It's oh so quiet ....

Where did February go? Must have been concentrating too hard on our shawl knitting! 
Yap and Yarn meets again in Stromness Library on Monday (3rd March) from 5-7pm. Come along and catch up with the progress of the shawls, socks and other projects the group have been working on and enjoy a cuppa and a chat.

Shawl knit-along

On Monday 3rd February the Yap and Yarn group meets in Stromness Library from 5-7pm, when Kaja will be starting her shawl knit-along. 

The pattern she will be using is the Ashton Shawlette by Dee O'Keefe which is available free to download from Ravelry.

 If you can't make it along to the meeting but would still like to take part in the knit-along then you can join in on the Yap and Yarn Facebook group, where you can post pictures of your progress and ask Kaja questions. 

And if you don't fancy tackling a shawl then just come along with whatever project you like and join us for a cuppa and a chat. 

© Dee O'Keefe

 

Gunnie Moberg Archive Open Day

Our exhibition 'Between the human and the natural' – portrait and landscape photography of Gunnie Moberg – continues until Wednesday 5 February.

 Following the success of the first open day, Rebecca Marr will be back tomorrow, Saturday 1st February, with boxes of prints of Stromness from the Gunnie Moberg Archive for you to look through. 

The Open Day runs from 1-4pm and everyone is welcome to come along to look through the images, and see if they can identify the people and places Gunnie captured on film. 

You can see examples of some of the prints of Stromness on the Gunnie Moberg Archive Blog.

Here are some images from the first Open Day on 18th January, when around sixty folk came along and enjoyed delving into the treasures from the archive. 

images: Mark Jenkins. Stromness Library 18 January Gunnie Moberg Archive Open Day

Exhibition and Open Day

‘Between the human and the natural’

This is the title of the exhibition of portrait and landscape photography by Gunnie Moberg, which opens in the Stromness Library this Saturday 18th January, with an Open Day from 12pm-4pm offering the chance to find out more about the contents of the archive and the process of creating the digital archive. 

At the Open Day Rebecca Marr will be bringing along boxes of prints for folk to browse, Gunnie’s published books and newspaper clippings spanning her artistic career,  as well as documents and diaries from her working life, and Gunnie's trusty Olympus OM1. The film 'Gunnie' by Mark Jenkins will also be shown. 

The exhibition runs until Wednesday 5th February. 

You can read more about the Gunnie Moberg Archive on the archive blog. 

Happy New Year!

Wishing all our readers a very happy 2014, full of good books, and many happy library visits!

We hope you enjoyed our Advent Book Quiz 2013, we can now reveal the answers:

1st - The Christmas Mystery - Jostein Gaarder

2nd - Imagined Corners - Willa Muir

3rd - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

4th - Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens

5th - Morven Callar - Alan Warner

6th - The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber

7th - Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish - John Firth

8th - The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

9th - Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Høeg

10th - The Mill on the Floss - George Elliot

11th - Demo - Alison Miller

12th - Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

13th - Emma - Jane Austen 

14th - The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland - Ernest Marwick

15th - The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

16th - Venus as a Boy - Luke Sutherland 

17th - Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy

18th - The Children of Green Knowe - Lucy Boston

19th - Orkneyinga Saga - translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards

20th - 'The Laird's Son' from Winter Tales - George Mackay Brown

21st - The Box of Delights - John Masefield

22nd - Village Christmas - Miss Read

23rd - The House by the Dvina: a Russian Childhood  - Eugene Fraser

24th - The Tailor of Gloucester - Beatrix  Potter

25th - A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

And the winner is: Catriona 

Congratulations to Catriona, and thanks to all who entered.

Catriona if you could email us at stromness.library(at)orkney.gov.uk we can arrange to get your prize to you. 

Last day...

... of 2013, but also your last chance to enter our Advent Book Quiz.

Look back over our 25 December posts, can you identify the author and title of each extract? Submit your answers as a comment on each post by the end of tomorrow, 1st January 2014, and you could win a fabulous prize!

The winner, correct answers, and all your comments will be published on Friday 3rd January. 

Good luck!

Advent Book Quiz Day 25

Merry Christmas!

'A merry Christmas, Bob!' said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistake, as he clapped him on the back. 'A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!' 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!