Marked

Today we visited the Scottish Crannog Centre with other members of our u3a for our summer outing. We had a speaker from there earlier in the year.   The visit was really interesting - we were shown exhibits in their museums and then demonstrations of  finger bow making, wooden lathes, stone grinding, weaving and dying, cooking. 

My blip is of timbers from actual crannogs which had been found in Loch Tay and preserved by the water. The tool marks made by the builders can still be seen clearly. 

We got opportunities to try different things - I made a finger bowl (not a very good one), tried the lathe (harder than it looked) and sampled nettle and honey tea (fine in small doses). I was especially interested in the dying process - woad  (for blue dyes) would probably have been imported as it doesn't grow locally. Urine is used to fix the dye (how did they discover that ?). This can produce variable results - the darker blue in the extra results from when someone has been drinking alcohol. We were also treated to a puppet show as well as hearing more about their new development. Great fun. 

On my return I headed down to the loch to join the Wednesday night dippers. It was even colder than Monday but invigorating. 

We shall continue with Gruth is Uachdar (Crowdie and Cream) this evening.