Well, that wasn’t very good!! My plan to publish a monthly blog has fallen down as I missed May, it’s now 7th June, so here goes, better late than never.
How was May for you? Here it was very different to May 2020 with cold and wet weather pretty much for all of May, right up until the last weekend. Remembering how wonderful it was last year had me yearning for the same this year. I still managed to get out into the garden as the weeds and grass don’t stop growing!!
Covid restrictions are beginning to ease here, with most of Scotland now in level 1, just areas across the central belt are still in level 2, and that means we can get out and about again. We have been over to Kenmore to meet friends for a coffee, and have been able to browse, and buy, books in a real bookshop, The Watermill bookshop in Aberfeldy https://www.aberfeldywatermill.com/ really is worth a visit if you are in the area.
But the major difference is we have managed a couple of nights away!! YES, we got down to Edinburgh, staying in a nice flat just of the Canongate in the Old Town. It gave us the chance to visit the Scottish Portrait Gallery https://www.nationalgalleries.org/visit/scottish-national-portrait-gallery which I felt was a bit like a visit to IKEA as you had to follow a set route around the gallery, although that did mean we saw portraits we might not otherwise have bothered seeing (the renaissance period for example) but we got to see the new portraits of Horse Macdonald and Dame Professor Sue Black.
Another exhibition we visited was at the Dovecot Studios and Gallery https://dovecotstudios.com/. If you don’t know the Dovecot it is a former swimming baths that is now a magnificent tapestry studio, workshop and gallery. The exhibition that was on is ‘Archie Brennan: Tapestry Goes Pop!’ which was very interesting.
Before visiting the portrait gallery we had breakfast in Loudon’s cafe just beside the UK Governments Scottish Offices behind Waverley Station, very tasty! After the tapestry exhibition we did something we haven’t been able to do for such a long time, we had a pint sat inside a pub!! You have no idea what that felt like!! Or maybe you do??!
Now that all the ‘what I’ve been up to’ news is out the way I can reveal the BIG NEWS. I have opened the studio to allow customers to visit. YAY! Bank holiday weekend I opened the studio, but out signs to let people know that we are open for business and will be doing it almost every week during the summer. I will confirm it on the website soon, but the plan is to open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday (except when there is a local market). This will give me plenty of time to iron out any issues before Perthshire Open Studios in September.
Finally, in hopeful anticipation of the vast numbers of customers I expect to be rushing through the studio doors (fingers crossed) more yarn has been purchased for dyeing, and I’ll leave that there to tease you until my next blog.
Happy crafting.