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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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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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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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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Simply because of where we live, this year has, I think, not been tough as it has proved for so many other people. I feel enormously grateful to be able to just step outside and go for a walk in wonderful rural scenery directly from our front door. And for me personally, the importance of…
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There is no getting away from the fact that, whatever business you are in, this year has been a very weird one. Having to change the nature and direction of what you are doing – often very rapidly – is never an easy thing, and this year there have been so many of those changes.…
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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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hello! Sorry to disappear there: sometimes a migraine can really slay me, and that’s definitely been the case with this one. As well as feeling utterly exhausted, I’ve really needed to rest my eyes, so I have spent most of this past week away from the computer screen. It is funny how not sitting at…
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Though our landscape is full of the sound of cuckoos at this time of year, I’ve always found it quite difficult to actually see them. Their song carries a remarkably long way, and when I’ve followed the source of the sound and spotted one, it always seems to be sat up high on a far…
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Hello! As you may have gathered, our broadband definitely isn’t sorted out yet – in fact, Tom received a somewhat concerning text message from our provider reassuring us that our switchover was now scheduled to be completed “before June.” The currently patchy connection is certainly somewhat frustrating, but in the larger scheme of things, it…
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Taking you on a rather different walk than you will be used to seeing on the KDD blog.Â
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(cuckoo by Edmund Fellowes) I’ve been thinking I might hear a cuckoo for the past few days, and yesterday (sunday), I decided to wear a GoPro camera during my early morning walk – just on the offchance that I might hear one, and would be able to record it for you. Imagine how excited I…
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Good morning, how are you all doing? Tom really enjoyed all of your wonderful (and hugely helpful) responses to yesterday’s post – and I suspect you’ll see him following up many of these paper folding leads quite soon. . . . It’s rather blustery and rainy here today (though the weather is less severe than…
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Good morning, everyone. Today I thought I’d share with you one of the poems I recently read at Write by the Sea. I’m someone who loves walking, and since my stroke in 2010, I’m also someone who has a disabled body. If you’ve read Handywoman, you might remember that a really formative moment in my…
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You may remember that I mentioned I fancied designing and knitting myself a new hat as part of the It’s on Your Heid knit-along, currently running in our Ravelry group I wanted to create a hat with deep, folded ribbing to cover my chilly ears; which sat on the back of my head (which is…
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I’m currently working on a couple of chapters for my book. The first chapter looks at learning to walk (which, unless you’ve experienced injury or disability most of us will never engage in as an acquired skill) and the second chapter explores some thoughts I have about walking itself (one of my favourite activities, which…
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