June 27th: Edinburgh

Today we left our one-night hotel and moved up the block to The Rock House, which is pretty rad. It’s not really a hotel, it’s a rentable cottage, which can only be booked by groups. Good thing we’re in a group. We dropped our bags, said hi to the tour host, and then headed back out to do some sightseeing. Today is arrival day, our first scheduled thing is in the evening.

We went to The Ginger Twist (a yarn shop), Dovecot Studios (a tapestry studio and art museum), and the Royal Scotland Museum (a sort of all-types museum like the V&A in london, or the natural history museum in NY). The yarn shop was lovely, and while we were there, they played:

• Doo Wop (That Thing) by Lauryn Hill

• The Magic Number by De La Soul

• Mistadobalina by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien

• Jump Around by House of Pain

• Can I Kick It? by Tribe Called Quest

I was ready to stay just to hear what was coming next, but then the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air came on and it was time to go. We didn’t buy anything, but came close. They had some Scottish wool and some great hand-dyed colors, but there’s a lot of yarn at home too.

I had never heard of Biba, but I’m not super well-educated when it comes to fashion. It was the creative work of Barbara Hulanicki, who was originally a fashion illustrator, and switched to designer. Her fashion and stores became more or less the epitome of swinging 60s London fashion (think Austin Powers gogo dancer types). There was never-ending demand for her fashion, and the story in the museum follows an arc like: “success led to demand, they had to expand to meet the demand, then they needed more capital so they brought in business partners, and then the business partners kind of drove the whole thing into the ground.” By the end, the “Big Biba” store in London as a proto-IKEA was a superstore that sold Biba-branded everything. They had clothing, they had soft goods, they had a whole line of cosmetics; they even had canned baked beans. All with the black and gold branding. Pretty surreal, in a “Spaceballs: The T Shirt” kind of way. Merchandising, y’all. The cosmetic line was apparently the first full line that included cosmetics for Black skin, and that line outlived the rest of the brand by about a decade. Still, the whole thing was over in about 10 years, from “sold 17,000 famous gingham dresses” to “nine floor superstore with branded bird-nest soup” to “no longer in business”.

The Royal Museum of Scotland was (a) free and (b) a great grab-bag of all kinds of stuff. We went through more history of the realm, saw some giant swords (like really giant, they must have been really tall in the 1400s), then went to a science wing (I got to see some F1 cars, plus the Dolly shown above), then a whole thing about the senses of different animals, and we only went to about a quarter of the exhibits. We tried to take a bus home, but since we were near a parade route (King was in town, there were apparently tanks in the parade even) the buses were all donked up, so we had to take an uber. 😃

After that, we headed back to the house, met up with our toumates (there’s ten of us, plus two hosts / guides). This kind of thing is always great- we’re kind of guaranteed to have at least a few things in common, since we’re on a tour to learn basket and hat weaving techniques. Some of the other folks have way more fabric, fiber, and basket cred than I do, but I’ve got none. I did get to mention that I made disconcerting pottery, but nobody asked me what that meant (yet).