The Turtle Moves

Good-day Sunshine.

Hello!

The sun has been shining like it means it, at last. I had a little wander round the garden this morning, just soaking up the happy warmth. The lilac is coming into full bloom. It's a very old and gnarly lilac, and the blossoms don't last long, so I like to make sure I actively appreciate them while they're here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's another fabulous burst of colour from the azaleas beside our tiny little pond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But best of all - my vegetables have started to grow! These broad beans have sat miserably at about 4" tall throughout our horribly cold and wet April and beginning of May, and now, suddenly, they've zoomed skywards. Wonderful! Grow, little guys, grow!

My raised beds are beginning to look as if we'll get an edible harvest after all - in fact I might have a couple of leaves of Lollo Rosso and Rocket this very lunchtime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I might almost believe I could possibly be a gardener.

May Madness

This palatial abode is a light-weight bivvy-bag and  tarp. See how it is cunningly erected using a stick and a couple of walking poles. This is what My Dear Husband intends to sleep in along the West Highland Way next week. He gave it a bit of a try-out in the Blackwood of Rannoch yesterday, and didn't freeze to death - he has just returned home safely - but my dears, the weather is Frightful! This may be May, but there's cold rain everywhere and snow on the hills. Still, a Man's gotta do what a Man's gotta do.

Personally, I'm staying in and trying to create the illusion of late spring/ early summer by making flowers - crocheted ones. I got this book - 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet - last year, but was a little intimidated by the complexity of some of the instructions. However, having followed the lovely Lucy's clear pictorial instructions for making her crochet rose, I took the plunge. I am particularly pleased with the dark and light blue Scabious (top left of the group) as it involved making one lot of petals into the front loops of the centre circle and then the darker petals into the back loops. Now I'm sure all you experienced crocheters are dab hands at such shenanigins, but it's only slowly that I'm getting more confident in doing slightly more advanced techniques. So I'm pleased. The next question is what to do with all the flowers!

Now is the month of Maying

Hello!

We went on another Geology expedition yesterday. This involved a trip in a small boat on quite high seas to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth.

This island is a volcanic sill, of the same age and type of Dolerite rock as Salisbury Crag in Edinburgh. It is also a splendid haven for all sorts of birds - Puffin, Razorbill, Guillemot, Kittiwake, Gannet, Arctic Tern, Eider, Cormorant, Shag, Fulmar and of course Herring Gulls who do their best to eat the eggs of all the afore-mentioned.

The sea looks calm in this picture - that's because we were in the lee of the island - the crossing from Anstruther to here involved a lot of large waves, the boat rocking to and fro and up and down and my Lovely Husband being Very Unhappy Indeed. (He is not a good sailor.) Nevermind, floating gently among huge flocks  of seabirds (and seals) made up for it.

We were hoping to land on the island, but the seas were so rough that we couldn't go round the point of the island (on the right in the first picture) to where the landing stage is. So we just looked at the birds and the cliffs and the interesting columnar jointing and horizontal shearing of the rock while drifting gently to and fro on the sheltered side.

 

There were however some Twitchers on the boat with us. They were distinguishable by the ENORMOUS telephoto lenses on their cameras (at least 6" in diameter and 18" long) and their camouflage clothing (even the cameras were green and brown splotched). They were Not Happy. Apparently a rare migrant bird had been reported on the island (a Black-winged Stilt) and they were desperate to land in order to spot it and 'tick it off'. They moaned and complained throughout the return journey. As one of them said, 'A bunch of Guillemot floating about beside the boat just doesn't do it for me.'  Hmmm. In that case, my dear, I'm very sorry for you. 

On the Track of the Giant Scorpion

Hello y'all. Today we went on a fabulous walk in beautiful sunshine along part of the Fife Coastal Path to find the fossilized tracks of the Hibberopterus. We've been doing a Geology class since the beginning of this academic year, and our lovely lecturer, Ros, is also a founder member of GeoHeritage Fife, so she let us know about this expedition. What a blast! After a brisk walk and some sliding down a bank, smelling delightfully of wild Hyacinths and Ramsens, we found this wonderful fossilized track of possibly the first aquatic animal to also come out onto land. It was huge - can you see the two sort of dotted lines in the picture above? That's the mark of its claws, and they're about a metre apart. The solid line in between them is the drag of its tail. This fossil is from the Carboniferous period, about 330 million years ago - long before the dinosaurs.

Awesome.

Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw.

The weather has turned a bit inclement, so not a lot of gardening has been going on here - but we always look out of our kitchen window at the birds, whatever the weather, and  bird watching was very exciting today.  There was a pair of Siskin, a Goldfinch, a Chaffinch, some Tree Sparrows, some House Sparrows, a couple of Bluetit, a Great Tit, a Coaltit, some Wood Pigeon, Mr and Mrs Blackbird splashing about in our little pond - and then - It All Went Very Quiet and all the wee birds disappeared into the bushes. The reason? - This handsome Sparrowhawk female sitting on our shed roof, checking out all the little feathered titbits we'd been encouraging to our garden with seeds and peanuts. She sat there for ages, but none of the little birds moved a muscle, so she eventually gave up. Within seconds of her departure, the garden seed-feeders were alive with frantic birdy activity once again.

Tell you what, I'd rather attract this kind of predator than cats. Luckily, our nearest neighbours are all dog people.

Ruffles upon Ruffles

Hello again!

Yarn continues to be produced in ever more ingenious guises. You have met the tape yarn and the loop yarn from which you make ruffle scarves. Now, let me show you the loop yarn with an extra edge. Katia Rocio knits up in just the same way as all the other fancy tape yarns, but it's even easier because you can't knit into the wrong edge by mistake - it's got bobbles on!

 

 

It knits up really quickly as well, because you don't have to estimate where to put your needle - every loop is a stitch. There are only 8 stitches in a row and one full ball of yarn makes one scarf. No thinking required.

As always the lovely people at Art of Yarn can furnish you with this interesting yarn. Have fun!

What Shall I Do?

Help! I've finished "The Baroque Cycle"! This 3-volume cornucopia of wit, history, swash-buckling adventure and bawdiness by Neal Stephenson was given to me for my Birthday. As you can see, it was also a superior set of special edition, slip-cased and signed by the author books. Not so much bedtime reading, more a piece of furniture. It has been my companion in the mornings and evenings for nearly 3 months, and despite trying to go really slowly towards the end, it is finished! I read the acknowledgements this morning - unwilling to finally close the last lovely volume. What shall I do now? I could go back to "Cryptonomicron" and remind myself of what the descendants of Daniel Waterhouse and his Logic Mill get up to, or I could see what else the wonderful Mr Stephenson has penned. Yes! Not only does he write fabulousy witty and convoluted historically based things, he also writes science fiction and crazy thrillers. I like the sound of "Zodiac" - here's what the blurb says: "Sangamon Taylor’s a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil — all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI’s most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world. "

Sounds like my kinda book. Amazon, here I come.

Pretty Lucy Flower

Hello there!

This week is a little strange, because my gorgeous grand-daughter is off on a school trip. Yes! The first ever Week Away From Home. Doing Outdoor Pursuits. She's only 11 - and a bit - okay, nearly 12 (how did that happen?). Her Mum, my wonderful daughter, is of course completely in a state of

shock/denial about it all and I haven't dared to speak to her this week in case the whole teetering edifice of "It's fine, really" topples to the ground. We are such wimps, the pair of us. ANYWAY - she's coming home tomorrow and will no doubt be full of fabulous tales of derring-do. To welcome her back I have made a pretty flower wall-hanging for her bedroom. Thank you Lucy of attic24 for the pattern.

I have to tell you that Rowan handknitting cotton comes in the loveliest subtle shades and is excellent for this kind of project. You can get it on-line from Art Of Yarn  -who also do lots of other yarns too. Did you know there's now a yarn made from sugar cane? Wow. First hemp, then bamboo, now sugar. Are we going to have small furry animals chowing down on our cardigans? Yay. Here panda, panda, panda.

Patterned Penguin

Hello there!

I made this charming chap today. Isn't he cute?

The pattern came from a lovely web-site, The Purl-Bee Penguin where they generously allow you to download pattern and instructions for free. And very clear, comprehensive instructions they are, too. I made this little fellow in about 2 hours this morning, and he's destined for my gorgeous grandson's collection of cuddlies, because the penguin seems to be the favoured creature du jour for him.

I was alerted to the web-site by my discerning and talented daughter who is always concerned that I should have enough to do in my retirement! No, actually  it's just that she wastes hours looking at lovely gorgeous things on-line when she should be writing her best-selling novel and when she finds something irresistible she shares it with us all.

So now I pass it on to you. Go on, make yourself a penguin or two! Perhaps you could go along with the interior decorating trend of having little bird decorations and make them in different colours. A row of technicolour penguins along the mantlepiece - you know you want to.

A Little Ice Music

So, our Norwegian weekend.

We flew in to Oslo, where we had a couple of hours to wander about and admire the architecture, the blue skies, the buskers playing the most beaten-up hammer dulcimer I've ever seen and the cold! Brrrr. We were still dressed in British winter clothes, so high- tailed it back to the warmth of the station fairly swiftly, where we caught our train to Geilo.

 

 

We had a lovely log cabin to stay in, and we soon got the thermal underwear on, so were well-equipped to enjoy the snowy beauty.

Also the husky sledge ride alluded to in the previous blog.

And the Ice Music Festival, which was the hook upon which this holiday dangled. The amphitheatre is carved out of snow, the musical instruments are carved out of ice, pictures painted on sheets of ice and lit from behind by candles decorate the outside walls of the arena and candles set into holes in the snow line and light the path to the venue.

The whole thing is magical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we took a beautiful train ride across the Hardangervidda plateau. We passed through the highest station in Northern Europe at Finse (altitude 1222 metres) and some stunning scenery to reach journey's end at Bergen where we had to get our flight back home.

 

 

 

                                                                                                            Altogether the best Christmas present I've ever had, and a completely unforgettable and inspiring experience.