insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman
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The fox and the stilton
My mother left some black pudding and stilton in our fridge when she departed. Even if I wasn’t vegan there’s no way I’d be eating either thing as they’re both full of salt so I put them outside with a camera. The stilton went first followed swiftly by the black pudding. Mr Fox looks to…
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Replacing and insulating our bedroom wall
About a month ago I started removing the wallpaper from a wall in our bedroom with the idea to cover it with 10mm of cork for insulation. I thought this would be an inexpensive way of keeping our bedroom warm in winter and lowering our energy bills. This wall is an external wall that faces…
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Wild weather, litter in the Dee, and Provost Skene House
The weather has been wild, wet, and windy in Scotland with large parts of the east coast of Scotland swamped by a deluge from the heavens. The village of Brechin which is about an hour south of us was evacuated in advance of the River Esk breaching its banks on Thursday night. We’ve mostly been…
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Granny is here, a wave from the King, and a knitting trail
My mother is visiting from Australia which is extra special because it has been more than four years since we last saw her. Today we drove out to Braemar in celebration for lunch and a walk. As we drove past Crathie we saw lots of people gathered and realised the King was about to leave…
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School trips and a bothy concert in Braemar
The kids both went on school trips last week and we were all alone for five days. It’s the first time we’ve not had a child in the house overnight since becoming parents. It was very quiet. Elizabeth went to Keswick in the Lake District and Daniel went camping in Glen Affric. Both participated in…
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Anthony Horowitz in Braemar
How beautiful is this scene? The view is looking down towards the village of Braemar from Craig Choinnich. We do this walk quite a lot because you get such great rewards with little effort. It’s only about 25 minutes up the hill from the village and you get magnificent views in all directions. The first…
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I knitted ranunculus
I finished another jumper! This is a pattern called Ranunculus by Midori Hirose, a Japanese woman living in Germany. You can buy Ranunculus on Ravelry. I had to re-start this many times as I kept making mistakes at the beginning but once I got the hang of it everything came together smoothly. It’s a very…
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A new dress, wardrobe cleanout, knitting, an unusual teenager
For the past few weeks I’ve been clearing out my wardrobe and selling stuff on Vinted, an online marketplace for buying and selling second-hand clothes. It was founded in 2008 by two Lithuanian entrepreneurs, Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskus. It launched in the UK in 2014. I’m not sure when I discovered it but it’s…
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A birthday, a trophy, some trains, and insects
What’s been happening lately? It was my birthday yesterday and I spent much of it at a highland dance competition with Elizabeth. She got third place overall which was a wonderful birthday present as there’s nothing better than seeing your child happy. The last two competitions she entered she came away with nothing so I…
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Rocket’s cage gets a makeover
Rocket’s cage has been getting a clean this weekend so I took the opportunity to give it a makeover. I noticed that he’s been trying to dig in his sand baths and because they’re shallow all he ends up doing is kicking all the sand out of the container and making a mess. I decided…
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Ceilidh at Mar Lodge
We went to a ceilidh at the stag ballroom at Mar Lodge last night. The ballroom is slightly on the macabre side with over 2,000 red deer skulls lining the ceiling and walls, many of which were stalked by members of the royal family going back to the 18th century. The building is almost unchanged…
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Stupid policies
Daniel is still hobbling around on crutches. It has been more than a week now since he fell off his bike but just yesterday he started to be able to put a little bit of weight on his foot. He’s not quite ready to dispense with the crutches fully but maybe by the end of…
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Giant courgettes
It was just as well I chose to ride Busby my cargo bike to the allotment today to cope with the weight of my courgette harvest. I didn’t get to the allotment last weekend so it had been two weeks and many of my courgettes grew into marrows. There are too many for us so…
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Busby the bakfiets is back in business
I stopped riding our bakfiets, Busby, back in 2018 when we got the electric cargo bike. Poor Busby has been sitting in our backyard ever since, tolerating all weathers and filling up with leaves and debris. I finally decided I couldn’t neglect him any longer and we booked him in for a service with the…
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Litter picking
We went litter picking beside the River Dee today with members from Aberdeen Cycle Forum. There’s a pretty path along the river that goes from the rowing sheds down to Victoria Bridge but unfortunately it looks like party central with mountains of bottles and cans. Well no more! We collected 20 bags of rubbish in…
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Congratulations to Daniel
Daniel smiling with my crochet fox head in the background.
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A knitted jumper for Daniel, antique binoculars, and a cat pic
I just finished knitting Daniel a jumper. For this I reused some Bluefaced Leicester yarn I’d previously crocheted into a jumper for him but it wasn’t a good fit so I frogged it. Fortunately knitting uses less yarn so I’d had plenty for this jumper with some to spare. I used a pattern from Harry…
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The Battle of Corrichie re-enactment
We had a terrific day in the field next to Milton of Crathes watching a re-enactment of The Battle of Corrichie: a bloody clash in Aberdeenshire between the forces of Mary Queen of Scots against the Earl of Huntly on the 28th October 1562. There was also a fascinating living history camp, a birds of…
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Old dog, new tricks
Lately I’ve been thinking about how we’re on this earth for so short a time and we should make the most of it. Learn and do as much as you can while you still can. I’ve really embraced this philosophy over the past year and have ticked three things off my list that I’ve wanted…
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