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...

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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

Snap: Patrick Geddes Steps

Patrick Geddes Steps, 4 March 2014, 11:45pm.

Cheers,

Kate xx

There's a head case on the staircase

Work No. 1059: The Scotsman Steps from 2011. The artist is Martin Creed. If you don't know about him, that's okay, because I'm going to tell you. But first, listen to him (there's singing!):



Martin Creed is, to put it plainly, a Scottish contemporary art rockstar. It's true; he has a new album out now. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for his work entitled Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, which has been acquired recently by Tate Britain. I saw it last December. And with that, it is what it sounds like: the lights going on and off. The gallery room is empty and the lights flick on and off at five second intervals. Sounds like art, right? And like the best art, it's controversial, as it has been since it won the prize in 2001. It can be written off as a joke, a jab at the art establishment by making a commentary about the gallery itself. There is nothing on the walls, just blank white. Instead of paying attention to something in the room, the visitor has to pay attention to the room and what we normally expect to find there. Actually, I find this brilliant, so I think the Turner Prize was rightly won, and with that... moving on.

Martin Creed, who moved to Glasgow when he was a child, was born in England, and studied art in London. But to hear him, you identify his Scottish accent right away. Edinburgh is home to one of his permanent public art installations, The Scotsman Steps. (ie. Work No. 1059) It's a marble staircase in the corner of what is now the Scotsman Hotel (previously home to The Scotsman newspaper) that connects the upper level of North Bridge to the lower Market Street. It's also just kiddy-corner to the Fruitmarket Gallery which commissioned the piece.

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shiny and new // via //

It consists of 104 marble steps from all different locations and of all different hues and patterns. They appear to be arranged randomly with no discernible pattern. The stone is really gorgeous, even littered with cigarette butts from hundreds daily passers-by and dead leaves blown in from who-knows-where. If you didn't know that an internationally-renowned contemporary artist had been commissioned to revive the steps, which had fallen into neglect and become somewhat unsafe, you might not even view the steps as art. To the casual pedestrian, they just look like nice slabs of marble to make a colorful stairway. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's part of the idea.

It also smells like pee.

If you stop long enough to appreciate the stairwell, you'll also appreciate other aspects of it as a stairwell that are much more related to it being a civic space than a piece of artwork. Other than smelling like pee, and the cigarette butts and crisp packets (let's be Scottish for the sake of this post), it gets rained on and is subjected to the dirt and grime of the bottoms of pedestrians' shoes. How many people who piss in that stairwell know they're doing so on a piece of fine art?

I think this is why Martin Creed isn't necessarily a jokester. It's hard to imagine he didn't take these things into consideration when he was commissioned to do the piece. Just like he didn't just flippantly turn the light off in a gallery space and call it art. There was a reason for it and some sort of more refined comment he was trying to make. His tendency to come off as flippant or jokey is, I believe, a product of much careful consideration and planning, knowing just where and how much to jab at the 'art world' to get the desired effect without cheapening the work or the process.

Hayward Gallery's Martin Creed: What's the Point of It? is on through 27 April at Southbank Centre, London.

Cheers!
Kate xx

Snap: St. Giles

St. Giles High Kirk in the evening, 3 March 2014.

Cheers,

Kate xx

International Women's Day - a memory

This post is a bit of a one-off departure for me and the blog, but as it's International Women's Day today, I would like to share an experience of mine from 11 years ago that I have never written about. The day after the experience I'll outline below, I typed up an emotional response on the computer in my high school art room and intended to share it with people who might be interested, but somehow it was lost.

Politics and 'causes' are things I can get behind when I feel strongly about them for one reason or another, but I am not an activist of any sort, nor do I label myself as much of anything, really. I could probably be criticized for living in a little self-absorbed happy-bubble, and maybe that's true, but not all of the time. Sometimes headlines grab my attention, or the overarching political climate is such that there are things that cannot be ignored. Lately, in terms of gender equality and news in Britain, there has been an increased outcry against female genital mutilation. It made me think how the appearance and manifestations of sexism and gender inequality change over time, and how many factors contribute, making it so complex. Religious or cultural traditions complicate matters so much, let alone throwing the political angle in there. But March 8 always reminds me of an experiment I participated in, in high school, at the impressionable age of 17.

I use the word 'impressionable' carefully because although I see myself now as having been immensely impressionable, what occurred that day demonstrated how easily (and how deeply) news stories, cultural biases, and the attitudes of others (especially adults) are perceived by young people.

So here's the story, which I've never, since then, laid out or really reflected on publicly, but it shaped my view in many ways and continues to influence my worldly perceptions.

I was one of about four or five students in my high school Amnesty International club. In our tiny north-midwestern corner of the world, we were (as we wanted to believe) valiantly fighting for human rights, often by consulting Amnesty's bulletins and causes and finding something we thought we could raise awareness about. This was probably 2003 (I'm a little fuzzy, and thought maybe 2002, but that seems too early), and was of course within a couple of years after 9/11, and the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq had escalated immensely. Anti-war protests cropped up on street corners. It was in the news constantly. As high school students, I doubt the majority of us ever sat at home watching the evening news, but we heard bits and pieces, we were obviously aware of events through discussions in social studies classes and with teachers, and also from our families.

One of the aspects of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which became relevant to our Amnesty group as International Women's Day rolled nearer, was their treatment of women. Images of this oppression were common in media sources, of groups of women wearing what looked like blue sheets which covered their entire bodies, called burqas, sometimes ornately embroidered, with perforated fabric on the faces so that they could see and breathe, but which was still opaque enough to hide their faces completely. The issues surrounding the burqa are complex, as these issues always are (such as, what if a woman prefers to wear the burqa? or what if it's banned as opposed to unenforced? controversies still abound over the niqab and hijab in many places, particularly those where the burqa is seen as something 'foreign' and misunderstood). For the Taliban, however, enforcing the burqa, suffice it to say, was an immensely simple, powerful method of dehumanizing women and the garment became an instantly recognizable symbol of oppression.

So the girls in our club decided to fashion our own burqas and wear them to school on International Women's Day to raise awareness in our school about the treatment of women under the Taliban. If this sounds like a loaded thing to do, it was.

For a couple of weeks we met after school to sew our burqas. Other than photographs from the internet, we didn't really have much to go on. Mine consisted of a light blue bedsheet with a hole cut out around the face into which I sewed a piece of fine screen. It was rough-hewn, yet unmistakable. A couple of teachers got in on the act and helped to distribute informational posters in order to educate students about what we were doing and the message we wanted to convey. When March 8 rolled around, the school office made an announcement to inform students of what we were doing, and that we would not be speaking unless we were asked specifically to explain what our aim was. No one knew who we were; we had told no one what we were planning. People eventually figured out, as the day went on, when I sat in an assigned seat in class for example, but I still had the overall effect of anonymity, especially walking the halls between classes, which proved the most interesting of all.

As a 17 year old, your social connections are of the utmost importance. You get a read on people; you think you know who people are. My cohorts in this operation all went about our day without much contact, so we weren't in a pack, therefore each of us had our own stories to tell. I walked into the school in the morning, right into the large common area where kids liked to hang out before class, and I was subjected to immediate abuse. Students I was normally very friendly with started shouting 'Osama!' across the cavernous room. Things like 'Go back to Afghanistan!' were laced with profanities. I was immediately confused by all of the messages I was both sending and receiving. It took about five minutes to realize this was going to have a bigger impact than my naive 17-year old self had expected.

Obviously the burqa was out of context, but it was challenging what other students were accustomed to seeing in their school which was primarily white and Catholic. 'Diversity' was not something it could claim convincingly. Students knew I was a woman because they had seen images of similarly dressed women in the media. They associated the burqa with Afghanistan and the Taliban, but to varying degrees and with different understandings of its significance. And what did it have to do with women? That's what we wanted to get across, but it was clear it was not going to be straightforward. People choose what they want to hear and believe. They didn't know who I was, but they didn't care.

Students whispered obscenities and harrassed me all day long. I was met by dirty looks from people I liked. Another participant in a burqa had books dropped on her from the upper level of a stairwell and we all shared similar hurtful experiences. At first, it was easy to tell myself that I was 'playing a role' but it became clearer as the day went on that the confinement of the burqa and the lack of respect from others was something that the women we were representing had to deal with every single day. Of course, every moment I was reminding myself not to take it personally. They didn't know who I was. "If they knew it was me, they wouldn't be acting like this," is what I told myself.

Not everyone, of course, 'acted stupid.' The spectrum of reactions was broad. In some classes, teachers ignored our presence and class went on as usual whereas in a couple of others, my teachers used the opportunity to speak to us and directly engage us with the rest of the class so that we could explain ourselves. I imagine a lot of people were too shy to ask because of our concealed identities. And some people who perhaps I assumed would be closed-minded turned out to be the most open-minded of all. So really, our little school was probably something of a microcosm, a little cross-section of society in general. People interpret things they don't understand in very different ways. Most people glanced at us curiously and walked by, going about their normal business. For those who had paid attention to the information we had given out, perhaps they simply understood the issue we were trying to represent.

But did we really know what we represented? We relied on the informational posters, leaflets and announcements to clue students into what we tried to say, and explained as best we could. In retrospect, I was probably as confused as everyone else, just from a different perspective. We were trying to bring women's rights to light, but we had both knowingly and naively, in different respects, opened a big can of worms. I imagine a sociologist would have had a field day with this experiment with all its levels of political and cultural misunderstanding in a school environment, wrapped up in the trappings teenage behavior. I didn't understand it then, and I don't totally understand it now. I was emotionally demolished by the end of the day. I went home and cried.

The next day our identities were revealed to many and the discussions continued on a more personable level. And that touches on the main point, that of the concept of being a person. I learned so much more about interactions between and attitudes about people as a result of that one bizarre and crudely-executed experiment than I have ever learned since, at least in such a condensed way. We don't usually get those opportunities to see life from the other side of the fence and I've perhaps carried the benefit of that opportunity with me through the years.

Ostensibly it was about women's rights during a specific time period and in a specific environment, and in some sense we got the message across, if a bit garbled. The larger issue was not just how those women were treated, but how women are objectified in society in various ways. The dehumanizing effect of the burqa was the most surprising thing of all. I became, literally, an object with no identity or feelings, onto which people could launch their harshest criticisms and nastiest looks with no consequences. But I think I need to remember that that's my culture. I don't know anyone who wears a burqa and I've not been raised in a society where this is the norm, so of course it was going to have a psychological impact on me based on my own perceptions and background. Context was more important than I could understand at the time.

If circumstances were the same, would I do that now? No. But it was an experience of a lifetime that I will never forget. Feminist issues are ever-changing, especially in our ever more global society. And these issues are rarely one-sided; more commonly they are complex and intertwined with many others. In the end, it was far more of a lesson for me and my fellow participants than it was for the school at large. It taught all of us about genuineness and compassion, but it also taught us a lot about prejudice and what people choose to hear and latch onto, whether it's a particular news source or authority figure or their parents or their friends. We learned about the 'other sides' of people whose beliefs impact the way they treat others. At 17, I was taught about the complexity and multi-sidedness of these large issues, but even more about myself, interpersonal relationships, and how big change starts small.

Feel free to (please!) leave feedback or thoughts on this or what International Women's Day means to you.

All the best,
Kate

Nick Mulvey at Electric Circus

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Last weekend I impulsively purchased a ticket to see Nick Mulvey at Electric Circus in Edinburgh. Partly because I had happened to stumble across a few of his tunes several months ago (he's got an EP and a couple of singles out at the moment) and Electric Circus is just a stone's throw from my front door. So off I went on Wednesday night and truly... a fantastic evening of music.

I always show up really early to venues. I don't know why that is -- if it's anxiety that I won't get a good spot or what, but I showed up at doors open, grabbed a drink from an insanely friendly bartender with wild hair, and planted myself on a leather couch in the back of the small venue, directly across from the stage, where I spent the next three hours in folksy singer-songwritery bliss.

Electric Circus is a nightclub some nights, a music venue, a karaoke bar, you name it... it kind of does it all. But it boasts a really wonderful, intimate setting for shows and the staff are great. I sat in the way back, naughtily leaning against an illuminated wall, sitting on the back of a couch (my grandmother would kill me if she knew my shoes were on the seat), but able to see quite well from there. I didn't bother taking photos (I don't understand photos at concerts, though I've done it in the past... I've become less and less keen) but it's really about the music, isn't it?

The opener was a young folk singer who called himself Eaves, hailing from Leeds. This kid could sing. He did a short, mellow set which set the tone for nicely for Nick Mulvey's folky, slightly more fast-paced, upbeat sound.

The house was packed and a number of people I talked to had only just heard of him because his newest single, 'Cucuracu' was just released on March 3rd and is getting some radio play. His first full-length album, First Mind, is due to drop in May. He was formerly a part of the group Portico Quartet, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize for their album Knee Deep in the North Sea. And to connect things further, Portico Quartet apparently influenced one of my favorite bands of the last couple of years, Alt-J.

Anyway, Mulvey parted ways with Portico Quartet a little while ago and busted out his solo chops, which after seeing this show, I think are going to take him places. Great songwriting, serious guitar-strumming skills and gentle yet assertive vocals with an endearing take-nothing-for-granted charm made for a really enjoyable, thoroughly absorptive performance. I think it's always fun to see someone at the sort of magical point in their career when they've amassed a following and some serious female admirers, yet they meet you out at the merch booth for pictures, autographs and chat.

I would see him again absolutely, and he intimated he might be back for the summer festivals here in Edi. No US tour dates as yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time. ;)

Seen any good shows lately? Let me know!

Cheers!

Kate xx

Snap: Gladstone's Land

Kite with prey, Gladstone's Land sign, Edinburgh Royal Mile, 3 March 2014.

Cheers,

Kate xx

Fruitmarket BookMarket 2014

Last Saturday I met up with some friends to go check out a between-exhibitions event at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh! It was the Artists' BookMarket that featured over two dozen independent presses, book artists and printmakers. It. was. fabulous. I mean, how could it not be, when so many of my favorite things come together in one event? Art/printmaking/illustration and poetry/literature and bookmaking. Gah, it's so great.

I set out to pick up some pieces. I haven't picked up much in the way of ephemera during my stay in Scotland, and I thought this would be the perfect excuse to pick up some things that I can add to my personal library/collection and also work as arty souvenirs over the long-term.

I found a wonderful photography book by photographer Fergus Jordan who was there representing his own work as well as the publisher the velvet cell which has put out some really streamlined, gorgeous photography books.

One of the numerous exhibitors // via //

But aside from the arty photography books and the gorgeous presses, there were some really beautiful independent Scottish publishers as well, some of them with more of a focus on Scottish literature and poetry. I scooped up an amazing little gem called 'Twelve Sea Pictures' by Leonard McDermid, which is something of a concrete poem printed on various papers by Stitchill Marigold Press. Good old fashioned letterpress printed and hand-stitched pamphlets, just gorgeous. And Leonard was awesome.



I could have gotten really carried away, but I controlled my purchasing urges and stuck with a few choice things that I dearly treasure already. I think that printmaking and bookmaking is something, though close to my heart and a part of my background already with experience at the used bookstore, that still maintains an aura of mystery and wonder because I know so little about the process. But the fact that books, so mass-produced these days, can be seen in terms of art... that's just wonderful.

Cheers!
Kate xx

Oh my god it's March!

I cannot believe it's March! I thought February would never end! Ahh!!

I've been a little off ball lately, still getting over my mystery illness (I'm about 98% back on track) and starting to work quite diligently on essays which are due (at last!!) starting this month.

There are a lot of exciting things going on! It might be a combination of many factors, but I feel as though I was in a major slump ever since the new year, and maybe a little before without really knowing it at the time. It was only after I got back from visiting Wisconsin that I felt really down in the dumps, and for reasons ranging from internship woes to academic stress to emotional weirdness about stuff at home and how I felt about being in Scotland and so on and so forth forever and ever -- for all of those and whatever other reasons, I just couldn't shake the blues. Apparently it took a pneumonia-like sickness, way too much time by myself and a creative outlet to get my spirits back up.

I had a moment of awakening one day for no apparent reason other than that perhaps the sun was out or I had felt cooped up for too long, but I literally made the decision to stop moping. Because wow, dwelling on the past or on things one can't have or stressful bits of school or work or whatever -- MOPING IS SO BORING!!

So I decided to finally utilize my art society membership and drop in to a life drawing workshop on Wednesday. What a brilliant decision -- it's been ages since I put my drawing skills to any sort of practice and I was pleased to find that I still have an eye (that's not a boast, I promise). It was so wonderful to surround myself with an entirely different group of people who had a similar interest in art and drawing. Even if it was only for an hour and a half, it was perfect. Being able to make something, even just a few sketches, made a world of difference in my attitude.

I bought some new clothes to freshen up my wardrobe, reunited with some friends after what seemed like ages, sought out some new music and realized that there is so much happening during the day that I need to remember to take a moment and appreciate. The daily routine can become so business-like and all the work can seem tiresome if I let it. But if I don't let it, I remember the work is actually in art history and is a subject that I love. And I don't have to go to the same coffee shop every day or walk the same route to class every time. I can choose to notice the details in buildings and smile at strangers (not creepily). I also realize just how lucky I am to live in the city centre (I may complain, but let's be serious) where I can walk down the street and listen to different kinds of live music every day from musicians and performers from all over the world, and meet people who both live here and are just passing through on holiday. There are so many stories.

The duo above is named Acid Tuna (which I find kind of hilarious) and are primarily a cover band, but when I walked by them they were performing a top-notch rendition of 'Hey Hey, My My' by Neil Young. I talked to them for a moment between songs and bought a copy of their awesome homemade CD and may check them out at one of their pub gigs... really nice guys.

Anyway!

Also -- my sister is coming to visit later this month and I couldn't be more excited to have a visitor! She's staying with me in Edinburgh for most of the week and then we plan to hop down to London for the weekend before she returns to the States.

So, it's March, and for all intents and purposes, I'm considering it to be spring.

Happy spring!!

Cheers,
Kate xx

Snap: Cascade

Late morning just above the west end of Grassmarket (the Castle is towering behind me). That's the Edinburgh College of Art building crowning the pile. 25 February 2014, 10:30am.

Cheers!

Kate xx