The Knitter Scientific

It's been a wonderful week of weather here in Orkney, with visitors and residents alike enjoying sunny strolls along the street in Stromness. We've enjoyed meeting those who have taken a break from the sun to visit the library, both new visitors and familiar faces. 

It was particularly nice to get chatting to a regular visitor who turns out to be a fellow knitter and Ravelry member Westendangela from Dundee. Combining her job as a biochemist with her passion for all things woolly she has been using knitting to bring her research to life. 

Her most recent project,  as part of the Women in Science Festival, involved creating a knitted display for her local yarn shop representing the human  blood stream when dealing with the sleeping sickness (her area of research) , with knitted red blood cells, white cells, Trypanosomes, the flu virus, and the DNA helix. 

knitted Trypanosome being attacked by antibodies

We are hoping Anglea might be able to join us at Yap and Yarn on a future visit to Orkney, but in the meantime she has very kindly left us a knitted Trypanosome of our very own. 

While researchers like Angela are studying the behaviour of the Trypanosome parasites, in the hope of developing more effective drug treatments, charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is responsible for supplying and distributing the drugs currently used to treat Sleeping Sickness, the disease caused by the Trypanosome parasite.

Sleeping Sickness is a devastating disease spread by the Tsetse fly, which  poses a risk to 60 million people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. To find out more about Sleeping Sickness and the role of the Trypanosome parasites visit the MSF website, where you can also donate to support the work of MSF in offering treatment to those suffering from this, and other, neglected tropical diseases. 

Mythical Maze

It's the first day of the school summer holidays and of course it's raining! But never fear the library is here to save the day, with the launch of this year's Summer Reading Challenge Mythical Maze!

For children aged 4-11 this free scheme will keep you reading all through the holidays as you collect stickers to complete your Mythical Maze poster. For every two books read you will receive a set of stickers and a special gift, and if you read six books and collect all three sets of stickers, you will be invited to a special closing event which will include an author visit, crafts, and a presentation of certificates and medals to all who complete the challenge. 

Visit the Mythical Maze website to find out more about the challenge and share book reviews and recommendations with other readers. 

There's a moose loose aboot this - library!

The weather on Sunday may not have been kind to St Magnus Festival goers, but it hardly mattered to those lucky enough to have tickets for the Arne and Carlos Knitting Workshop in the Stromness Academy Library. 

Becky has returned buzzing with excitement, and inspiration for even more knitting projects - members of the Yap and Yarn group beware!

Apart from providing help and encouragement to workshop participants, as they tackled their very own Magnus the mouse, Arne and Carlos shared photos of the beautiful garden they have created at their home in the Norwegian mountains. 

A wonderful afternoon of knitting passed all too quickly, but before they left  Arne and Carlos were kind enough to sign the library copy of their book Knit-and-Crochet Garden - which is now available to borrow again, as Becky has bought her own copy. 

 Becky also got a photo with the superstar knitters, along with the original Magnus.  

Arne, Carlos and Magnus with a rather over excited library assistant!

Becky assures us that her own Magnus will soon be finished and ready for a photo call, however when we demanded a progress photo this is what we got:

In the meantime if anyone else has finished their Magnus please send us a photo so we can share them here and motivate Becky to get further than some disembodied legs - looks like poor Magnus has had an unfortunate accident at the paws of the library cat.

Maybe we could tempt Arne and Carlos back to visit the Yap and Yarn group when we move to the new Stromness Library?!

Midsummer, St. Magnus, and a (knitted) mouse

Despite the low cloud, the slightly chilly air, and a lack of sun, it is in fact midsummer. Here in Orkney this means not only an excuse to celebrate what George Mackay Brown described as 'the over-brimming of the year's well of light'*, but also to enjoy this year's St Magnus International Festival. 

Today in Stromness Town Hall at 5.30pm the first performance of this year's Johnsmas Foy will take place, when Sarah Jane Gibbon will direct 'The Raven Banner, Twelve Valkyries & a Ghost Army'. This will be a commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, through song, poetry, story-telling and Old Norse writings performed by Sarah, along with poet Emma Grieve, composer Aimee Leonard and storyteller Tom Muir. 

For those who would like to know more about how midsummer and Johnsmas were traditionally celebrated, then we would recommend Midsummer, Johnsmas and bonfires on the UHI Centre for Nordic Studies website and also the excellent articles on Orcadian Bonfire Traditions  and A Year of Orcadian Tradition from the Orkneyjar site. 

In a break from tradition this year's St Magnus Festival features two workshops by Norwegian knitting celebrities Arne & Carlos. These have proved so popular that both Kirkwall and Stromness workshops have sold out, but we know that at least some of our library Yap and Yarn group members have been lucky enough to get tickets - including our library assistant Becky. During the workshop Arne & Carlos will be leading participants through their pattern for Magnus Garden Mouse, from their latest book Knit-and-Crochet Garden, which is, of course, available from the library.

We hope Becky will bring her Magnus into the library for a visit when he is finished and we'll try to get a photo to show you. If anyone else has knitted Magnus do please send us a photo and we'll share them on the blog. 

 Arne and Carlos

Magnus Garden Mouse

So it's going to be a busy weekend here in Stromness, but however, and where ever, you are going to be celebrating, we hope your solstice, St Magnus Festival, and Johnsmas  are full of midsummer magic.

*  from "Solstice of Light" in Under Brinkie's Brae, 1979, p.147

More friends from afar

Well dear readers we're feeling very cosmopolitan here in Stromness Library this week. Following our visit from Milli from Finland,  *waves at the Etela-Haaga Library folk*, we received a lovely email from Mike Goldstein  from America, who had visited us back in 2008. Mike sent us a lovely photo of Seamus, one of the cats who used to live next door to the library and adopted us as his second home.

We were delighted to hear from Mike, and asked if we could share his photo with you, in case anyone else remembers Seamus, or even had the dubious pleasure or being drooled on/ covered in ginger fur/ nuzzled/scratched/ or bitten by him. 

Seamus was quite a character with a bit of a split personality. He would rub himself affectionately against your legs or jump up on your lap to be petted, but could get very grumpy if you dared to shift him off a chair he had chosen for a nap. We even took to bringing in a pair of leather gardening-gloves to work,  in case he objected to being put out when it was time to go home!

Unfortunately Seamus' owners moved house, and following Bubbles' tragic accident we have been without a library cat for quite a while now. Maybe we will be adopted by one when we move to the new library?!

We were very interested to read about Mike's research at Cornell University, where he is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Eleanor J. Gibson Laboratory of Developmental Psychology. His research focuses on  the development and evolution of communication, taking a comparative approach studying both human infants and songbirds, to try to better understand the mechanisms by which communicative development takes place.

We look forward to welcoming Mike back to Stromness in the future, as he plans to return to carry out research in Orkney. He is interested in studying the effect of a noisy environment on vocal learning, and hopes that making recordings of the seabird colonies in Orkney will help him to get an idea of the acoustic challenges faced by young birds in a large breeding colony. 

It is so lovely to hear from library visitors and blog readers from far afield - it really makes us feel like part of one big library family :-)

Smile

Books make us smile too :-)

https://www.facebook.com/grammarly/photos/pb.139729956046003.-2207520000.1402497740./769144789771180/?type=3&theater

Library family Moomintroll

There is something about working in a library, it doesn't matter where you go, you always find yourself looking for other libraries to visit. We get lots of  visits from library staff on holiday in Orkney and today we had a lovely visit form Milli from Etela-Haaga Library in Helsinki, Finland. 

It was interesting to compare notes with Milli on the similarities of our experiences of working in smaller branch libraries, and the role of the library in our communities. We were delighted to be able to issue Milli with her very own Orkney Library card as a visiting member, and look forward to welcoming her back on her next visit to Stromness. 

It was great to discover the Etela-Haaga Library has a Facebook page  and we loved this photo of the staff dressing up as characters from the Moomin books, as part of the celebrations marking the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth.

Visit the Tove 100 website for details of other events marking the birth of Tove Jansson.

 If by some chance you haven't met the Moomins yet then come to the library where we can introduce you to the magical world of Moomintroll, the Snorkmaiden, Snufkin, Sniff and all their friends and family. 

© Moomin Characters™ http://www.tove100.com/