Avoid the crowds on Mother’s Day and take your mum to tea with an artist. Artists across Scotland are opening their studios and serving tea on Sunday 17 March 2012. Tickets are around £5 per person and places should be reserved on the Take Your Mum to Tea site. Artists based in Fife include Lucy Turner, the creator of the very popular “stuffyourdoodles”, 3D stuffed characters created from your drawings
‘I became a Buddhist in the 1950s , but I’m also Jewish and I don’t have a quarrel with that – I don’t feel I can only be one or the other.’ Artist Dora Handzholder’s primitive style may not be to everyone’s taste but at 84 she seems to have achieved an enviable joy in life. ‘In many ways I turned to Buddhism because of its teachings of basic kindness, hope
Five, Six, Seven, Eight – A Debasers Filums Production Later this month Govanhill Baths will present 1950s Cinema and Dance Hall in its Edwardian main pool. Surf rock band The Head Henchmen, the cast of Five Six Seven Eight and virtuoso cabaret legend John Sampson will perform on Saturday 25 February 2012. This is only one of many unexpected fundraising events in an 11 year campaign by the local community to reopen
Granny Green’s Big Night Out is a weekly gathering of crafters and creatives based in Edinburgh. Open to all, the group is a mixture of skilled and beginners, old and young, professionals and hobbyists, male and female. The group meets every Monday night from 6-8pm at the Red Squirrel pub, 21 Lothian Road, Edinburgh and everyone is assured of a warm welcome. There are regular craft drop-ins where you can
The Glasgow Film Festival, with its usual, colourful mix of film, events and talks, kicks off today and runs until 26 February in venues across the city – including a tall ship and a swimming pool! A highlight of this year’s festival is a special screening of Roy Ward Baker’s 1958 epic A Night to Remember at The Glasgow Film Theatre on 19 February. Generally regarded as the best, and certainly
Much to be admired are those people who step around norms and pursue something with such thoroughness and devotion that it succeeds in the unlikeliest circumstances. Seventeen years ago singer songwriter Kenny Anderson launched Fence Records with what he calls ‘a healthy cynicism of all things music industry related’. He set up not in London but in the small coastal town of Anstruther and yet within five years the label
Next week is Burns Night, when the life and works of Scotland’s greatest poet Robert Burns will be celebrated around the world with formal gatherings, casual get togethers and perhaps the odd solitary armchair reading, glass of whisky in hand. To mark the occasion, we’re delighted to have copies of a brilliant downloadable Burns Night Companion to giveaway to three lucky readers. Worth £6.50 ($9.95), this fun and stylish guide has
Paisley born singer songwriter Gerry Rafferty is to be remembered at two concerts on 22 and 23 January as part of this year’s Celtic Connections in Glasgow. The concerts have been curated by Rafferty’s daughter Martha and Rab Noakes and will feature performances by, among others, The Proclaimers, Barbara Dickson, Ron Sexsmith and James Vincent McMorrow. Irish singer McMorrow, who sings some of his songs in a voice so high
We’d like to wish all our Avocado Sweet readers, writers, makers and suppliers and all the other interesting people we’ve met in 2011, the very best for the holidays and the coming year. We’ll be back posting daily from 9 January and have lots of exciting plans for 2012. Merry Christmas, love Jane and Michelle x The painting is by Paige Bridges and is available from Vintage Trailer Art.
We are giving away one of these gorgeous little robins to two lucky readers as a Christmas competition prize. These unusual Christmas decorations are handmade using vintage fabrics and electric cable copper for their wire legs. Part of their charm is their dimunitive size and the obvious hand stitching on the pretty fabrics. Because the robins are on legs they can stand on a shelf or mantelpiece or perch on a Christmas