I don’t mind saying that the Oa is one of my all-time favourite sweaters. It is just really cosy, super-practical for walking, and I love the way it looks. It’s a design that’s been really popular among knitters, but it’s also one of those hand-knits that non-knitters often really like. From time to time, when…
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Hello, happy Wednesday, and welcome to another My Place post! Today I’ve the very great pleasure of introducing Outi Kater, a designer whose work I’ve admired ever since I spotted one of her hats being worn around the streets of Lerwick around ten years ago, and had to immediately find out who had created this…
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I know I am really lucky to be able to walk outside for an hour or so, every single day. But though I love my daily walks, I have of late rather missed walking much further, in the hills. A few days ago, I had a sudden urge to go for a good long walk…
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Hello and welcome to our Wednesday My Place post! Today’s contribution is something really special, and I’m very excited to introduce it! First of all, the design is the kind of shawl I really like: bold and graphic in appearance, but with lots of variety and some novel features that keep the knitting interesting. Next,…
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Welcome to our Wednesday My Place post! I’ve been thinking a lot about knitting and time of late: Knitting takes time, makes it, and reflects it, and I’ve noticed that knitters have recently been using their projects in a range of really interesting ways to mark time’s passing. Some of these projects seem to be…
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There are many creative handywomen I admire here in Scotland, and today I’m really happy to introduce you to one of them: Flora Collingwood-Norris. A super-talented designer of knitwear (of whose palette I’ve long been a huge fan), over the past couple of years, Flora has proudly advocated both the value of making, and the…
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Welcome to the very first post from our My Place project! We’re kicking things off with a designer who I’m sure is already familiar to many of you – Virginia Sattler-Reimer. I’ve never met Virginia in person, but I feel like I’ve “known” her forever: she’s one of those people I eagerly followed back in…
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We seem to be in the middle of a fairly sustained cold snap in our part of Scotland. Icy days have been followed by snowy ones, with bitter temperatures and freezing fog. I personally like quite chilly weather, and particularly enjoy its transformative effect on my surrounding landscape. During a cold spell, everything starts to…
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A few of you asked about the changes KDD has made to the way we use big tech and social media – and about where to begin when considering making similar changes. As a starting point, I would suggest reading Shoshana Zuboff’s The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism, which I read back in the middle of…
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Hello! We are currently enjoying a very quiet and relaxing winter break. In the absence of any socialising, this has largely involved good food, lots of films and books, knitting (me), creating digital soundscapes from ordinary household objects (Tom) and crisp long walks (both of us, plus dogs). After an extended period of hard work,…
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It is that time of year in Scotland when the clocks are about to “go back” (when our time reverts to GMT, rather than BST). My bipolar has always had seasonal triggers (generally in very early spring, and then following the autumn equinox) and for me, as for so many other people, this time of…
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We’ve had some beautiful, golden September weather here recently, and have been making the most of it for our 10 Years in the Making photoshoots. Due to local Covid restrictions, these shoots involve just Tom and myself, but this also means we can get up and start taking photos at first light, when there’s often…
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The revival of my eighteenth-century balloon-o-mania was inspired after some recent walks around Clachan of Camspie and Milton of Campsie (just north and east of where we live) during which I discovered that that balloonist, Vincent Lunardi, landed in Campsie Glen at the conclusion of his second flight from Glasgow in November 1785. After wowing…
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I’ve been reading a lot of books while researching People Make Glasgow, and one of my favourite recent reads is Ian R Mitchell’s This City Now (reissued as Walking through Glasgow’s Industrial Past in 2015) which offers a brilliant walker’s guide to the city’s industrial history. The book mentions one of Mitchell’s peripatetic-literary Glasgow forbears…
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It has been a very wet and cool July. As our Spring was unusually dry and warm, the garden has definitely appreciated the wet weather, and apart from having to wear the dreaded rain pants on my long daily walks, I’ve rather enjoyed it too. Certainly there is something rather jolly about hearing the rain…
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Hello! Friday is project reveal day, and today I wanted to show you a new iteration of one of my favourite designs of 2019 – the Udal pullover, designed for and with Meg Rodger’s Birlinn Yarn Company. Inspired by one of my favourite Hebridean places, and using Meg’s own fabulously hardy and beautiful Hebridean wool…
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