Tracy McCabe Stewart - Contemporary Fiber

In my current urge to travel, I have been visiting some interesting sites.  There’s a great site called Daily Bute featuring a daily picture of the Isle of Bute, Scotland as well as pictures from some other locations in Scotland.  I’ve posted about the Isle of Bute before (look at my Scotland posts);  it’s where I got married and one of my favorite places to visit.

Click on the link above to see some lovely shots.

Here’s one of mine:

Rothesay Castle (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

As the three people that have read my blog from the beginning know, I have a completely irrational fantasy about being a farmer/outdoor/live off the land sort of person.  It involves images from summer camp, British Country Living Magazine, and various other great childhood memories.  I wrote a lot about it here.  

Part of my fantasy involves raising chickens.  I dream of fresh eggs in the morning and a sweet, loving relationship with my hens.    All of them flocking to me when I come out to see them, coming up to me for a scratch, strolling with me through the garden.  Sort of like little Lassies with feathers.

The truth is that I have 2 dogs that would be happy to eat any smaller animal I might  have, I live in a Chicago suburb that has ordinances against chickens and I would never be able to send the chickens to their maker once they quit their laying years.  I would just end up with a huge flock of pet chickens.   Amazingly, my husband Ken is not really sold on this idea. 

Anyway, to keep the country dream alive, I read great blogs like Theresa Loe’s, “Garden Fresh Living” blog.  She lives in California and grows oodles of food and raises chickens.  Gotta love that!  Check out her blog.  The chickens are on today’s post.

She has a video on her blog today with chickens doing agility training. Who knew?  I don’t think I could even get my dogs to do these things.  I, of course had to go to YouTube and see if there were more chicken athletes out there.  Here’s another video of those avian champions.  Do you think Ken will let me have chickens that can do tricks???? 

I know everyone who has a blog can embed videos.  I am rather technically challenged and can not.  Here’s the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nI27Zwi9VU

I was pining for the fjords today ; thinking about Scotland and surfing the internet.  I ran across this wonderful Scottish painter Ken Bushe.  He does lovely, lovely oil paintings of earth, sky and water.  His website  includes information on technique as well-presented with that quirky Scottish humor.  Enjoy!

Hi all,

I went up to Door County, Wisconsin Friday and Saturday.  We went up with friends and broke into stereotypical groups for the weekend.  The guys all went to the Experimental Aircraft Association Show in Oshkosh, WI, while us girls went and checked out some of the many gorgeous galleries in the area.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Door County, it lies on the little pinkie finger of Wisconsin; a skinny little pennisula that is incredibly popular with tourists.  Door County has oodles of galleries, outdoor activities and beautiful scenenry.

Sadly, I completely forgot to bring my camera, but did manage to go to some galleries with lovely websites.  On top of seeing some really first rate artwork, the thing that really stuck with me was the incredible use of space these galleries had.  I saw revamped barns, beautiful trellises over gorgeous patios, incredible gardens that included ponds and sculpture.  They were truly magnificent and I came away feeling incredibly inspired.  Many of these were pretty close to the vision I have for my dream living situation.  Take a look for some artistic inspiration:

Fine Line Designs Gallery Really gorgeous artwork.  A decent sculpture garden.  Definitely worth seeing.

Edgewood Orchard Galleries-Absolutely incredible on all levels.  This is probably the most wonderful gallery experience I have ever had, anywhere.  The buildings were incredible, with lovely patios to sit on in between, the sculpture garden was absolutely incredible, both in the garden itself and the caliber of the sculpture, and the other media were just as first rate.  If I went to one place in all of Door County again, this would be it.

Plum Bottom Pottery-First rate pottery and sculpture.

The Flying Pig-Good artwork and truly lovely gardens.  They had a really unusual selection of plants and a really nice coffe shop in the middle.  It was a really relaxing, lovely end to the day.  If you click on their site, they have a truly lovely video of the space. 

 

All of these were really worth the trip!

Rothesay Castle Moat

 

We never went into Rothesay Castle this trip (where we were married) but I did take some pictures of the moat:

 

Here’s the last of my pictures from Scotland.   I passed by this busty lady in town every day and she never failed to amuse me.  I’m not really sure why, but something about her teensy head and generous chest always brought a smile (yes, I am immature)

Busty Gal

We took the bus down to Kilcatten Bay and started walking down to St. Blane’s chapel.   This beautiful rock formation is called Hawk’s Nib.  click on it to enlarge (as with all the pictures)

Hawk's Nib

We also passed this lovely lighthouse:

Lighthouse

I think that’s one of the Cumbrae islands behind.

Beautiful view of Cumbrae

 

Ken kept running into and scaring wildlife this trip:

Ken, the Cow Whisperer

St. Blane’s is a wonderful ruin of a 12th and 13th century church.  amazingly, quite a bit of it is still standing:

St. Blane's Chapel

There are a surprising number of graves still standing.  The upper churchyard was reserved for clergy burial in Medieval times and men later.  The lower section was reserved for commoners in Medieval times and women later.

Here’s another shot:

More Chapel Pics

Clergy section and wall to the commoners section above

Here’s another:

12th Century Section

This section was reserved for clergy to worship.  The commoners had a separate section that was added later.

Here’s a gravestone from 1767.  It was in the church, so has held up amazingly well:

1767 gravestone

 

Another day we went up to Mount Stuart.  It’s the ancestral home of the Marquess of Bute.  The Marquess owns most of the island and has a grand home with amazing gardens.  The current Marquess apparently wants to be more accessible and refers to himself as “Johnny Bute”.  Here’s a little picture of his digs.  We didn’t do the house tour-I’d done it before.  Instead we did the gardens.  Here’s a picture of the outside.  The home is HUGE and I could only get a small bit of it without a wide angle lens.

A Teensy bit of Mount Stuart

 

Here’s a lovely pond just outside of the house:

Mount Stuart Pond

 

Here are some shots of my favorite UK plant, the Gunnera.  It’s some kind of giant rhubarb.  It is really giant, each leaf can span 6 feet!  I wish I could grow it in Chicago, but, alas, it’ too cold here.

Gunnera

More Gunnera:

Gunnera Seed Pod Thingie

and some great shadows on this one:

Gunnera Shadows

Leave it to me to find animals!  There were a few of these cute burros:

Burros!

and a beautiful Beech tree:

 

I am going to try to get some actaul art work done today.  I WILL post art pictures again!

As I have posted about before, my husband, Ken does not feel it’s a good holiday until he has physically conquered something.    He goes from a completely sedentary job to biking 50 miles or hiking up 4000 feet while hardly breathing heavily.  I spend most of the day lagging behind and panting and  pretty tired.  If you put him in Scotland, he gets even nuttier about this because his brother is exactly the same way.  They get together and come up with outlandishly tiring plans.  There is usually a pint and a good meal afterwards, which makes up for most of it.  This year was fairly tame; they just decided we should bike around the island.  I did better than usual-25 miles without passing out  and remaining relatively cheery.  Ken and his brother Alan, decided that wasn’t enough and tacked on another 10 miles after that; I’m sure traveling at warp speed.  Here’s the family  at the beginning of the journey at Rothesay Pier.  Notice how all of the crazy Stewart men look happy about this trip and my brother in-law’s wife, Joyce’s look says,”Here we go again.”

Our band of happy travelers at the beginning of the trip

I did stop for these cows because they seemed to be posing for me:

The cows pose for their close-up

There are tons of cows on Bute-and sheep!

Rothesay

This was the view just biking out of Rothesay.  It’s truly beautiful on the whole island.

More gorgeous views

I forget what this is a view of.  The foreground is Bute, but I think the back landmass might be another island like Inchmarnock or Arran.

Calmac Ferry

 

Here is the ever present ferry.  Mainland Scotland is the landmass behind it.  Bute is a really short crossing; about 30 minutes.  I took a bunch of pictures at Mount Stuart Gardens and St. Blane’s chapel.  I’ll put those up over the next few days.

Here’s some pictures of our fabulous trip to Scotland.  We stayed on the Isle of Bute (in the Inner Hebrides) for the trip, except for a few jaunts to the Glasgow suburbs to see family.   Bute had it’s heyday in Victorian times, were thousands of people would go to escape the grimy industrialism of Glasgow.  Many of the buildings still stand. 

I have always wondered what this pretty little building’s function was.  Apparently, it is too process poop!  Those Victorians sure made pretty municipal buildings:-)

Victorian Poop Hut

Rothesay (the main town on the island) has a promenade walk by the seaside; complete with putting greens and palm trees:

Rothesay Putting Greens

Bute benefits from the Gulf stream which allows it to grow palms, etc.

Here’s Rothesay pier and the Calmac ferry which takes you on and off the island:

Calmac Ferry

Lots of boats, too:

Rothesay Boats

  Ken and I stayed in a fabulous B&B called the Munro House with the loveliest hosts, Joan and Andy Walters.  The B&B was owned by someone else 10 years ago.  We had our wedding reception there and decided to stay there for sentimental reasons.  We couldn’t have picked a nicer spot.  Joan and Andy were delightful.  Here’s the view from the terrace.  I don’t have a wide angle lens, so you can’t really appreciate how vast the view really is.  We spent quite a few evenings drinking wine on the terrace.

Terrace at the Munro House B&B-What a view!

More later!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous here in Scotland, so I taken full advantage and spent my time hiking and biking aound the Isle of Bute.  We are walking part of the West Island Way tomorrow and going to see  the  ruins of St Blane’s Chapel. I will post pictures when the rain returns!

Man, do I love this woman’s art quilts.    As someone who has made an attempt myself to capture birds in fabric, I am awed by the creativity and skill Karin uses to create her “bird” pieces.   She seems to share my love/obsession with cranes.  Check out her work.  It is amazing!  http://www.karinfranzen.com/wp/ 

 

I’m off to Scotland today-first to Paisley (a burb of Glasgow) and then off to the Isle of Bute. I hope to post again in a day or two.

I discovered Eurovision a few years ago, when Ken and I were traveling to Scotland.  We had just made the trip over, and spent some time puttering around during the day.  When the evening rolled around, we were both still feeling pretty jet lagged and decided to have a quiet evening in the hotel pub, rather than go out.  The pub television was showing the fantastically horrible extravaganza called Eurovision.  I was immediately and forever hooked!  There is simply no American equivalent to this annual event.

Eurovision is a yearly contest of “talent” acts.  Each European country (and some non-European countries like Israel) have a group of performers put up an act to represent their countries. 

Let me repeat that these acts represent the TALENT of  the participating country. 

The results are addictively, brilliantly, wonderfully horrible examples of kitsch and melodrama and I LOVE THEM!  There are some genuinely talented performers in the show, but nobody really watches it for them.  For a bit of perspective an all of this, this is where ABBA was first discovered.  Enough said. 

Though I sadly missed the show this year, I have found a few gem performances on YouTube for your enjoyment.  Here’s a fine selection from the Czech Republic-love that cape:

Eurovision Czech Republic 

and some fine singing and gyrating from Sweden:

Sweden-Love those outfits

True weirdness from Serbia:

What the heck is going on in Serbia?

Armenia had the best costumes:

Armenia!

This one from Iceland was, scarily, the winner:

Iceland Yikes!

Enjoy!