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!

Summerhall Gallery

Its that time of year where no matter how hard you try, things dont quite work out to plan. Yesterday was the third attempt at getting out to the Summerhall Gallery to see their joint exhibitions: Invisible Spaces and Visible Girls: revisited. This gallery has been on my radar for a while now owing to the fact its dog friendly and I was simply waiting for an exhibition to catch my eye before heading over. With hubby working retail, our previous two attempts were cancelled as he was called in at short notice and I had warned him that Missy and I would be going ourselves if he was drafted in again.

Thankfully it didn't come to that! With our last "date" day in sight until after Christmas, we quickly filled it with glorious plans - a long walk in the morning, lunch out at the gallery and then the Christmas markets in the evening after a walk through the meadows. Firstly, owing to late finishes at work, the early start never happened. Then the yellow snow warning kicked in and, despite multiple layers, we were all frozen to the bone simply walking to the gallery and had to stop in at a shop and buy a jumper for the hubby. We could see that people were being made to queue to simply get into the markets and made a note that perhaps that wasn't going to happen. 

We did get to the gallery and the exhibitions really surprised me - I had expected to enjoy the Invisible Spaces one more, but the Visible Girls by Anita Corben was absolutely brilliant. Both the hubby and I lost ourselves to the wonderful portraits and were delighted to see that these punks and mods from the 80s had been, where possible, traced again and their portraits redone. I loved seeing past and present side by side, especially getting to see where such fiery and determined young women ended up. If it tours out your way, I highly recommend, its not a big exhibition, but you will find yourself reminiscing on times when everything was just a little bit rougher about the edges.

There was a workshop about archiving going on, and about how we should tackle that in a modern age. Getting to look though old negatives and slides was quite fun, but I didn't really feel like the statement being made was really that much of an argument. We discussed with the curator about whether smart phones have made us worse photographers despite better pictures, and what would happen with archiving a digital generation and then found ourselves drawn back to those portraits from the 80s and forlornly missing the days when you had your spool and the suspense of whether the photos would turn out or not.

Missy looking at the old negatives

We enjoyed some tea and cake in the gallery cafe and then shivered our way across the meadows. Even in her little fleece lined coat Missy looked miserable at being outside and we decided to call it quits whilst we were ahead of the game. Walking to the bus, we could see that the queue into the markets had only gotten worse and that the market itself was crammed with people. Getting home, cuddling up on the sofa with tea and hot chocolate seemed a much better idea, so thats exactly what we did.

I've been doing odds and ends of sewing today, cant really post too much about it (spoilers!) so I'll share some more of the Christmas crafts I've been doing, namely a new and updated wreath as the old one was getting far too shabby:

I've also started my Christmas baking (thank goodness for chest freezers) so there are cupcakes for my niece to help decorate when she visits, and some festive tiffin made. Next its White Christmas (an Aussie delicacy) and some short bread, and perhaps I may find the time to bake some real bread too. We'll just have to wait and see!