September 2008

Well the time has flown by and 5 months have passed since I last put finger to keyboard. I guess not too much out of the ordinary has happened, the gallery is getting busier but most of my trade still comes from local people. Not sure how the summer went in terms of tourists but I think we are all feeling the pinch. To attract a bigger market I decided to introduce some new lower cost items. This started off with a new local telephone directory commissioned by the Xmas lights fund. 140 copies were made and they sold out within 3 weeks.

The equipment and techniques used on the directory formed the basis for my range of notebooks (see menu on left) and the Sunset Calendar. The notebooks have been a great success and will be very popular as Xmas gets closer. I have produced several bespoke versions and just had an order for 40 of the A6 versions for a local business. Producing the calendar has been problematic as most people would buy in bulk to get the cost down. I have no idea how many I will sell so they are all hand made. This takes a long time and I had to resort to a bulk ink system on my printer just to make it possible. If this proves to be a good seller than next years will not be produced in house and I will take a gamble on sales.

Something else that is taking up my time is the arrival of a mobile home. This 38'x12' structure had an interesting journey and we had to shift around a lot of earth to get it located. Well worth it though as it is luxurious compared to living in the house. Just need to do a few mods to make it a bit warmer for the winter...! Not sure how many people actually read these diaries but always happy to hear from anyone who is is interested in this part of the world.

March 2008

Well the run of poor weather continues but at least we will not have a water shortage for the next 350 years. Gallery picked up well at the beginning of the month and I located a source of cheap glass & mountboard in Oakham. Oakham is just north of Cambridge which is a long, long way from here. However a few calculations showed that even with the fuel and other costs it was still a good deal. En route I caught up with the family and also a few friends so that made the trip worthwhile as well. The glass was loose, 2mm thick and 1200x915mm. I had to construct a carrier for the back of the land rover to ensure that all 120 sheets made the 700 mile journey. I have to say that listening to the timber frame creaking behind me concentrated the mind for the whole 18 hour journey back. Thankfully everything arrived in 120 pieces and the weather even smiled on me during unloading.

I used the farm jack to lift one side of the land rover.....

So that the glass could be slid out sheet by sheet. It only took 4 hours.....

My new oval mount cutter arrived as well so I have been spending a long time getting to grips with the machine and producing even more scrap mountboard. However I did get an immediate order for a triple cutout. Think it came out ok for a first attempt.

You may remember from my earlier diaries that I have been experimenting with heat recovery from my open fire. Well I have the system fairly well tuned now and just a single pipe is sufficient to raise the water temperature to around 50 C. Initially the pipe was buried in the heart of the fire but I was producing too much hot water and had to drain the tank a couple of times just to "quieten" things down a bit. Anyway I have not had to use the immersion heater for several weeks.

I did manage to bring back some of that good 'ol southern flu and that has been quite intense for the last 10 days. Worst part is not being able to sleep horizontal as I start coughing really badly. So resorted to sleeping upright on the sofa. Very poor quality sleep that is slowly catching up with me. Latest problem is completely blocked ears. Actuall painful to talk to people so I have shut up shop until next week. Oh well that will teach me to get a flu jab next year.

February 2008

Well January passed with a whimper. I seem to have spent the whole month just trying to stay warm and the weather has been poor to say the least. Not very much happening round here, I think most people just keep their heads down and look forward to warmer times. The gallery is ticking over and I have had work from a long way off so word seems to be spreading. My only competition in Ullapool (80 miles away) has ceased trading so that may be good news for me. I did set a record by going for exactly one month between Tesco visits. Quite a change from the 4 times a week in Cambridge. Have to confess it was a challenge to find a square meal towards the end but a new chest freezer has made the difference. Mind you the temperature on my kitchen floor is generally 1 degree above ambient so I put stuff into the fridge to warm it up...

I have added a picture sales section to display some of the framed pictures in the gallery. These will be mostly my own work and I will add more as time goes on. I am looking forward to tourists returning to the area and will be interested to see which pictures sell well. The Rhiconich Hotel has finally changed hands and hopefully the new owners will be bringing it back to life. I have passed on the hotel website to them so will have to cross it off my list of sites. However I still have this one and www.antarcticimages.co.uk which is getting a lot of attention but no sales as yet.

Another new addition is the visitor location map from Google, just a bit of fun to see where my website hits are coming from. Curiously my site seems to be popular in Arizona so a big hello to y'all. Sorry about that. The house has put up with some fierce winds over the last month but everything is still hangin on ok (fingers crossed). However during the really bad storms I did hear water drops on my living room ceiling. I guess that rebuild clock is ticking. Ok not really anything else to mention so that is all until March.

January 2008

Happy New Year ! The last few months have been spent getting the picture framing workshop organised. I have had a small amount of work so far but given that everything is generally quiet at this time of year it's not surprising. At least I am well stocked and it will be a nice change to have money coming in as opposed to the endless invoices during the setup period. Keeping enough, and the correct, stock is quite tricky. Quoting for a frame in a moulding and mount that I do not stock means £50 minumum moulding order, 20 mountboard sheet minumum order and a delivery charge of £20. That is quite an investment for a single frame so the object is to use existing stock. However it is also important to frame using the right combination of materials so once a month I will bite the bullet and place a new order. I guess it will be a year before I know if the business is a success but at least it keep me off the streets.

Not too much happening on the croft as I am still deciding what to do with the land. The Land Rover went down to Inverness for a very expensive service. This one involved replacing every single fluid on the vehicle and I had a new battery fitted as well. I also invested in a block heater. This is esentially a 2.5kW heater that sits in the coolant circuit and can raise the block temperature to around 85C in 45minutes. The advantage is that the engine will be warm before starting on a cold day. This reduces engine wear and also means the interior is toasty instead of arctic.

I mentioned in my last diary entry that I had a Stoat as a house guest. Well after 6 weeks of almost 24/7 recording I managed to "capture" him. It was quite an effort to edit 24 hours of film to extract a couple of minutes so I started to use telltales in the places he visited. This made editing a little easier as moving the telltale was obvious even when scanning through at high speed. At some point I will put the video together but for now I have a few stills. Bear in mind that Stoats do not hang around anywhere for long !. These pictures are taken in the "kitchen" just by the front door. Fats (as he is now called) managed to steal the drip tray I mentioned and it is now probably hidden between the walls. Fats managed to find three ways of getting into the kitchen but all are sealed so he should lose interest soon.

Apologies for the low quality but the camera is low resolution and these are captures from video. Also the camera colours are poor in low light and it captures infra red when the lights are off. Anyway you can see that Fats is adopting his winter white camouflage.

This is a cute image of Fats when he returned to retrieve the drip tray he hid in the wall. Just to the right of the heater is a wall void that I filled with expanding foam to keep the wind out.

This did not stop him and he spent quite a long time digging a hole to get at the fat store.

This was his next tunnel into the kitchen which I discovered by accident. The lid is a telltale that allows me to see activity when editing the video clips.

This was a funny sequence. I came home at about 4.30 pm which was a favourite time for Fats to visit. I think he must have been busy chomping through the insulation again and did not hear me arrive. Having seen that the telltale lid had moved I replaced it and stopped the video and immedialy restarted it again.

Checking throught the video I saw that Fats had come into the kitchen but had not left. So he must have been caught out and still in the kitchen when I arrived. I stopped/started the video and saw the tell tale had moved again so more activity.

The yellow arrow shows Fats in mid air and blurred as he takes his chance for freedom.

The next picture shows him in full flight at the back of the fridge...

And back down to safety !.

I have timed this sequence and he made the journey in 2.18 seconds. No wonder they are hard to see on video. Incidently the black dots on the mat are not what you think !. I spilled some bird seed... honest.

So that tunnel has been sealed as well so that takes care of Tom & Dick but what about Harry ?. Well we finally came face to face one night after he had found a way throught the roof !. I opened the kitchen door and Fats was sitting on the draining board. I swear I saw his eyes roll... Anyway he did an amazing set of acrobatics to get back into the roof which deserved 10/10. I have only seen Fats once since and that was when he managed to trip a mouse trap with his nose. He lept into the air (without the trap) and disappeared never to be seen again. I will keep my eyes open for him again but he was becoming a bit of a pest so perhaps this was for the best.

Enough of this excitement.... More next month.