The Great Tapestry of Scotland

I was in Scottish Parliament for a meeting today and was a little early, so I strolled through the main hall and had a look at the Great Tapestry of Scotland exhibition that was put up today. Apparently it can be viewed for free from 3 to 21 September.

The website tells me that the Great Tapestry of Scotland is one of the most ambitious community arts projects in the world. The project, developed by esteemed Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith, artist Andrew Crummy and historical writer Alistair Moffat, brings together hundreds of volunteer stitchers from across Scotland.

It breaks the record for the longest embroidered tapestry in the world - at 143m; 70m longer than the Bayeaux Tapestry in Normandy. The tapestry tells the story of Scotland in 160 panels. This is a panel on Robert Louis Stevenson - panel no. 108.

Here are some quite interesting facts about the tapestry (stolen from the BBC website):

* There are 160 panels depicting more than 12,000 years of Scottish history.
* It took 50,000 sewing hours to create: equivalent to sewing 24 hours a day for 6 years.
* It is made of 49,000 meters of yarns: enough to lay up and down Ben Nevis 37 times.
* 1,000 stitchers from Shetland to the Borders, aged from four to 94 helped create it.

That's pretty impressive!

In other news, I went out for a hill run tonight. I did laps of Hunter's Bog and the Volunteer's Walk in Holyrood Park. It was reasonably tough going up the steep 'Piper's Walk' section, but a nice long recovery downhill. On my third lap some American tourists started clapping me. Erm...thanks, but it's not that impressive!

Today's run: 4 miles
September running mileage: 16 miles
2013 running mileage: 772 miles

I also got an email from blipfoto today - turns out the folk from the Edinburgh Festivals website want to use one of my shots on their promotional material! Brilliant!