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.

walking through stars in northern skies and northern Scotland

In Spring 2007 I was part of a tour of schools for the Highland Constellation Project . On our journey, we collected seven stars. Their pattern has become a new constellation - the Jumping Fish or Iasg a’ Leum (below) designed by Ullapool pupil, Alexander Stewart, in celebration of Highland Year of Culture 2007. Our journey involved star-gazing and stravaiging, describing pathways between beacons on two maps, and exploring time and history as represented above by Gill Russell. I wrote the story of those two constellations - one celestial, one terrestrial - setting within my text some of the jewels of writing that the children had produced in our workshops. Now this story, Walking through stars in northern skies and northern Scotland, together with visual pieces that artist Gill Russell catalysed, has been beautifully bound by Laura West into a rocket-shaped book. It is currently on display in the Scottish Parliament in 'Cridhe na Gaidhealtachd – Craft in the Highlands’ and later in 2008 will be touring around various Highland locations.