March meanderings

Been feeling a little uninspired as of late. I've mostly been trying to get assignments in. I was ill last weekend as well and have been generally feeling quite tired. So I've just been watching repeats of That 70's Show and Big Love and using Fair Trade Fortnight as an excuse to buy two large bars of Green & Blacks chocolate on my weekly grocery shop.

I'll be hosting a little giveaway soon to celebrate reaching 100 followers.

So St. Patrick's Day for me was tamer than previous years. I had some friends over to dinner, I made Irish Stew (with the addition of Guinness), colcannon and carrot cake, using Crumbs for Dinner's recipe (highly, highly recommended!) We enjoyed some whiskey ginger & mint cocktails and had the craic.




Recently I also went on a day trip to the Scottish Museum of Costume at Shambellie House -


Hannah as the Dunce in the corner. They do recreations of Victorian classes for children's school groups that visit here, so obviously this is some evidence of that! Children really enjoy reenactments, so we're still big kids then!


They were shutting up the 'Marriage in the Movies' exhibition in preparation for their next exhibition, opening in April, about what the Land Girls and Lumber Jills of WW2 wore. A lot of mannequins were shrouded in these creepy dust veils, for storage.


'Willow Lady' sculpture in the grounds of Shambellie House, designed by Trevor Leat. This really ties in with the ideal of the house and its close affiliation with the landscape surrounding it.


These human like models were very popular in the 1970s. Interestingly they were based on the appearances of famous movie stars. This one is clearly Greta Garbo but there were a few others whose faces were similar and I just couldn't place them. What do you think of these sorts of mannequins - they are usual for action poses and 'personalizing' the costume, but are their facial expressions and make-up distracting? Are they too familiar to ethnographical mannequins (which obviously isn't their purpose)?


Shambellie House is a Victorian country house, originally built for the Stewart family in 1856. Charles Stewart donated his substantial costume collection to National Museums Scotland in 1977 and he also loaned Shambellie House to be used as a Museum of Costume, for the display of his collection.

Other things been keeping me busy recently include our student exhibition of studio ceramics (more on this at a later stage!)

(James Tower "Shell Form" stoneware sculptural form, 1981, Paisley Museum collection)

My camera might be getting on a bit, as I only seem to take blurry photos these days. Some day I'll get a nice camera. When I learn to take care of things! (That'll be a long time coming then.)