Back to a new normal

As you can no doubt imagine there hasn't been a lot of something New's going on around here for a while so this will be the first New to Me link party of 2019 with a shiny new blog button made especially for the occasion!

Celtic Thistle Stitches

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 I do hope that you will join me in celebrating the trials and tribulations of trying something out for the first time. It takes me longer every time to create a new blog button as I can never remember how I did it the last time :) This time I tried the InLinkz blog button creator and it seems to have worked but I am still keeping my fingers crossed!

All of my New to Me's this month have been travel related as there hasn't been much in the way of stitching going on.

At the beginning of the month we took a belated birthday trip to Skye, where our boys had given us an overnight stay at the Kinloch Lodge hotel The booking included a 7 course tasting menu with wine pairings so it was just as well that we were staying overnight!

The weather was atrocious whilst we were there but the welcome couldn't have been warmer, definitely somewhere to add to the bucket list if you are planning a trip to Scotland. The food was pretty exceptional too :)

As the weather was so bad we didn't get to visit the Fairy Pools or Coral Beach but we did manage a quick stop at the third place on our list - Talisker Distillery! I really like the Talisker Storm malt whisky, so it was nice to be able to see where it is actually made and to see just how many different whiskies they produce. 

On our way up to Skye we stopped overnight in Fort William, which is at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. Amazingly this bronze statue of a model T Ford, which sits on the main street, was made to commemorate the unbelievable feat of one Henry Alexander in 1911 who drove the original car up to the top of the mountain! A team of 77 equally mad stalwarts took the original car up the mountain again 100 years later in May 2011, this time in pieces and re-assembled the car in the middle of a snowstorm! I am guessing that it sounded like a better idea when it was suggested than it actually was :) The bronze statue was cast in 2018 to commemorate both trips. 

My final New to Me trip was a bit closer to home, to the outskirts of Glasgow to visit the House for an Art Lover. The house was built using designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for an international competition in 1901, but not actually built until a local businessman decided to realise Mackintosh's designs in 1989. The photo above gives you an idea of the style and scale of the house. It is absolutely stunning and deserves a blog post all of its own!

So, that is my New to Me's this month now it is over to you to share your experiences whether good or bad with trying something for the first time. As always the link party will remain open until the end of March so you still have time to try out that new technique or visit that new destination and link up. I would love it if you added the new blog button to your post and checked out the linkers to share the celebrations too. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter