THE MAKING OF A KILT......

Here you see some examples of tartans used for the making of kilts.
When we were in Scotland, we have visited the Scottish Kiltmaker Visitor Centre in Inverness at the Highland House of Fraser. Did you know that for one kilt you need 8 yards of fabric? And that a kilt for a man weights 12 to 14 kilos?
It was wonderful to see the craftmanship of the ladies that are sewing the kilts by hand, the fabric is very heavy and certainly not easy to sew through. I talked to the very friendly owner of the shop and he told that there are more then 400 tartans. When I told him that we were all quilters, he was so friendly to sell us small pieces of the fabric for a nice price (woolen tartan fabrics are very expensive, the cheapest one was around 50 Pound a yard)and I am looking forward to make a cosy woolen quilt of them in the wintertime. If you ever go to Scotland and want to know more about the making of kilts then you can learn a lot about
it over here: Highland House of Fraser.
Did I tell you that they also make the kilts for the English Royal Family?

I also forgot to tell about the pictures, the first one is a view on the Ben Nevis from Inverlochy Castle in Fort William and on the second picture you can see the mist come closer between the mountains of Loch Lomond. Next time I'll show some more pictures.

SCOTLAND - unforgettable in more than one way!!!!

From June 23th until June 30th I visited Scotland for a walking vacation with friends from England, Italy, Denmark, Canada and Holland. Scotlands' nature is unbelievable beautiful. We have been walking a lot up in the mountains, across little rivers and waterfalls and along lochs, didn't see Nessie by the way.......
We all stayed together in a lodge with view on the Ben Nevis
and had a great time together, everyone prepared a dinner from their own country and we even had a mystery dinner one evening. We also went to Mallaig with Harry Potters' steamtrain and went to Inverness where we visited a kiltmaker
(I'll tell you more about it next time)and had dinner and a Scottish musicevening.
I will sure go back to Scotland in the future!

Unluckely the end of our vacation was a nightmare...........
My friend Imi and I had just checked in at the airport in Glasgow when two terrorists crashed a Jeep loaded with petrol and gas canisters into the terminal, it was supposed to have exploded into a fireball, taking the terrorists' lives and as many others as possible. We were so lucky that this didn't happen because the door frame was too sturdy and the car got stuck and some brave (police)men knocked the burning terrorist down who wanted to open the boot of the car and extinguished the fire before it exploded.
Because all flights were cancelled we had to stay on the floor of the terminal near the gates all evening, were brought to an exhibitioncenter in the night, dropped on the airport on Sundaymorning, waiting in a row of 6 miles until we could pick up our suitcases. There we were told that we had to search a hotel and book a flight back home by ourselves! At 14.00 we found a telephone in a Holiday Inn hotel (our mobile phones were out of order), phoned the KLM and they told us that we could go home no sooner then Thursday. After that we phoned home and luckely our DH's managed to get us on an Air France flight from Edinburg to Amsterdam on mondayevening and we arrived home mondaynight.
You can imagine that everything that happened takes the stuffing out of you. I still don't manage to get into my normal rhythm and need all my concentration for my new job in which I started last monday. I sure hope that I will soon be able to get back to Crazy Quilting and find some inspiration soon again!