M I A

 I know, I know. I looked at the blog last night and thought, where did that week go? And it took me a while to remember what it was that I was doing last week that took up so much time, but I finally remembered that most of Mon-Wed was taken up with the Celtic Art Course.  

There was the normal class prep for Tuesday which always takes up a fair chunk of Monday. Last week it was Pictish symbols and there was a lot to read and speculate over. I enjoyed speculating with the rest of them although I have to say I find topics like this where there can be only speculation and no resolution frustrating in the extreme. This is why I would make a rubbish archaeologist. 

It was also the week the first assignment was due in. I think I've made passing reference here previously to the fact that this was an 'essay' with a word count of 1500, including references and  with a tolerance of 10%. That's a harder target to hit than you might think if you also  want to say anything worthwhile, so it took a bit of writing and rewriting. In the end I didn't  think I had said very much although I had discovered that, books and lecture notes to the contrary notwithstanding, neither the Book of Kells nor the Lindisfarne Gospels contain any blues made from lapis lazuli, and I was quite chuffed to find that out and reference it. 

Otherwise the week was full of language study, reading, baking , knitting and walking - reports and pictures to come in due course. Not pictures of the baking as I didn't take any so I will just note that I made some lemon cupcakes with a home grown lemon and they were luverlee.

And now I must go and try and do some prep for tomorrow's class which is all about how early medieval artisans were pictured in contemporary literature. As far as I could gather this was mostly Welsh, but we'll see. Always assuming that my internet, which is currently 'out' comes back,  and that the IT people at UHI get the systems sorted. They were subject to a cyberattack at the end of last week and half the systems are either down for 'repair' or crippled apparently. Update due in half an hour at which point I will know if I am likely to be able to a) read the necessary material for tomorrow's class and b) the class will actually be taking place.