We had a great family holiday in Edinburgh, travelling by train from Stonehaven. There were times when the children wished we had taken the car as they are not used to walking for long distances on pavements. We stayed in a new Premier Inn on Princes Street with a fantastic view of the Castle and of the chaotic roadworks in the street that represent the controversial and hugely expensive Edinburgh Tram Project. We visited the revitalised National Museum of Scotland with its amazing Natural History gallery. Everyone reached knowledge saturation point after a while so we left without having seen absolutely everything. We made a fleeting visit to the National Gallery before the children had a cultural meltdown. They were not particularly impressed by the sculptures at Contemporary Art Gallery which did not have any of its famous paintings on display. Freya even muttered that she wished she had chosen Biology instead of Art when we tried to understand the significance of what looked like worktop samples from a DIY shop.
The Camera Obscura Museum was great fun: there were optical illusions, crazy mirrors and weird holograms. This was followed by a visit to the Museum of Childhood which housed a huge collection of evil looking dolls. I think we found them more disturbing than a trip to the Edinburgh Dungeons where actors recreated scenes from a medieval cannibal cave and the dastardly deeds of notorious body-snatchers, Burke & Hare.
A day at the Zoo was obligatory as we wanted to see the new Pandas. The male one was not on show and the female one was fast asleep. She was cute but not as entertaining as the Penguin Parade which has sadly been suspended while their pool is being repaired. The family consensus was that we have officially now made our last zoo visit since we agreed that we don't really like looking at animals through glass or rather, not seeing the animals because they are hiding.
We enjoyed some great cafes and restaurants in Edinburgh. The Dome was delightfully opulent, Browns had wonderful polished brass tables, the mussels were superb at the Mussel Inn and the Hard Rock Cafe was simply cool. The Georgian architecture and cosmopolitan, busy streets certainly made a change from our usual surroundings.
I have searched my computer and all backups to try to find all of the Word documents that I have ever written for my blog. I will slowly restore it back as far as late 2008 when my old laptop crashed and lost everything. This is a shame and I wish I had at least printed the old website blog out while I still had it as I had intended L
I had a productive weekend in my workshop. I utility-quilted a triangular quilt for a project that will feature in a forthcoming edition of P&Q Magazine, painted the reverse of the Norse bird with a roller to hide the fact that I drew the pattern out on an old sheet using a black biro and I have quilted two thirds of a new piece onto shot brown and orange taffeta that looks rather like Viking seaweed. There only remains one more piece until the "Ostrych" is complete yet I have two more shiny pieces of fabric and I have found a great source for plenty more. I think I may have missed the point of creating a series – perhaps all of the pieces should have been the same size or even the same pattern although I am sure that I would have become bored with the repetition. Maybe the next time I decide to tackle something like this I should PLAN to make a set of matching, small quilts!
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