What a lot of adventures you’ve been having recently! I’m afraid to say I haven’t been up to anything even remotely as exciting as you… As a result, I am not very sure what to write.

Some photos then.

At the beginning of January I went to watch Hansel and Gretel the ballet in Edinburgh with my mum and sisters. Sorry the photo is so grainy, but it is a very rare occasion to have just us ladies together! The ballet was great.

Malcolm was very pleased to stand in for Gordon and play with The Moth and the Mirror at the end of January to a sold out Oran Mor! It was a really good gig and one of only two Celtic Connections things I managed to catch; the other one being Bill Callahan where we, against all the odds, bumped into Tim!

Hannah won tickets to one of the new Hard Rock Cafe’s opening events. We had a great time, eating pastries and drinking buck’s fizz at 11.30am! I’d never been to a Hard Rock Cafe before and I had no idea there was such a subculture attached. We spotted this little old lady dotting about chatting to people and having her photo taken and it turns out that she was Rita and she’s a Hard Rock Legend, with cocktails named after her and collectable badges with her face on them. Anyway, it was a pretty surreal day all in all. Oh, and KT Tunstall played. Here she is with Hannah.

And here is a gratuitous photo of me dressed in my ‘rave turtle’ gear.

As for my new year’s resolutions: I finished knitting the things that I had started and hadn’t finished and I’ve started knitting a couple of other things. An o w l s jumper which I’ve wanted to knit for aaaaaages and had the pattern and the wool and everything. Well, it’s started now and the body knit up really quickly, but I’m finding the sleeves very tedious, so I’m also making myself a big chunky shawl! It’s really satisfying to see it come together so quickly.

On the making front, I’ve been drooling over this fabric:

Technically, it’s upholstery fabric, but I think it would make a super dress!

I’m seeing Katy tomorrow, so I might try to get the pattern pieces for her dress cut out after work. I’m a bit nervous about cutting into the lovely, expensive wool she gave me to make it from!

I’m really enjoying your portraits! It makes me think I ought to have a project too. Have you heard of 30 before 30? It seems to be a thing that exists in blogs where people basically write thirty things they’d like to do before they’re thirty. Since I will be hitting the big 3-0 this year, I’ve been contemplating having a go. They wouldn’t need to be big things… I don’t have all that much time after all. Well, I’ll keep thinking about it anyway. Maybe I’ll tick some of the things off while I do!

So, one of the things I might put on a hypothetical list could be a tattoo. I love these:

Isn’t that teal/turquoise colour lovely?!

They seem to produce art in all sorts of different media and I like the idea of making something that is such a collaboration: each of these is based on some story that the person has told them and they’ve based the tattoo on that. Every tattoo is like that to a certain extent I suppose, but I love how unique and illustration-ish these are.

I’ll try not to leave it so long between posts! Happy adventuring xx