housekeeping

Did you know that this blog has now been around for fifteen years? This space has always been at the heart of what we do, and Tom and I enjoy the fact that it remains a place where we share our passions and explore ideas in long-form, ad-hoc, experimental, and provisional ways that tend not to be accommodated by social media platforms. Over those fifteen years, what we do around here has changed, grown, and diversified, and we’ve amassed a huge amount of material, on a wide range of different topics. In a rare recent fit of tidying up, I decided to organise some of this material for those who find themselves here looking for something specific.

I’ve created a new section called Conversation Pieces, where you can find interviews with, profiles of, and guest posts by, our creative friends. There are over sixty conversations listed here so far, and the catalogue is by no means complete! I’ll continue adding to this section, so do check back from time to time.

There’s also a brand new Historical Excursions section, which includes essays I’ve written here over the years, exploring topics from the legacy of slavery in Scotland’s rural landscape to the imperial story of indigo and British balloon-o-mania. Posts exploring the history of textiles and hand-knitting are included in this section, such as last year’s popular sock of the week series.

In the Making / Art section of the blog, you’ll find posts about our different projects and work in progress. There are posts here about art and artists, about Tom’s creative work and exhibitions, as well as about the residency and collaboration with Mexican designer-makers, that resulted in the creation of the Carbeth Creature.

I’ve also created a Favourite Places section for posts celebrating the many beautiful spots we love spending time in around Scotland, together with a separate page, where you can find the films Tom shot as part of our Secret Coast project, and other recent work with moving images and sound.

And it would be surely remiss of me not to include a Dogologue section, where you can enjoy the many important contributions to this blog that have been written by Bruce, Bob and Bran over the years.

Finally, I’ve created a section which has the title Opportunities. At the moment, this section is dedicated to advertising our brand-new appointment (if you, or anyone you know, is interested in this position, you’ve until the end of this month to apply!) but in future weeks I’ll post information here about test and sample knitting, about the support we offer to designer-makers (yarn, materials, mentoring), and about other creative and collaborative opportunities, as and when they arise.

To aid your navigation, there’s a “looking for something” page and drop-down menu, where you’ll find all our new sections listed, and if you still haven’t found the particular thing that you came here in search of, try using the text search box at top right.

This remarkable photograph (like others in this post) were taken by Tom from Scalasaig, in Colonsay. He stayed up until the early hours to capture the wonderful sight of the moon rising over Jura – and I think the resulting images were definitely worth the late night!

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!