Made by greenjelly. Man, I love Etsy
Knitting Anarchy!
My knitting group has been asked by Beanscene not to come back due to "disruptive" behaviour! Let me just repeat that: my knitting group has been asked by Beanscene not to come back due to "disruptive" behaviour. So, spending around £7-10 per head, sitting around a table and knitting for 90 minutes every other Tuesday can now land you with an ASBOS. Amazing.
Seeing as Beanscene has quite recently had financial problems I thought having repeat customers in an otherwise quiet café would have been a Good Thing, but obviously I know nothing about business strategies or customer service.
Addendum: photo and styling by my partner who is slightly gobsmacked by also amused by the idea of knitters getting ASBOS.
Cadder Excursion
The HarperCollins visit was a great success. They marketed the event as a chance to see original Peter Pan artwork and unseen letters from famous authors such as JRR Tolkien and Agatha Christie, but in reality we enjoyed the visit to the cartographic offices much more. We also had a chance to peek into the process of making dictionaries. Very cool, very interesting and very cheap because the on-site bookshop was closed. Boo.
The Antonine Wall/the Cadder Fort? Underwhelming as the site was excavated in the 1930s and subsequently turned into a sand quarry during World War II. So we stood in the rain, looked across the Forth and Clyde canal and saw a bunch of trees. However, as the Antonine Wall now has been declared a World Heritage Site, we might get to see something a bit more involving in the future. We did learn that the Roughcastle fort in Falkirk is well-preserved and well worth a visit, so we might head up there at some point.
Finally, we spent some time at Cadder Parish Church which stands in the middle of a forest. There has been a church on site since the mid-12th century and although the church has been rebuilt and refurbished many times since, you could still see the passing of ages in the surroundings. Dave loves his stained glass windows and was thrilled to see stained glass windows featuring World War I tanks. I was more taken in by the graveyard and its odd open iron coffin.. It was used during the 19th c to deter grave robbers (who'd sell fresh bodies to the anatomy schools). You'd simply put the coffin on top of the grave, fill it with stones and just sit in a little waiting house nearby until you heard the unmistakable sound of men trying to remove stones from the iron coffin. The waiting house is still there -- it looks to be a favourite spot for the local foxes.
And what is this? Could this be a sighting of the increasingly common februarii ladius sweaterae? I believe this one is the organic Scottish Gray variant with mother-of-pearl features..
This photo was actually taken a day earlier during our bramble picking adventure. Bramble is the Scottish word for blackberry and we have had quite a few bramble crumbles lately. Yum, yum.
West End Girl
Not everyone can say that they've had their knitting-in-progress cooed over by a BAFTA winner and OBE recipient but now I can. My mother's quite excited. Yesterday David and I went out for dinner to celebrate my two years in Scotland. On our way to the restaurant we stumbled across 'Polish Taste' - a little Polish deli here in the West End. David suggested we could take a look as we were running a bit early and I am very grateful that he did. I found all the things I hadn't managed to find anywhere during my first two years in Glasgow: affordable buttermilk and live yeast! They also had some very, very delicious sourdough bread. Wooh. I never thought of Danish food as being very 'Baltic cuisine' but, according to manager Joanna Korzeniowski, I was not the first Dane to be ridiculously pleased about buttermilk.
And, finally, Lost in Fiction is opening down the street soon. The shop front is all pretty and mysterious. I'm rather excited about its Ffordian/Nextian name. Ooh!
Like the Drip Drip Drip of the Raindrops..
I'm sitting here quietly listening to the gentle drips of water flowing into .. a bucket I have to empty every two hours or else.
Yesterday's sore throat/headache-tranquillity was broken by our downstairs neighbour pounding on the door. Water was dripping into the kitchen. Seeing as we've had some sort of leak around our sink and had been waiting for a plumber since last Monday (long story and a boring one too), I wasn't too surprised. A few phone calls later and I was still waiting for a plumber, but now I had been promised one and on the same day! Same day meant next day, of course, and so far he has put a bucket under the sink, ripped part of the window frame out, dismantled a tap .. and left.
Oh, if you are in Edinburgh on Saturday, my friend Lilith is doing a trunk show of her fabulous hand-dyed yarns (she runs Old Maiden Aunt). There'll also be handspun yarn and tiny trickets. The whole she-bang takes place at K1 Yarns just off Grassmarket.
Wednesday Woes
I woke up this morning with a very sore throat and a pounding headache, so I will make this brief.
Startling Things I Have Seen Recently On the Net:
+ The Han Solo Stitch Sampler
+ Dark Side Stained Glass
+ The 'Scariest' Garden Ornament Ever
+ Bad Baby Names (Legend Haakon? Calaya Delphine? Aemezolina Mercedes? Gennavieve Luaraleigh?!)
+ 10 Comics Creators That Should Make Movies Instead Of Frank Miller
Have at it. I'll try to find some LemSip and my bed in the meantime.
Addendum: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!