My summers spent on the Lewis moor engendered an early passion for the natural world and so science was a subject that had a huge appeal for me. Zoology and Botany were of particular fascination and interest and so these became my specialist subjects at school.

Though textile art and design took over my life I have never lost of my interest in all aspects of those subjects. I have a lifelong love of Odonata, the dragonflies and damselflies that I observed minutely on the bogs and lochsides of the moor. In the summer of 2007 my patience paid off when I observed and photographed the submerged oviposition behaviour of the Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). This was the first recording of this event and so my paper on the subject was published in the Journal of the British Dragonfly Society in September 2008.