Hmm, there's something missing....

Last week, Dave and I took a rare day off together and headed for Lewis in the Western Isles for the day. Just jumping on the ferry as foot passengers meant a distinct lack of transport on the other side but it didn’t bother us as we had a good wander round Stornoway and the Lews Castle grounds in between showers and having a baked tattie in An Lanntair. I'm going to stick my neck out here and admit that Stornoway...well, it's just not that pretty is it? One of the best snaps of the day is of me standing outside an empty butchers shop. Just as well the rest of the island is absolutely stunning.

I bought metres and metres of Harris Tweed when I was out there, so now have enough Harris Tweed to sink a ship but it shall soon be transformed into gorgeous cushions coming soon to a luxury Scottish hamper near you! If anyone would like one sooner, drop me a line and you can get first dibs on your favourite tweed. Mine’s that slatey-grey one at the second-top of this picture. If you think slatey-grey sounds boring, wait till you see it in the daylight and you see the blues and browns running through it – gorgeous.

Frying eggs the hard way.

Whilst I’m on the subject of frying eggs, it reminded me to tell y’all about Oleifera Rapeseed Oil. Back in the days of PO (pre-Oleifera) I was an advocate of organic sunflower oil for all things frying, baking and cooking as I found olive oil too heavy and with an overpowering taste. Lately, I’ve been trying out Oleifera which as well as looking quite classy on the old kitchen work-top, has converted me to the benefits of rapeseed oil. You know when you fry eggs you get that crispy hard bottom and edges? Well, I did anyway, but crispy bottoms are now a thing of the past and you don’t even need to use that much of it, so it isn’t swimming in grease.

Award winning design, a great product and guess what?

It’s Scottish! Yahoo!

Stuff we chose for our hampers part 5 – Island Bakery

The Hebrides have some of the wildest most barren landscapes in the UK. But this empty and hard edged landscape seems to have brought out quite the opposite characteristic in the islands locals. The Scottish islanders have their own special rules for everything. They are a generous, open, but most of all; colourful bunch. Our experience of Mull’s locals has been just that. The main one we have found is that all visitors must go away with a stomach full of great homemade food. Happy days. One rule not to fall foul of in the Hebrides though is that nothing happens on Sundays, as my father-in-law found out; temporarily barred from the local shop in Dervaig for playing his bagpipes on a Sunday. He should have known better.

Tobermory’s Island Bakery from Mull was in fact the first supplier we chose for our hampers. While Velvet Antlers was still just an idea growing in my head we looked around for inspiration and products out there that matched my notion of the style statement I was looking for. While perusing a farm shop soaking up inspiration, Island Bakery’s Oat Crumbles kinda jumped out from the rest. I wonder if they were influenced in their brightly coloured biscuit boxes by Tobermory’s famous harbour buildings?

That technicolour waterfront that greets the returning firshermen every day is perhaps Mull’s most photographed icon. Mull is also famed for its music scene; Sadly Mull’s pubs no longer vibrate to the beats and jigs of Mull’s most famous musician, the late Martyn Bennett. His albums are regularly employed to supply the psyche for a training session or two in our house!

You’ll find some Island Bakery’s oat Crumbles, Lemon Melts or Chocolate Limes in most of our hamper range – we liked them that much…

Stuff we chose for our hampers part 4 – Gillies Clootie

It’s really no wonder people get so worked up about planning their weddings. It really is quite important for things to be just right. A wedding is your chance to tell most of the people you know something about yourself and your style.

The style we wanted for our wedding was ‘Scottish’, ‘chilled’ and ‘informal’. We reckon we hit the right note and so we still look back and think it was a great day and we were very comfortable. You know I think that in an ideal wedding people should really feel at home. Sometimes big gatherings get so formal and I think that limits the fun a little bit (sure, or course some alcohol later on helps make this dissolve, if not swing quite the other way!). But if you choose all the details for your wedding accordingly, I think it’s possible to side step this issue and put everyone at ease and in the mood for a good time from the word go.

And every detail is important – the venue, the food, the arrangements etc etc. But the food is possibly most critical. Whisky is powerful stuff, but even the thirstiest Scot cannot ceilidh dance into the wee small hours on an empty stomach. We went to a wedding some years ago in a very majestic Scottish castle, but ended up doing mass minibus runs to the local chip shop. There was no food at the reception and everyone was too hungry to dance and needed party fuel urgently!

For our wedding lunch we took our family to The Oak Tree at Balmaha on Loch Lomond. If you are in the area it carries a strong recommendation from us! Our chosen dessert was Clootie dumpling. Clootie is like so many features of Scottish style, culture, or food; quite traditional in origin but is so damn good that it’s easy to give it a modern twist and make it something pretty cool. In this case, a little high quality vanilla ice cream or, if you prefer to keep it ‘retro cool tradtional’ then some fresh custard, and bingo – You have just fuelled a room full of people to complete many dance floor pounding hours.

Whatever you want to burn off your Clootie doing, you’ll find a generous hunk of it in our Sheer Belter and Pure Stoater hampers.

Stuff we chose for our hampers, part 2 – Arran Aromatics

The Scots are a damn lucky bunch when it comes to holidays. Glaswegians like us especially so. As well as the usual choices of getting on a plane anywhere, we have an almost inexhaustible resource of lovely places to discover in our own islands. Often, it’s financial constraints that lead Scot’s to holiday within Scotland, but it’s probably the time most outdoor lovers discovered the highlands and islands.

The isle of Arran is a popular haunt of Glaswegians off work for the summer ‘Glasgow Fair’ weekend, summer holidays, weekend warrior trips and these days, stag and hen dos!

For us, it was Arran’s famous granite mountains that brought us across on the Friday night crossing to Brodick and the long trek up the road to Glen Rosa campsite. Later, we discovered the quietude of camping in Glen Sannox beside some old ruins. This became our base for exploring the cliffs of Cir Mhor, The Bastion and Cuithe Mheadonach. The mood of these mountains really leaves an impression on you. Such a small mountain range, but I remember feeling so remote hanging off a huge granite flake listening to the silence of the summer mountain air and feeling the warm up-draught as the 300 foot plated granite wall soaked up the afternoon sun. Only the sight of the tiny wee Calmac ferry scurrying back and forth across the firth of Clyde to Ardrossan reminds you that civilisation is not too far away.

On that summer updraught I also remember the smells. They always seem so much stronger in the hebridean mountains than anywhere else we have spent time. Blossoming heather, peat drying in the summer heat, and the raw untouched granite, as the crystals under my feet scrittle slightly, disturbed for the first time since the glaciers left.

Arran Aromatics have made it their life’s work to bottle this most exquisite of sensory experiences. So we thought it was perfect for Velvet Antlers hampers.

Scottish style comp winner

A pleased Mike

Dave and I have just returned from a whistlestop tour of Sheffield, London and Glasgow (where we dropped off Mike's winnings). I'd say he looks pretty happy with it. My money's on his mum receiving it for Christmas!

What is Scottish Style? comp winner

And the winner is (drum roll please....) MIKE!

Mike has won a gorgeous Wee Beauty hamper full of lovely things to munch on (and wash with!) Mike felt that Scottish Style could be reflected by it's mutability, it's ability to change which I thought was on the money - so well done Mike.

Thanks also to everyone else who entered, it was a close run thing.

Velvet Antlers launched!

Well after a lot of hard work, Velvet Antlers is finally here. We’ve launched our luxury Scottish hampers in November, just like we said we would – by the skin of our teeth! At long last, we’re all systems go, ready to supply you and your nearest and dearest with tasty treats and gorgeous goodies. Orders for Christmas have already started coming in.

Let us know what you think of our hampers and remember to enter the competition on Scottish Style below. The winner of a Wee Beauty will be announced on Sunday!

What is Scottish style? competition

We’ve obviously spent a fair bit of time thinking about this recently so we could try and perfect our hampers. But we really wondered what other people think good Scottish Style is.

So here is a wee challenge for ya (with a wee beauty of a prize if you do well!):

Comment on this post and tell us of a simple thing, thought, icon, image or phrase that characterises modern Scottish style, right now, in 2007.

The best comment by December 1st will win a Wee Beauty hamper – so get thinking! We’ll announce it on here.

Quite apart from the prize, we’d really appreciate the comments, just to discuss it and hear other folks thoughts. We want to see if we’ve got it right, and figure out how we can tweak our styling to make it even cooler!

What is different about Velvet Antlers?

Every new business has to be different. Sometimes new ventures are started because someone comes across something they need or want, but isn’t available. Other times it’s already available but needs improving. Sometimes it’s both.

Velvet Antlers hampers do both (you knew I was going to say that didn’t you).

Claire sprung on the idea of making hampers as a business after she realised just how much she enjoyed picking lovely items and putting them together herself into hampers for Christmas gifts for our families. When we looked at what hampers were available commercially, we could both see straight away that they looked very different from the Hampers Claire was making.

So how different can a hamper be (we hear you cry) ?

Note the lack of Tartan (and wicker, and shortbread, and…)

If you look at our hampers you’ll see that they are filled with undeniably Scottish stuff, but note the lack of Tartan, shortbread or wicker.

Scotland has more going on that cliché’s. We’ve tried to seek the new and cool stuff out, and put it in our hampers.

But rather than hit you with any cheesy marketing, we just reckon you should have a look at the hampers – it’ll be pretty obvious what’s different…

…style.