The Wormhole of Memory

A tiny spider, a bit of feather, and a few catkins on a tweedy day.

And my mind wanders down the memory wormhole to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, the first book I remember thrilling me;

the Scots bagpipers whose performance I saw as a child with my mother at the Boutwell Auditorium;

the Complete Book of Tartan precursor she gave me for Christmas when I was in fifth grade;

my reading and re-reading of Lucy Fitch Perkins' The Scotch Twins;

Downton Abbey and the PBS film Secrets of Highclere, with its interview of the Gamekeeper (a descendent of a 19th-century gamekeeper at the estate) and his apprentice, discussing their tradition of wearing tweed;

my last best winter coat, tailor-made for me by mother (not long before her death) of certified Harris Tweed;

Harris Tweed - From Shearing To Stamping from HTA on Vimeo.

The National Gamekeepers Organisation;
and then to this, a blog post without a thesis, but with plenty of curiosity -- and heart.