Why I'm so Obsessed with Scotland

Marykate & I doing our standard "LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL THING WE FOUND" pose after hiking Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. Its a thing. Europe has been blessed with this pose many times. 

I recently started watching Outlander and WOW it is a great show!! The knitwear is freaking fantastic, and its main character Claire is a strong independent woman trying to navigate the craziness of 18th century Scotland after being kind of sucked through a time warp stone thing from her life in the post-WWII UK. Its brilliant, I swear.

Aaaand its also currently giving me my fix of the beautiful Scottish countryside & the wonderful Scottish people & their accents. I've been totally enamored with Scotland and its culture ever since I went on a trip there when I was 14 years old, and I was so happy to find out that the magic was still there when I visited with my friend Marykate a few weeks ago.

We decided to visit Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, for the first weekend of Spring Break. We flew in to London on Thursday night & then took a train from London to Edinburgh early Friday morning.

Me being a totally excited goon while riding the London Underground. I know they call it the tube because seriously IT IS SO TUBEY & WEIRD LOOKING & also wonderful.

We took the tube to Kings Cross & boarded our train from there AKA we took a train from Kings Cross in London up to Scotland AKA we were basically going to Hogwarts. Yep, like I said: totally magical. And yes, I was excitedly freaking out the entire time.

Our train car was ridiculously warm for the 4+ ride but it was made a little better by the fact that we kept whizzing past bucketloads of sheep & yaks (highland cows, but I call them yaks) & all other wonderful fibery goodness. I was especially excited to see all of my wooly friends because I WAS ON MY WAY TO A YARN FESTIVAL. I'm 100% serious. Those things exist. And the best ones are in Scotland.

I obviously wasn't going to make Marykate go to the yarn festival with me because I knew I would spend too much time there, so once we got to Edinburgh we split up for the afternoon for some solo exploring. I hopped on a double decker bus (which is normal public transportation - so fun!) & traveled about 25 minutes through the hilly city to the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, which is basically the old meeting hall/marketplace that is now used for all sorts of event and concerts.

The fact that one of the biggest yarn festivals in the world happened to fall on the first weekend of my Spring Break is what I like to call a beautiful gift from above. The Corn Exchange was a huge place, & it was all filled with yarn & yarn lovers from all over the world. I got a little emotional and honestly a little freaked out because I wanted to touch all the yarn & make friends with everyone there & it was honestly just really overwhelming at times. This was my first yarn festival, after all. But I forced myself to slow down & just embrace the chaos of people & fiber everywhere.

There over 100 vendors at this thing. 100 booths that looked just as enticing as this one! Also, notice the younger looking girl in the back left of this photo. I swear, I was not the youngest person there!

It was so crowded. It was amazing. I had never seen so many knitters in one place - & a lot of them people I'm a little obsessed with from stalking their Instagram accounts or blogs! It was like if the biggest Packers fan in the world was all of the sudden in the same place as every single player on the team - both the current team and the all stars from past teams (did I say that right?). IT WAS THAT BIG OF A DEAL.

I walked away with some good stuff - a few skeins of sock yarn, bulky yarn for my blanket (which is going great, by the way), some lovely undyed aran weight yarn, and one skein of Blend No. 1, an unbelievably perfect undyed blend of yarn with fiber from 3 different sheep so it has this magical sort of heathered grey look to it. Blend No. 1 is made by Ysolda Teague, a young Scottish woman who makes a living creating knitting patterns & yarns & teaching classes & she's amazing & her blog is one of my favorite things ever & I want to be her a little bit. I spent ages trying to figure out what I wanted to make out of this perfect yarn, & I finally started on a pair of simple fingerless gloves that show the simplistic brilliance of her yarn.

A selection of yarn I got from the Edinburgh Yarn Festival in Scotland. 

There wasn't a huge selection of bulky yarn - sock and worsted weight were more popular - but WOW I found an amazing vendor that had just what I was looking for. Mrs. Moon is UK based company that focuses on making ethically sourced yarn, which I honestly hadn't even thought that much about until I had a lovely conversation with one of the founders. I get most of my yarn from companies that I am very familiar with and read up on, not mass produced labels, so I know where they source their fiber and I don't think ethical sourcing is much of an issue, but I know the textile industry is crawling with nasty business. Mrs. Moon sources most of their fiber from Australia, which I thought was really interesting. Their line of "plump" yarns (pictured below) is 80% superfine merino wool & 20% baby alpaca (the perfect blend). And honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful color palette of yarn. And all of their colorways are named after desserts! I chose the one on the middle shelf in the second to left column in the photo below - its called Rhubarb crumble.

Responsibly sourced, eco-friendly, squishy, & delicious yarn in the most perfect colors from Mrs. Moon.

I think I only spent about 3 hours at the yarn festival, which really wasn't that long because there was so much to see. I was pretty shy and kept to myself for most of the time, but I did meet a lot of lovely people & I'm so glad that my first yarn festival experience was a positive one.

Marykate & I met up later in the afternoon & checked into our hostel (one of the BEST hostels I've stayed in - I highly recommend Castle Rock Hostel if anyone is headed to Edinburgh!) to rest before grabbing some dinner & exploring a bit at night. Our hostel was just a staircase down from the Edinburgh Castle, so it was the perfect location. Everyone who worked at the hostel was so friendly and helpful, which was really the norm during our entire stay. Scottish people are seriously the best.

It was kind of gloomy the first day, but we still had a great view from our hostel!

We found dinner at a wonderful place that I can't remember the name of, but I do remember I got salmon & it was delicious. We then hopped across the street to a bar our waitress recommended & I tried whisky & I HATED IT. But we were able to see a local band play in a local pub & we met two very nice girls who were traveling as well so that was fun.

We didn't stay out too late because we jam packed our Saturday with activities. First, we started at The Elephant Cafe - a must stop for anyone whose life was altered by the Harry Potter series (AKA everyone).

The one downfall of The Elephant House is that it advertises that it is "The Birthplace of Harry Potter" in the font "Jokerman". Its honestly a disgrace.

J.K. Rowling wrote most of the first few Harry Potter books at The Elephant House Cafe, and I completely understand why it worked for her. Its a cozy place with good food, and it has an amazing view out the back window that I'm pretty sure anyone would find inspiring.

The Edinburgh Castle is peeking through the left side of the window.

Aside from advertising themselves as "The Birthplace of Harry Potter", allowing their bathrooms to be completely vandalized with scribbles of people writing their thank you's to J.K. Rowling, and having a small bulletin board that included some newspaper clippings about Rowling's connection to their cafe, I loved that The Elephant House still stayed true to themselves. There were, as the name suggests, a lot of elephants, and not a lot of Potter paraphernalia. I appreciated that.

Yum!

We filled up on "The Elephant House Breakfast" and then set off towards Arthur's Seat for nice morning hike. Hiking Arthur's Seat was a must-do on every article we read and was recommended by everyone we talked to, so we knew we had to do it. I think we went at the perfect time - we started our hike around 10 AM if I remember correctly. It wasn't too crowded and it was a nice temperature.

Arthur's Seat is pretty much a steady incline most of the way, with a few fun rocky climbing parts, and there are a lot of different routes you can take up & down. I didn't take too many pictures because I was too busy huffing and puffing. I swear, everyone was. Its a quick hike but its not like it takes no effort. We made it up there in about 45 minutes (we were very proud of ourselves) & were greeted with an astounding view of the city below.

I was so happy that my eyes didn't really open at all.

All the panting was 100% worth it. We could see the city, the surrounding little suburbs, and the connection to the North Sea. People were just sitting up at the top chatting and hanging out. A lot of people were tourists, but you could definitely pick out the locals who hiked up with their dogs or had their walking sticks. And there were a lot of old people hiking much faster than us! This one old man looked like he had all his paces memorized - he didn't miss a beat even when he was walking over a rock sticking into the trail or switching from flat to steep and rugged terrain. He clearly had it down to a science.

We made our way down after a little bit, then wandered back into the city to get some tea & regroup before spending the rest of the day wandering around the city before we had to catch our train back in the afternoon.

I still can't get over how cute this teacup is.

We didn't have a whole lot of time in Edinburgh, but it was time well spent. I was reminded of how kind the Scottish people are, how beautiful the land is, and how much I absolutely love it there. Edinburgh is one of those cities that feels small enough to be cozy and big enough to be bustling all at once. The people are active, they serve good food with a lot of different options, and honestly they seem genuinely happy. I could see myself living there and loving it.

I know I'm not alone in my love of Scotland - almost all of my friends who have visited absolutely rave about it as well. My Dad went a few years ago and I know he loved it also! Honestly, it's hard not to! I think everyone should visit if they get the opportunity. I know I'll be back as many times as possible! But for now, I'll just keep watching Outlander & knitting away while dreaming of living in the Scottish Highlands with my dreamy Scottish husband & my flock of sheep (sorry I keep threatening to move places, Mom. I REALLY LIKE IT HERE.).