more and more specialised, people do what they do within smaller and smaller categories, individual work occurs in…

  • back here

    back here

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    Kate Davies Designs
    in

    When something really major happens in your life there is always a before and after. And when that something is a massive transformation that alters your body and identity, when that something is a stroke that suddenly changes you from an able-bodied person to someone who will spend the rest of her life managing the…

  • The Inspired by Islay club

    The Inspired by Islay club

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    Kate Davies Designs
    in

    The Inspired by Islay club is now open for pre-order! I’m really excited to finally be able to share this project, which has occupied the majority of my knitting and designing year thus far. If you have been wondering about the distinct lack of knitting content around here recently, it is because all of the…

  • vicarious

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Lucky Tom has spent the past week cycling around the Outer Hebrides with our friend, Mool. I have so enjoyed the photos that he’s been sending me each evening that I thought I’d share a selection with you here. All of these photographs were taken with his phone.

  • Islay inspiration

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    I love camping: I suppose there is just something about taking the time to simply be in the outdoors that allows the world to insinuate itself upon you in the most pleasing way. And I find Islay a particularly inspiring landscape. I like to potter about just looking at stuff, and always come home with…

  • I am two

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Hiya, it is I, Bruce. I was born on the 27th May, and now I am two years old. This weekend we celebrated my birthday at some very fun places called Inner Hebrides. To travel there, you have to get on noisyboat. As everybody knows, I am called Bruce. Yet apparently I have another name…

  • the gardens at ardfin

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Would you like to come for a short walk on Jura? Leave your money in the honesty box by the tree, and follow the path to Jura House garden. With its mix of Scottish wild flowers and victorian woodland planting, the surrounding landscape looks like a fairy glade. Then you open a door in the…

  • mead magic

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Last summer, when we were walking on Jura, we buried some home-brewed mead above the gulf of corryvreckan. Yesterday we retraced our steps, and returned to find it. I heart Jura. Seven miles and a very enjoyable walk later, we climbed up a cliffside on the remote and empty north-west of the island and wondered…