Corner View - Spring

This weeks Corner View is all about spring.

The clocks changed in the UK this weekend heralding the start of British Summer Time and for the last 2 days many parts of Scotland have had snow.......wind......rain.....snow......I am not sure that we are ready for spring yet. Usually the daffodils are out and blossom beginning to appear on trees by now but not this year. However, some delightful signs of spring were evident when I was away in the Yorkshire Dales this past weekend:

Last spring I was in Japan....the most famous sign of spring being the cherry blossom (sakura)....it was beautiful...

Cherry blossoms and hanami parties in Shinjuku-Gyoen Park, Toyko

I am off to check out spring elsewhere on Corner View....

Woollie Weekend

Girls weekend away - 10 girls and 2 boys......boys at the girls weekend....what's the world coming to.....

Gone are the days of cocktails in water pistols till dawn, now in our "grown up" years we have glasses of wine, cups of tea and a breast feeding couch!!

This year, 10 girls and 2 boys under the age of 1 came from all corners of the UK (and one from Switzerland) to the Yorkshire Dales for a weekend of relaxation, walking and eating. We were 4 short in number, all missed, but that just meant more cake for the rest of us.

The Yorkshire Dales - muted shades from brown to green making up the patchwork quilt countryside interrupted by dry stane dykes criss crossing over the hills and dales, disappearing into the distance, trees bending under the pressure of the wind, fluffy sheep dotting the hillsides and rolling roads taking you off into your imagination.

Corner View - Typical Architecture from your area

This week's Corner View is all about the typical architecture of your area........

I would be the first to admit that the place where I live is not the prettiest. Yes it has an amazing location at the mouth of a large river, with the mountains and the beach close by, but the city itself is a post-industrial city with all that this brings.....old factories no longer in use, low cost housing etc. However, that past has also left it with some huge mansion houses (there used to be more millionaires per head of population than anywhere else in the UK, courtesy of our jute industry), beautiful libraries funded by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and some large scale civic architecture.

In fact, the building voted the city's favourite has just reopened following a 4 year programme of refurbishment and modernisation. I walk past it each morning on my way to work. The McManus, is the city's gallery and museum housed in a "splendid gothic revival style building."

In many Scottish towns and cities Victorian tenement buildings are commonplace.....stone, purpose built flats, typically 6 or 8 to a block, with an indoor stairwell known as a close. Indeed, a tenement flat in Glasgow is owned by the National Trust and preserved by it's previous owner, Miss Toward who lived there with her mother from 1911 for over 50 years, keeping much of the Victorian furniture that belonged to her grandparents and not changing much in the flat that whole period. It is an amazing piece of social history.

We also have our fair share of 1960s architecture (and plans to demolish quite a lot of it too!)

We also have the first UK building designed by Frank Gehry, famous for the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Our's is small in comparison, but pretty perfect. It is part of a chain of Maggies Centres which provide support to cancer sufferers. "Maggie" was Maggie Keswick Jencks, the wife of landscape architect Charles Jencks, mother and landscape designer, who died of cancer, but before she died, she set up her charity to provide support for the many non-medical issues cancer brings. Maggies Centres exist in 6 UK locations, Dundee was the third and all are designed by world class architects including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid. There are 4 interim centres operating with plans for another 4. The interim centres are currently fundraising to build their permanent structures - designed (for free) by architects such as Kisho Kurokawa, Wilkinson Eyre, whilst Frank Gehry is designing the centre for Hong Kong.

Photo by Miomar at Flickr

We are also in the midst of an international architecture competition to design the proposed new V&A Museum for the city. So whilst we have to contend with an industrial past, we are moving forwards!

Go check out the other Corner View's to see some more typical and atypical architecture from around the world!

Woollie Weekend

This weekend I was away with the National Trust for a weekend of destruction, all in name of conservation. We were off to one of our favourite spots, Threave in Dumfries and Galloway in SW Scotland. Part of the estate includes Rockcliffe, a beautiful coastal landscape which overlooks the Solway Firth and this was where we were working this weekend. It is home to an array of birdlife, including the entire population of barnacle geese from Svalbard which winter here.

We were clearing footpaths along the coast and around the Mote of Mark, a dark age hilltop fort occupied during the 6th and 7th century and Muckle Hill. This involved removing a lot of prickly bushes from brambles, to blackthorn to holly - ouch! We learned about the correct way to prune trees to ensure the tree heals effectively and that it's best not to sit on a blackthorn branch!

The chopping team - March 2010!

Atop the muckle March 2010

Whilst we were lucky with the weather i.e it didn't rain, it wasn't quite as glorious as it was when we visited last May. I've put a couple of photos together for comparison!

Perfect lunch spot - May 2009

A top the muckle May 2009

But it was certainly warmer than when we were hedge laying on the Threave Estate in January 2009! We went back to look at our hedge and see the growth progress since it was laid, it was quite impressive and you could see why they make such effective barriers for livestock.

The hedge, laid in January 2009

The hedge in March 2010

Woollie House

I bought a new coffee table at auction....well, by definition, it's new to me. It's definitely not new. It's a vintage Ercol Windsor drop leaf coffee table.....and it looks fabulous. Now my only problem is that I have 2 coffee tables in my living room. Is it right to buy a house just to put your coffee table in.......

Woollie Wanderings

March is a busy month......but a fun one! First weekend I was in London for a flying visit with friends I met on my trip to Japan last year. We had 2 days and packed in a lot of cake!

Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery - the red velvet cupcakes were delicious, meringues from Borough Market, lemon cake from Books for Cooks, apple tart and cinnamon custard from the Christopher Hotel in Eton....yum! It's amazing I didn't come home 2kgs heavier. But I guess all the walking that we did balanced out the cake eating!

We wandered the South Bank alongside the River Thames from The London Eye to Tower Bridge, via the Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre, the Oxo Tower and Borough Market.....so many fabulous tourist attractions in such a small area!

On Sunday we went to Windsor Castle and took a tour through history.......it was a beautiful day and visiting the castle was fun....we saw the state apartments where the Queen entertains and laughed at the thought of all those dignatories, dining with a view of Slough and Heathrow Airport.......the apartments were destroyed by a fire in the 1990s and the restoration work has been carried out to the highest of standards. It is great to see that the skills required to create such beauty still exist.

It was nice to catch up but I must return soon as there are other friends with new babies that I must visit.

Corner View - Miniature Worlds

I haven't posted a Corner View post in a few weeks - no excuses, sheer laziness! But this week's post is called Miniature Worlds and I knew that I could come up with a post for this one.

I love to knit and felt and this often leads to the creation of miniature worlds!

Debbie Bliss - Knitted Farm

Mochi Mochi Land Log & Woodins

It also never ceases to amaze me how small the real world is becoming.....with friends moving all over the planet and blogs linking people who would never have "met" before the cyber world gave us all a helping hand.

10 Simple Things that Make me Happy

I've been tagged twice now, by Life in Yonder and Arctic Mum Blogs so here it goes for 10 simple things that make me happy:

1. Cold, sunny winter days but thinking of spring

2. The smell of the sea and the breeze (or usually in Scotland the gale) on my face at the beach near home

3. My friend's little boy Kelvin giggling with me and hearing him say Diane

4. Being outdoors with friends destroying the countryside all in the name of conservation

5. A good book

6. Knitting! Even more so, knitting group

7. Running (or after running to be precise) - I stole that one from Arctic!

8. Laughing out loud

9. Spending time with friends and family

10. Travelling

Anyone else want to play......

PS Going for the spring look in the blog header in the hope that it encourages spring to hurry up and get here! I was fed up with the frozen icy river!

Yes, it really is MORE KNITTING!

Last March I went to Glasgow to the Donna Wilson exhibit at The Lighthouse with friends. After the visit I promised to knit a raccoon a la Donna Wilson from her book The Knitted Odd Bod Bunch - finally after a wait of almost a year (and a birthday gift last September of a bag of knitted bits) the raccoon is finished. His new owner is very happy!