Its the busy season with the tile sales but this summer so far has seen visitor numbers well down on previous years. No doubt the 'credit crunch' is affecting tourism in the Highlands, which will be a major blow to the local economy. However, we have still been busy supplying all our outlets so we are not complaining.
Apr 08
To date orders are good with our Tile business, and we have taken some nice orders from local shops and castles. We have added a big range of 4"x4" tiles featuring animals and birds native to Scotland that are selling well. As I expand our customer base its looking very much as though we will soon be busy for the entire summer season. We have customers as far afield as Pitlochry, Oban and the Isle of Mull. I'm also working on a website for retail sales, a link to it will follow.
Madie and Phil have moved into their new home in Salcombe, we travelled down for a few days in January to help them move. It's a lovely house and they have been fortunate with furniture donated or bought in the sales so they now have a very tidy and modern home.
We returned from a month in New Zealand at the beginning of April, only to find the Highlands freezing under a blanket of snow. Some diference to NZ where we had a month of wall to wall sunshine in what has been a record summer for them.
Carol has been persuaded to do some 12 hour shifts in Portree Hospital as they are very short staffed. With our annual family visits starting in May and the tile business booming it will be a busy summer ahead.
Nov 07
We have starting up a little business selling hand painted ceramic art tiles, imported from China. I have commissioned some views of local scenes for the tiles, and we are also stocking a large range of standard art tiles to hang inside the home. At the moment we are only selling through eBay and to local shops on Skye. To view the range of tiles click here to go to our shop on eBay.
We collected the tiles from Southampton docks on a flying visit down south in a rented van. Over a ton of tiles and a large roller to tow behind the quad bike made the return trip a bit slower than the drive down, but my garage is now racked out and full of boxes filled with tiles. We have taken orders already and the shops will take plenty in the spring so hopefully we'll earn a little from this venture.
The island landscape underwent a major change during October with the addition of 10 wind turbines erected on the hills behind Edinbane. We can't see them from our house but they dominate the view from the road to Dunvegan and can be seen all the way down the west coast island road.
Wind Farm near Edinbane