Tag: Edinburgh
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Arthur’s Seat
I was going to tell you about volcanic plugs and St Anthony’s well, about James Hogg’s Confessions and the brocken-spectre, but as soon as I got here this morning I knew it was just about the hill and me. Arthur’s Seat lies at the heart of Edinburgh, and since I’ve lived here, it’s been at…
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Corstorphine Hill
Autumn seems to have arrived while we were away. The plums on Jesus’s tree have been turned into jam, the brambles in the local hedgerows are all but gone, and the rosebay willowherb has blown spectacularly to seed. It seemed the right sort of time to ascend Corstorphine, which has, perhaps, the most woodland character…
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shade
Continuing the colour-related theme, here is a tank I made quite a while ago, as a sort of exercise in shading. At Woolfest last year, I bought four colours of some lovely Artisan Threads BFL. One was a soft rose, and the other three were slightly different shades of green/grey. As you can see, the…
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The Braids
Hill four of the seven is Braid Hill, or in local parlance, The Braids. Rising from a wooded valley floor to an undulating hillside a couple of miles south of Edinburgh, The Braids are part managed parkland, part urban corridor. By day, a place for golf buddies and walkers; by night, the hideout of youths…
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Blackford Hill
Time for the third of the seven hills. Blackford sits to the South of Edinburgh and though the hill is not at all steep, the terrain is rough in places. On Calton or Castle Hill, one is definitely walking in the city – not so here. I thought I’d try using two walking poles today:…
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Calton Hill
A couple of days of bed rest is enough for me. Now that the incision wound in my thigh is feeling less tender, it is time to crack on with my seven hills of Edinburgh project! You will recall that I’ve only managed one of these so far, but now the hole in my heart…
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daisies
The weather is amazing – not so very long ago there was frost on the ground, but last week it warmed up, and everything seemed to suddenly spring into life. This kind of seasonal spontaneity reminds me of a North American Spring, but the kind of spontaneous human behaviour hot weather inspires could only happen…
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gang trigly
The easiest of Edinburgh’s hills (and therefore the first of my seven walks) is Castle Hill – the volcanic plug sitting at the highest point of the street that runs through the heart of the city’s old town and which is known as the Royal Mile. Our ascent (which, incidentally, covers a Scots not an…
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mead mountain x2
A White Christmas! And time, once again, to ascend mead mountain. Does doing this more than once make it a ritual or tradition? Whatever it is, the excitement of uncovering a bottle of home-brewed mead, buried at the top of a mountain, really never goes away. This bottle had a full twelve months to mature…
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twenty three
The audience assemble to hear Handel’s Messiah at the Queen’s Hall. A lovely evening!
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eighteen
Behind today’s advent calendar door is Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, photographed in 1915 by Frank Hurley. This startling image — which suggests the engulfing beauty of the Antarctic landscape, as well as the vulnerability of the ship (and all things human) within it, features in an exhibition I saw recently at Holyrood. Hurley was a…
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braid claith
Since I wrote that piece about the Yorkshire woollen trade for The Knitter a while ago, I’ve had broadcloth on my mind. Broadcloth is a traditionally woollen, and and quintessentially British fabric. As the woven wool trade developed through the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Centuries, broadcloth, in its several grades, kinds, and colours was popularly produced…
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on show
Today I visited the Edinburgh and District Allotments and Garden Associations Show. I found out about the show too late to enter (not that anything I’ve grown would have won any prizes, mind, but I do have hopes next year for the “any knitted item” category). I really enjoyed myself — it was great to…
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spent
You know when you get so physically tired that you can barely even speak? Well, I’ve been there a few times this week. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling — I find that toiling to the point of total exhaustion has a pleasing brain-clearing effect — at the end of an evening down the allotment,…
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in case you didn’t know. . .
Today is World Wide Knit in Public day! It was a lovely, sunny morning, and Rebecca and I walked up into the centre of Edinburgh with our knitting. As you can see, she is very adept at knitting socks on the move. . . . we met up with other knitters, and occupied the space…