Revisiting Summerhall

Well, it's been a changeable weekend - Saturday was almost warm when out of the Arctic wind and today has been sleet and snow. Oorlich is a definite way to describe today's weather, and is a terribly fun word to say.

Saturday I took my mum out to the Summerhall Gallery. I had originally scoped out a new country park in the area but, being or the very fair weather walking type, my mother wasn't keen so we went for an indoors idea instead.

I've previously mentioned the Summerhall gallery, it's an interesting wee place and we caught it between main exhibitions, so just looked around at the smaller ones that were available. Some of it was pretty pretentious and high brow, but some evoked interesting conversation. My mother is not in any way an arts type, so it was interesting how the subject of grieving a memory you realise you have now forgotten impacted her and kept a steady conversation going between us. Even if it was merely trying to figure out how the topic was being expressed in a piece.

We did a short walk through the meadows both going in and out of the gallery and I had spotted all the daffodils in bloom, so Missy humoured me with some photos and spring truly felt like if had arrived, at least, when out the wind!

So imagine my surprise at snow this morning. Missy went out for a 5km run with the hubby and came back soaked through and shivering. She was quickly swaddled up with a hot water bottle - she is casting out her winter coat and probably found her sleeker summer one not up to the challenge of the sleet.

Difference a day makes!

The hubby and I had planned on going into Edinburgh and doing a non doggy day (a rarity, and organised well in advance with the dog walker coming in at lunchtime). There was two exhibitions at the National Museum of Scotland - one on robots (very much my mechanical engineer husbands kind if thing) and one on Scottish Samplers from the 1700s and 1800s (very much my kind of thing). We did the samplers first and, once the hubby realised exactly what we were looking at (he had expected tapestries, not the small practice pieces of sewing we were admiring), we both thoroughly enjoyed admiring the tiny stitches and the lost art of hand sewing. Looking at the mix of French knots, embroidery, cross stitch, eyelet and button holes, and black work we were both very impressed with the exhibition. It saddened me a bit that such fine art is really lost now (some of the cross stitch work was millimetres across) but it won't make give up the sewing machine. No matter how beautiful, I will not sew button holes by hand!

The robot exhibition was equally as good, if a bit of a gear change from the library like environment of the first exhibition. We were met with the creepiest life like baby doll robot I have ever seen and then swiftly moved into automaton and then the actual robots. I have a soft spot for automaton - gears and clockwork and wind up pieces fascinate me and I was very charmed with a rabbit in a cabbage that would sit up, bite a piece and then sink back down again into his cabbage bed. There were model solar systems and celestial clocks and a whole wonder of oddities. And then we were at the robots. Clearly the clever rabbit and planets could not hold the attention of the kids for here they all were - getting pictures with the robots and running about touching every button visible.

Well, we would go on a Sunday in the pouring sleet, so I can't complain that it was busy, only that I had been caught out by how quiet the first section had been! The robots first focused on the original classic robot/human design that we now think of and the different senses that they were trying to recreate from movement,  sight and touch to emotion and empathy. Some of it was horrifically uncanny valley, but some, like the robot with the bob haircut, were really cute. Lastly they focused on where the technology is going and to be fair, we live in an interesting age, so I look forward to seeing where it does go!

I've been lost in spring again with my sewing, and I'm super pleased with this completely self drafted pattern for a drawstring teapot cosy. I saw a similar design in Copenhagen and was charmed with the idea of a cosy I wouldn't need to remove from a teapot that was still relatively one size fits all (I've tested it on a few of my teapots and it certainly lives up to that expectation!)

That's all for now - once we reach April and we're officially 'on season' I should hopefully get some new adventures in, I've given up on the notion of an early spring to plan anything too outrageous before then!