And so...

I think the time has finally come. The blog... at least this incarnation, has reached its final destination. I am so happy to have been able to share my experiences pre- and post- move to Edinburgh in the last year and the blog has been an incredible learning experience. And I haven't given up blogging! It's simply that I've moved on to a new project with a somewhat different scope, more in line with my current (and future) interests.

I urge you to check it out: http://young-space.com/ ...it's all about art and why I love it! And stuff.. by emerging artists! It's very, very new and verrrry much a work in progress, but that's part of the fun. These online spaces are always works in progress, aren't they?

Thank you so much for reading the last several months! I've enjoyed every bit of this process and 'met' so many wonderful people through this blog! I'm so grateful to have been able to find so many other fantastic blogs.

Also, my love for Edinburgh has only grown, which you can continue to find consistently on Instagram (http://instagram.com/lovenotwarhol) and also on Twitter (http://twitter.com/lovenotwarhol)

Cheers!
Kate xx

A day dark and dreary

I've been reading a few Victorian gothic novels lately that were written by Scottish authors or were even set in Scotland: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson is one that I'm actually amazed I never read before -- since it's possible to read it in one sitting, it's totally worth picking up. The other was one I'd never heard of, preceding Stevenson's novel by over 60 years, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. Memoirs and Confessions takes places in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas and, though published in 1824, is set in the early 1700s. Even then, there are mentions of the city that I can recognise.

When my sister and I climbed up to Calton Hill and checked out the adjacent Old Calton Burial Ground, it was blustery, as it had been all day, but the sky had clouded over and the air had a hazy, misty quality to it that made everything seem dark and quite ominous. It never actually rained that day, but going through these photos I couldn't help feeling a sort of atmospheric connection with all the dark and dreary literature I've been reading. So I went with it... dark and dreary Edinburgh! Sometimes that's okay... brings out the mysterious gothic feel of the city quite nicely.

Cheers!
Kate xx

So it begins.. sort of...

// via //

Dissertation. The icing on the cake, the cherry on top, the--oh wait, it's not like that at all, is it? Sure, next week is the last week of classes (quite possibly the last classes I ever sit in as a full-time student, but then again, that's what I said five years ago) and throughout the summer we're supposed to devote the equivalent of a full-time job's worth of research hours to this big paper due at the end of August. It's a third of my entire assessed work, so it's a big deal. I finally sat down with my supervisor and hashed out a few of my ideas, which at the moment are naturally disjointed, sprawling, and rather fuzzy round the edges. One does a bunch of reading to grasp the topic and try to formulate some sort of thesis, then continues to read and starts realizing all of the endless branches of thought, and then keeps reading to narrow down.

Read read read. But I'm feeling really good about this topic and the direction it's (so far) taking. It's only a shame I probably won't make it to North Carolina this summer, but one never knows. Fancy a research trip to the hot Appalachian wilds from mild old Scotland? ;)

One of my essays is due tomorrow, another one next week, and then a double-sized one is due in a month. I have nine days of my internship yet to complete (major delays, not too happy about it, but so it goes) but I look forward to being able to put all of this term's coursework behind me, get working on my dissertation, enjoy the summer weather, and oh, TRAVEL.

Cheers!
Kate xx

Spring sounds

Alright, it's about time I get another playlist up here because I've been changing up my playlist pretty drastically lately... here are 15 tracks I've been completely hooked on! I won't bog down the page with a bunch of videos, but I've included a few choice ones below. Enjoy! :D





This is the Kit - The Turnip (live at Union Chapel London 2011)




Cosmo Sheldrake - The Moss




Trails and Ways - Border Crosser




London Grammar - If You Wait




Cheers!
Kate xx

Castle traipsin'

The week, it is over. Or, at least, my whirlwind week in which my youngest sister flew across the pond to visit me here in Edinburgh before we popped down to London for all of about 48 hours. It was maaarvelous! Exhausting, of course, but time simply disappeared and we had so much fun checking out my regular haunts and new places too.

One of the things we did, that I had been meaning to do for some time, was catch the bus to see Craigmillar Castle. It's within the city limits of Edinburgh so there's hardly an excuse to not go, and we were not disappointed! It was a veeeerrry windy day so on a couple of occasions we were feeling a little... precarious on the parapet. It was difficult to hold cameras straight, let along keep hair whipping in front of the lenses! But it was so fun to climb around seemingly endless stairwells and along countless levels -- it's amazing to imagine what the place must have been like when it had its original floors... a veritable maze.

Hope you're all enjoying a happy weekend. I'll get a few more photos up from the rest of our trip (I didn't take too many photos, so the posts are brief, but it's something!)... Soon! :D

Cheers!
Kate xx

 P.S. Check out that jet stream Saltire-in-the-sky in the first photo! Couldn't have coordinated my sister's welcome to Scotland any better than that... ;)

Slackin'.

Well, the sun's been out. That's pretty much my excuse for not blogging as much. Aside from also having four essays in-progress and a dissertation I've been planning, but I digress. It's been a little bit warmer in Edi and although it's been a little bit cloudy, it hasn't really rained in several days. Even the cloudy days still maintained a sort of brightness rather than that heavy, dark kind of overcast.

AND MY SISTER'S COMING TO VISIT!!

She'll be here tomorrow evening, so I've been cleaning and busy buying treats! :)

I don't think I mentioned it on the blog specifically, but my Instagram feed topped a Buzzfeed list of accounts based in Edinburgh that you can totally check out here: 15 Instagram Accounts That Will Make You Want to Move to Edinburgh Immediately so I've been living up my teensy-tiny slice of internet fame! Haha. What was so fun about that list was that about half of those accounts were already mutual followers, and it's spurred a more organized Edinburgh Instagram group. (Yes, nerdy. Yes, cool.) So now we're all keeping track of one another like it's some kind of special club. WELL IT IS.

On the downside, my phone has been acting up/shutting off and it's been difficult to take photos with it. Sounds like an excuse, but it's massively frustrating, so hopefully when I get that all sorted, I'll be able to post some more photos... more regularly. Because, I freely admit, all my photos are taken with my iPhone and I ain't ashamed.

I hope you all are having a marvelous March -- can't believe it's half over already!!

Cheers,
Kate x

Fergus Jordan's 'Under Cover of Darkness'

I posted about my visit to the BookMarket the other day, and one of the treasures I came away with was a photography book, 'Under Cover of Darkness,' of the work of Fergus Jordan, Belfast-based photographer and researcher. I was drawn into the moody, almost ominous atmosphere of his photos, which focus on the city at night. They have an ethereal, eerie quality that plays into our innate uneasiness, even suspicion of the dark. Knowing as we do how darkness can seem to envelope us and cut off our access visibly and psychologically to the space around us, Jordan's work taps into this feeling of uneasiness, mystery and curiosity about what lies beyond what we cannot see. In some cases, street lamps have been edited out of the photo, so a pool of light dimly illuminates a street but confusingly there is no light source. I like these little tricks.

All the works below are from the Under Cover of Darkness series.

Blacklight (2011)

On the Periphery of the New Lodge, X (2010)

Mutual Distrust (2009)

Unknown Territories, Belfast, V (2009)

Enhanced Visibility, IX (2009)

All photos are via Fergus Jordan's marvelously comprehensive and informative website, which I definitely urge you to check out to find much more of his work and his writing as well!

Cheers,

Kate xx