paper, scissors, snowdrops

If you love books, paper, maps, words, making things, I have two recommendations.

Firstly, visit Innerpeffray Library, Scotland's oldest free public lending library, which still houses its fascinating book collection, made available to all-comers from the late 17th century. It's a beautiful place tucked away near Crieff in Perthshire, with a chapel and school-house, built beside a Roman road where it forded the River Earn. You can enjoy books small enough to be kept in a locket (with a tiny magnifying glass) or thudding tomes of maps and bibles; illustrations of four-footed beasts or sorcery diagrams.

Secondly, do a creative bookbinding workshop with Rachel Hazell. A highly enjoyable way to learn the basic craft skills to cut and stitch books or paper sculptures, and then to store treasures in words or pictures.

I was lucky enough to combine the two this last weekend, and enjoyed the absolute, primary-school, absorption of making and experimenting with papers, inks, and linen thread amidst ancient books, beds of snowdrops and snow. Our faces shone as we went off clutching our collection of hand-made books, heads full of further projects.

And finally if you love all these things, you'll also love this.