Stitches

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This was a plastic shopping bag for sale at the supermarket, and I took a photo of it because I thought - quilt pattern! Maybe I think too much about quilts? I would not make it in orange, however. 

We took a little train trip down to the Borders last week to have another look at the Great Tapestry of Scotland. 

We've seen it before, but there's always something new to look at. It's in Galashiels and this (above) is Gala Water. 

There are 160 panels in the Tapestry and it's the longest such thing in Europe.  The last time we went, we only looked at the first half before we ran out of brain, so this time we started half-way through. 

I could so easily get into embroidery; and it would be much more portable than a quilt. (However, I don't need another hobby to add to my two choirs, my editorship of the church magazine, my quilting, gardening and walking.) The Tapestry (only it isn't; it's embroidery) is about the history of Scotland. Here's a chap walking behind a newly modified kind of plough. 

Here's a panel about the East India Company, and Scotland's (doubtless scurrilous) involvement. 

A jolly lion. 

A lady curling - a Scottish sport on the ice. I do like all the different stitches used. 

There's a whole panel, Margaret G-F, about your famous relative, the poet Hugh McDiarmid. It's not a wonderful likeness but they've got the hair! (The panel's not dirty - those are just shadows.)

I can't remember what this depicted, but again, the stitching is great. 

1000 stitchers from all over Scotland took part in this - mainly, but not exclusively, women. They're all named beside their panels, and we recognised the names of a few people whom we vaguely know. Scotland's a small place. 
 

A little trip

We took ourselves off for a little outing to Dunfermline on Thursday on the bus, over the bridge to Fife.  (Buses are free to the over-60s.) We'd heard that there was an exhibition of Joseph Noel Paton's paintings in the Carnegie Library, and having only vaguely heard of JNP, wanted to find out more. 

It turned out that he was very famous in his day and was the Queen's (Victoria's) Limner in Scotland. He painted lots of pictures of fairies, because that was very fashionable, but also portraits of his family and other people. 

This one is of his wife and youngest son and is called "Lullaby". It somewhat disregards the fact that the average mother, having got the baby to sleep, would immediately put him down and go and tidy up - or possibly collapse in a heap - rather than balance him precariously on her knee and play the piano to keep him asleep. However, artistic licence and all that. 

The paintings were in a modern extension to the library, which was very nice indeed, and which also houses a museum with various exhibits showing the history of Scotland and specifically of Dunfermline - which was the capital of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries. 

Queen Margaret founded a priory here in 1070. As tends to happen, the building got altered a lot over the years, a bit of it was taken over for a palace (now fairly ruined) and an extra church was built on the side two hundred years ago, but there's still quite a lot to see. The extension to the library has lots of glass, with extensive views over the gardens, 

and the Abbey church and precincts. 

You can see Robert the Bruce's name built into the church tower.

By the time we'd finished looking at the exhibition (and had lunch) the Abbey was closing, as was the Palace, so we just had a quick look and will come back another day.

Then we went for a short walk in the adjacent Pittencrieff Park. This was bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and given to the people of Dunfermline. The story is that as a boy, he couldn't play there because the estate was privately owned, so he vowed that one day, he'd buy it. And, once he'd become one of the richest people in the world, he did. 

 

Walls

I've now cut all the tumbler shapes for the middle part of the quilt I'm making for my friend - these are all from the shirts and pyjamas of her late husband. It did seem a bit odd, handling his clothes, but she was keen for me to do it and she's a lovely friend.

And... the annual photo of my amaryllis - watered for 360 days of the year when it's a potful of green leaves, all for the triumphant five days when it's glorious.

Big Granddaughter went to a climbing wall party the other week, so was keen to try it again. So SIL 1 and I took her and her brother. This place is bonkers - see that person up there? She was a young woman. She climbed up there, foothold and handhold, foothold and handhold, removing one hand from time to time to clip herself on to the next hook. Mad!!! Very brave, looking at it another way. It was VERY high, much higher than it looks there.

But then, can you see Big Granddaughter???? Yes, there she is, at the top, having gone foothold to foothold, handhold to handhold up there. She did it lots of times, on different walls. The boy at the bottom is Big Grandson. He (wisely) never got above head height before deciding to come down again. That's my boy... .

This was another thing. You had to crawl - or some bigger kids just stepped - from pole to pole. She went right to the top, which is about twice as high as she is here - and then the way to descend is just to launch yourself off and the harness lowers you down. Theoretically. (Well, it did. But I wouldn't have trusted it.)

Then we came home and did lots of Heads, Bodies and Legs. Much more my idea of fun.

She's an avid reader. Son used to get The Beano when he was little and I kept his collection. She's about to be seven. Time whizzes past.

Today we visited friends and they took us to Paisley Abbey, where we'd never been. It's quite impressive. 

Someone had done a nice time line about its history. 

I'm not sure what my favourite castle is. You?

Oops indeed. The choir area got rebuilt only in the late nineteenth century.

It's a lovely building but it would take a bit of filling - I doubt if it's often standing room only these days.

Crazy passions

It was still the school holidays last Tuesday, so Daughter 1 and I took her children to the Glasgow Science Centre. They watched balls whizzing about on an energy machine,

investigated the power of air currents and did all sorts of other things.

It was fun. I wonder if they'll grow up to be scientists? I didn't, but some members of the family are certainly scientifically orientated.

 Brio trains retain their popularity.

Today, Mr L and I went to the exhibition "Royalty and the Romanovs" at The Queen's Gallery. This comprised various portraits of the royal families of Europe - mostly those married to one of the many offspring of Queen Victoria - but concentrating on the Russian royals. There were also some Faberge eggs and other exquisite ornaments. It was interesting and of course, when one got on to Nicholas II, sad. Amazing to think that those murders happened only thirty years before Mr L was born. History certainly telescopes as one gets older.

We then had a cup of tea in the Queen's cafe and looked out on the hill and the autumn trees.

It was slightly frosty this morning for the first time.

Brr. But the weather's been beautiful. There's certainly something to be said for autumn at its best. 

Daughter 1 to Biggest Granddaughter: Come and let me brush your hair - it's gone a bit mad.
Granddaughter: But that's right, Mummy, because I have a good heart but crazy passions. 

(As Daughter 1 says - who writes her scripts?)

Why the days aren't long enough

The children came as usual on Friday and played a very complicated sort of obstacle course of their own devising. It involved various stations around the garden at which: their backs were killing them and they had to have a massage; their feet were hot so they had to bathe them; they were bored so they had to go and look at flowers in the park; they needed to build a tunnel (in the sandpit); and... I forget, but this amused them for ages.

On Saturday I met up with ex-colleague friends for coffee-merging-with-lunch at South Queensferry.

I arrived slightly early and wandered around in the sunshine. Our venue was that white building to the right of the middle of the picture.

 South Queensferry is a quaint little place, not designed for the motor car.

D had to go before we got round to taking photos. One of our number, R, is considerably younger than the rest of us and is sadly still working. This is one of the worst times of year at college, when one's desperately trying to learn several hundred names and also trying to be entertaining so as to make the students optimistic that it's going to be a fun-filled year.

J took us to see the amazing Queensferry mural which has recently been erected.

There's the Burry Man on the left (a chap goes around the town covered in burrs - don't ask why).

Daughter 1 has become 40. I would like to be 40 myself.

I've started on a cot quilt for Daughter 2's friend, inspired by something I saw in a blurry picture on the internet. The friend suggested I do it in self-colour blues but I'm cheating slightly, with small cornery bits (not the technical term) of faint pattern. Once I'd started, I found, as usual, that it was rather more complicated than I'd imagined, and realised that if I'd simply gone for fabric in two shades of blue, it would have simplified things considerably. But by then I had the idea in my head and somehow felt I had to continue. One must pursue one's Vision.

It's going to be something like this, though I've now rearranged the crosses.

And so life goes on.

Searching for Hugh MacDiarmid

Oh, I do love bloggy meet-ups! Margaret, who's a retired French teacher from Washington State, came to stay for a couple of days before going up north on a group tour. It was such fun and she's so lovely - just as I was sure she would be, from her blog. Her grandfather was a first cousin to Christopher Murray Grieve, pen name Hugh MacDiarmid, who's a huge name among fans of Scottish poetry. He was born in Langholm, in the Border country, so Mr L kindly drove us down there on a pilgrimage. Firstly, we tracked down Hugh MacD's memorial - which wasn't quite where it was marked on the map. We drove up a single-track road for some distance - I hope Margaret didn't think this was an elaborate plan to kidnap her - until we spotted it. It's quite large once you get there!

Personally, I'd have put it in the village for ease of visiting - on the other hand, there are lovely views once you've found it.

Langholm itself is set among the hills.

We almost found his birth house - it's number 17 in a road which has numbers 15 and 19 and then in between, a sort of muddly building which appears to have a house at the front and another in the back. However, we paid homage to the general area.

We also followed signs to the library, having discovered that the family moved to a flat above this, where CMG/HMacD grew up. Having failed to locate the library, we then later happened to pass The Old Library, which was clearly the right vintage. So we waved to his shade in the windows above.

At that point we decided to have a cup of tea, and entered the only cafe open in the village. It's called Truly Scrumptious. It wasn't. The woman in charge somewhat grudgingly allowed us to sit down, saying, "You can have coffee, but not tea. I've switched the urn off. We close at 4." At that point, it was about 20 to 4. You'd have thought she might have managed to boil a kettle, even if it was too much bother to keep the urn on. However, coffee was all right. She didn't offer anything to eat, but luckily we weren't hungry.  Scottish hospitality at its best (though she did have a southern English accent... ). They probably don't get a huge number of tourists.

Which will be why the tourist office was shut (on a Saturday afternoon). But the cleaner was there, and when I asked her for directions to the cemetery, where CMG/HMacD is buried, she told us how to get there. "Is it walkable?" I asked, and she assured me that it was.

Well, she was right. It was quite a long walk, the kind where you go, "Do you think we're nearly there, or will we go back for the car?" and then you decide that it can't be much further. And it is. And then it's up quite a big hill.

But we got there. We knew that he was in plot F17 (or something - can't quite remember) but sadly none of the plots was marked, and there were a lot of gravestones. After we'd all searched for a considerable time and were about to give up, Margaret found it - hurray!

So that was a lovely, if slightly hilarious, day.

The countryside is very pretty.

After that we drove home, vaguely trying to find the cottage he lived in for much of his adult life, but this time we failed. But we got the general idea.

The next day, Margaret and I went to Holyrood Palace. The palace is nice enough but I really covet the garden. You wouldn't think it was in the middle of a city. That's our city hill in the background. The ruins to the left of the picture date from the abbey's founding in 1128, though the abbey church is in slightly better condition (though still ruined. It was plundered by English troops in the 16th century. But we forgive them. I'm sure the Scots did some plundering in England also).

The following day we went to the Botanics, where Margaret bravely sampled the iconic Scottish soft drink of Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew). I warned her that it wasn't my favourite. You can see what she thought of it. I couldn't quite think of how to describe it in advance but she identified the taste as like cough medicine, and I couldn't disagree. But she'd read about it in Rebus books and now she knows not to have it again.

And now she's off on her tour and I've started to think about my next quilt. A friend of Daughter 2 is having a long-awaited baby and she wants a cot quilt all in blue and all self-colour, which I shall find an interesting challenge.