Tag Archives: sgath an tighe

Creative breaks…

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Work is progressing on our second B and B room (although this is a photo of the first!)  Just carpets and curtains to sort out now, and then we can get everything put together.

We are hoping to offer some weekends of themed ‘creative breaks’ over the next few months. These will be a chance to escape to lovely Dunoon and make something beautiful. It is amazing what we can achieve when given space to do so. This bowl was made by Issy in our pottery a couple of weeks ago, on her second ever attempt at moulding clay;

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The idea is that we will be setting out a list of creative weekends people can book in for, but also guests in the B and B, or our holiday cottage, will be able to get creative too- making some pots, or a range of other activities.

More info to come!

New name, new logo…

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We are really pleased with the new logo for our wee collection of micro enterprises.

We have been developing bed and breakfast rooms, self catering accommodation, retreats, crafts and craft workshops, pottery and more over the last few months. We needed something to tie it all together. At first we used the house name (Sgath an Tighe, meaning ‘shelter of the house’ or ‘house of shelter’) but increasingly we thought that it might confuse slightly as people cannot pronounce or spell it!

Eventually we came up with ‘Recreate’ as a name- with all its implications for creation, creativity, starting again, and making use of recycled materials.

Hence our business website will be transitioning to branding around the new name, and will use a new address of www.recreate-argyll.co.uk

Here is the art work, by Simon Jones, who we would highly recommend to others on the look out for some branding/graphic design work.

Quiet weekend- step away for a while…

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We are just planning our first ‘quiet weekend’ using the new accommodation space at Sgath an Tighe. This will be from Friday evening the 11th of January to Sunday the 13th.

These weekends are intended to allow individuals and couples to set time aside to reflect, pray, meditate and share some evenings around a fireside. Our starting point for entering into meditation here is Christian spirituality- of a generous open kind.

The spaces at our house will allow for three double bedrooms, one twin, and one single, and it would be lovely to fill these.

Our first weekend will cost £200 per person, including accommodation, all meals and activities. (We cook simple but lovely wholemeal vegetarian food.)

We will divide our time into periods of silence – where guests are welcome to use prepared spaces in the house, the garden, or to take walks along the shore – and times of sharing.

There will be an opportunity to be part of morning and evening rituals, and to use clay and other art materials to aid reflection and meditation.

If you are interested, get in touch and we will send you a booking form.

Our first Guest Room nears completion…

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Here is a peek at what I have been working hard on over the past weeks- our first guest room for the new holiday/retreat/craft business is nearing completion;Image

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It will all be ready to go in the next few weeks- available for cosy escapes, quiet retreats and the like.

We are waiting for curtains and a couple of bits and pieces, but check out the view;

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A little self-review of the downshifting process…

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As I climbed a ladder to paint a patch of re-rendered pebble dash on the outside of our old house, my thoughts were strangely on my former employment- all those years of social work. It has been just about two months since I took redundancy from my post as Mental Health Area Manager- which is something of a surprise- where did all the time go?

Time is a precious commodity- this is the longest period of my adult life without some kind of paid employment- even as a student I was so skint that I always had to find some work in between terms. I am acutely conscious of not wanting to squander these weeks of rest and recovery before the next chapter of my life can begin.

My hope was that the redundancy payment will give me some time to do the following;

  • Recover from what has been an exhausting, stressful and even damaging job.
  • Go on holiday somewhere.
  • Transform two large en suite rooms in our house to offer bed and breakfast accommodation.
  • Plan retreats, activity/craft breaks at the house, using our B and B as well as a holiday cottage.
  • WRITE.
  • Hope that the recharging of the batteries might result in me finding some part time work within the social work field that will allow me to continue to do the above things but have enough money to live.

How has it gone then?

Well, it took quite a few weeks (with hindsight) to ‘stop’ after all the madness preceding. I found myself, weeks after I left work, driving back towards Dunoon thinking about all the stuff I had yet to sort out in work. There came a point however, about four weeks after I left when I realised I no longer felt ill. I should add that I had not previously realised that I did feel ill. It was as if some pressure had been released out of my system and everything was working a little better. Long term exposure to high levels of stress is a terrible thing.

We managed a few days away, down in Northumberland- a place we had not been to before. I have also played a lot of cricket for both Innellan and Greenock clubs, and the chance to run around a field for a while playing a game I love has been like a holiday too.

The work on the house is now well under way as can be seen above. The biggest single task has been to fit an en suite shower room, and it is now finished;

 

My perfectionist friends will point out the rather irregular tiling in places but nothing in this old house is straight, so perfect finishes are simply not an option. I think it looks great though and is very usable.

The planning of retreats- well we are not there yet, but Michaela and Pauline’s craft workshop business is going great guns and already people are asking about the possibility of staying over in the B and B, which is just what we were hoping for.

Finally- writing.

If I were to pick one thing that I wanted to find time to spend doing, it is this. However, as yet, it has not happened really. I think this is partly about discipline, making a slot each day- but this kind of way of being creative has never really worked for me. Inspiration may be 70% perspiration but it still requires the nurturing of an idea. I have a project in fragments at the moment, waiting for the glue that brings them together.

Better boil up some horses hooves…

Pottery courses…

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Michaela and Pauline have been running lots of craft course over the past few months, under the guise of Blue Sky Craft Workshops. (They have a FB page here, website is under construction.)

Recently they have run a whole series of introductory pottery courses- hand building, using the wheel and generally having fun with clay. These have been a roaring success- I was particularly pleased to see how much our lovely ‘Scottish Grannie’ Netta enjoyed her session yesterday- see the picture above and below.

 

Pottery in particular is one of those things that seems to transcend age class and gender- most people enjoy the feel of clay in their hands!

If you are interested in giving it a go, it might be worth considering a holiday break up here in Dunoon. It is often a lovely weather up here in the Autumn, as the Argyll forest gets all golden and busy with red squirrels preparing for winter;

 

Michaela took this photo yesterday morning from our house;

 

If you fancy a trip to see this place for yourself, we have a holiday annex which sleeps 4, and in the next couple of months will also have two en suite bed and breakfast rooms.

You can get in touch with us through our website here.

Or if you drop me a line, I can ask Michaela to add you to her mailing list for the wider craft workshops and it may well be possible to co-ordinate a wee trip here around them- felt making, learning how to use sewing machine, jewellery making, christmas cards, Christmas wrapping with a difference….

Jubilee approaches…

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I am in a strange place at the moment- all about transition. The ending of one thing and the step into an uncertain other. It is on the whole a good place, but not without it’s physical and psychological challenge. I have less than two weeks left in my current job (perhaps even my current career) and then I plunge into a time of relative free fall.

There is a plan of sorts- I will have some redundancy money that will keep us going for a little while and allow me to invest in alterations to the house. We hope to have two double rooms available for holiday letting/bed and breakfast by the end of the summer, which (along with our self catering accommodation) will allow us to make some kind of a living through hospitality. Our real hope is that we can start to offer a combination of activities around the old house- retreat weekends, pottery courses, outdoor activities etc. (We have a FB page and a website if you are interested to see where things are up to at present.)

I also hope that I get some time to spend writing. It is perhaps what I love to do most- a private secret thing that may well have no external application, but if I do not give some serious effort towards, will be a source of regret.

Then there is social work- I am not entirely sure I am done with it. I hope that in the process of stepping off the tread mill I might rediscover some of the passion and idealism that made me a social worker in the first place. I will probably need to do some part time work too.

On Sunday, during our Aoradh family worship day, Andy spoke about slavery. He described the context of slavery in the time of Jesus- people born into slavery, captured there in war, or selling themselves into slavery in order to cope with life or debt. Andy made the comparison with our relationship to money in our age- which (given what I have said above) clearly resonated with me.

We are all caught up in things that hold us, for good or ill. Some of this we fell into out of the womb, some caught us through circumstance, yet others we willingly tie ourselves to. Often it seems that these things become bigger than us- they offer us no choices, no release; we become slaves.

There is this other word however, which we have heard rather a lot of over this year in the UK- Jubilee.

I am not talking about elaborate celebrations of the anniversaries of monarchs, but as Wikipedia puts it;

The Jubilee (Hebrew yovel יובל) year is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years), and according to Biblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the Land of Israel; there is some debate whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath’s Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year.

“This fiftieth year is sacred—it is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families. “
My Jubilee is not a release from bondage into some kind of utopian ideal- and I am sure it never was for the Hebrews. It just signifies for me the simple fact that making risky shifts in the fabric of our lives is a rare privilege.
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