Trip to Robert Burns Birthplace Museum + This Week's Bargain

Good Afternoon to You All

Apologies for being MIA for the last couple of days - I had been doing too much again, gadding about all over the place and even putting in a bit of gardening, and paid the price but rested yesterday and today and feeling able to get going again. The weather here is just gorgeous - the late afternoon sun is streaming into the craft space and lighting up the dust motes : )

The sculptured mouse above is Kenny Hunter's 'muckle, brazen beastie'!  So nothing like the mouse Burns (1759-1796) actually wrote about in his poem 'To A Mouse' then. He describes the mouse as a 'Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,' (the standard English translation is 'Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,') However, the sculpture commemorates the poem and is situated at the entrance to the Poet's Path which connects the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum to Burns Cottage, now owned and run by the Scottish National Trust.

This is the only time you will ever see me up close and comfortable with a mouse!

The entrance to the museum proper in Alloway, Ayr. We were not allowed to photograph inside but I can tell you that there is a terrific display with lots of opportunities to be interactive, both for adults and children, as well as displays of artefacts and manuscripts associated with Burns himself, and a cinematic experience every hour. There's also two shops, a restaurant and gardens featuring environmental art. For those of you who do not know who Robert Burns is, he is the Scottish National Bard, he was a poet, a lover, and an exciseman (the dreaded tax man). He wrote a vast number of poems - many of which have been set to music. Although a lot of the poems were romantic and written for his many women friends - he had several illegitimate children as well as a great many to his wife, Jean Armour - he also wrote, as a farmer, about his natural surroundings and several with a more political message. Not bad for one who died young at only 37 years.

These fabulous weathervanes, depicting scenes from the poem entitled 'Tam o' Shanter', can be seen on the Poet's Path which leads to the cottage that is Burns' birthplace.

We spent two afternoons down at Alloway taking in the Museum and the Poet's Path and still haven't seen everything so will be going back to go inside the cottage museum and then down to, the Auld Kirk, the Burns Monument and the Brig o' Doon - a humped bridge also depicted in 'Tam o' Shanter'.

One of the pieces of environmental art depicting the field where the mouse in it's nest was disturbed when Burns was ploughing.

Now for something completely different - my bargain of the week. These very useful boxes were going cheap at WH Smith so I grabbed a couple. The first is a place to keep all the craft knives I seemed to have amassed over the last year, and the second is full of glue pens, gold pens and an opaque white pen.

That's me caught up with what I've been up to recently. I hope you enjoyed the wee tour of Burns birthplace - and if you have never been to visit it is well worth the trip.

Now that my mojo has returned I'm off to do something crafty.

Happy crafting to you all,