Two handmade tote bags

I've just finished my latest craft project! This lovely tote bag is made from fabric scraps and buttons from various sources (several friends have given me scraps over the years as they know I can often use such things!) I'm quite pleased with the way it looks, though the fastener is slightly wonky.

The blue buttons match the blue in the main fabric so well, I just had to include them as decorative details! 

This is the second tote bag I've made and involved quite a lot of design and sewing. 

The first bag I made a few years ago, was easier to make as the bag part was already made and I just added the handles. 

 

Corvids and other Birds

 We just got round to looking at Crafty Green Boyfriend's photos from our weekend walk around Arthur's Seat. Some of them are amazing! Look at these Jackdaws

and this Carrion Crow 

He also got a much closer and better photo of one of the male Tufted Ducks than I did

and a close up of a (very small) Small Tortoiseshell butterfly 

Another Day in the Dells

 

I was in the Dells alongside the Water of Leith again today. It's one of my favourite places and being a regular volunteer with the Water of Leith Conservation Trust means I have a good excuse to walk along the river every week. 

The Bird Cherry Tree is in bloom now.

The flowers seem to be smaller than many other varieties of cherry and they're arranged in quite a distinctive way. The tree is also well named - this particular specimen is often full of birds.

The Lesser Celandines are in full bloom in many areas of the Dells now

 

My favourite patch of Lesser Celandine is this one

The birds were all singing, including Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers. Great Spotted Woodpeckers were drumming loudly. 

I rarely see Rabbits in the Dells, but they feature in my favourite part of the mural in Colinton Tunnel

Gorgeous Gorse on Arthur's Seat

On Easter Monday, we walked around the bottom of Arthur's Seat and down to Duddingston Loch (see this blogpost). Yesterday, we walked uphill (though not to the top, as I find the final stretch up to the summit of Arthur's Seat impossibly vertiginous). The gorse is beautifully in bloom at the moment 

and offers a lovely frame for views of Edinburgh

Dunsapie Loch is a lovely wee loch, and Mute Swans have built a nest on its shore this year. There were also several Tufted Ducks, this male looking very smart. 

The light was playing beautifully on the surface of the water

 Birds were singing all over the place, including Dunnocks, Chaffinches and Chiffchaffs. We also had good views of a Raven (these large but elusive corvids nest on Arthur's Seat, but you need to be lucky to see them!). A flock of Jackdaws was chasing a Kestrel.

We walked home through The Meadows and sat for a while under this Wych Elm and watched the Woodpigeons eating the flowers. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you may be able to see some of the Woodpigeons!

Spring in the Dells

 

Most weeks I carry out a voluntary river patrol in Craiglockart and Colinton Dells alongside the Water of Leith. This is a beautiful area of ancient woodland that is looking particularly lovely at the moment. Some of the cherry trees are in full bloom at the moment

Some of the larch trees are also in full bloom, though their flowers are much more likely to be overlooked. If you look closely at a larch tree, you may be able to find these pretty flowers:

In the undergrowth, the Lesser Celandines are in flower too, though in shady areas, they're only just in bud. This patch gets a lot of sun!

I saw my first butterfly of the year, this Peacock, which seems a bit faded, so is likely an individual that hibernated over the winter.

It was a day of firsts in fact! I heard my first Blackcap of the year and my first Willow Warbler! These summer migrants join the Chiffchaffs, which arrived back from Africa a few weeks ago. I also saw my first Dark Edged Bee Fly, which sadly didn't pose for a photo. 

Grey Squirrels were running about all over the place, but only this one allowed me to get close enough to take a good photo!

Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh

 

This is a mixture of nature writing, memoir and history. Kerri ni Dochartaigh was born in a mixed Protestant-Catholic family in Derry in the middle of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She lived through traumatic events such as her house being firebombed and lost friends to murder and suicide, and attempted suicide herself. This book shares her personal journey and thoughts on politics from the times of the Troubles to Brexit, which once again pushed Derry into violence. Throughout it all, she turned to nature in wild places and urban green-spaces, to find solace for herself and her brother. When she left Derry to try to make a new life for herself in various places, including Edinburgh, Bristol and rural parts of the Republic of Ireland she found herself always drawn to water.

The book contains some beautiful writing and thoughts about nature, language, culture and belonging.

As someone who is starting to learn Scottish Gaelic, I was particularly interested in her thoughts around nature and the Irish language. As a Protestant she wasn't taught Irish in school and she bemoans 'the loss of the ability to name both the landscape and the creatures we share it with in Irish. Like all Celtic languages, Irish places a great deal of importance on the natural world in its stories and legends.

It's ultimately a book of hope:

Light finds its own places, the spaces for it to take as its own. The black crow of sorrow cannot, will not, keep the light under its sooty wing forever.

I have to admit though, that her habit of circling back on ideas and thoughts, was starting to become tedious for me, much though it probably reflects her own thought processes and much though it has been praised by some reviewers. 

Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh published by Canongate.

  

Arthur's Seat and Duddingston Loch

For Easter Monday we took a lovely walk along the lower road round Arthur's Seat and down to Duddingston Loch. The weather was beautiful and the gorse was in full bloom

The Norway Maples were also in full bloom, lovely trees when they're in flower 

We went down to the shore of the Loch and met this friendly hybrid Canada-greylag goose 

Of course these days you can't get too friendly with wildfowl given the avian flu pandemic which is still raging. 

We also saw a Pinkfoot Goose which had no feathers around its head, probably because the other geese have attacked it, it's the only Pinkfoot at the Loch (and has been for some time as far as I know). 

We also saw this caddis fly near the loch. When they are larvae, the caddis flies live in the loch and make armour for themselves out of sticks and other materials, but this is what they look like as adults click on it for a closer view!)

We also saw this queen Common Wasp, who sat patiently while Crafty Green Boyfriend took her photo, her markings are quite beautiful.