Notes from a morning in Portland, Oregon, during which I consider adding more tartan to my wardrobe. I leave the café where I have been perusing Scottish-American taxidermy online and trot out onto Hawthorne Boulevard. A sausage dog lollops by, wearing a fetching Royal Stuart scarf. I see tartan everywhere all of a sudden. As […]
Tag Archives | kilt
“I love you kilt and thistle with your tartan bounty and rich heritage”
Notes from a morning in Portland, Oregon, during which I continue to be perplexed about the fact that people make sporrans — Scottish manbags/kilt accessories — out of animal heads, after a visit to the Kilt and Thistle Shoppe in Salem. The next day at the Fresh Pot coffeehouse in Portland, I scroll down the […]
Extraordinary
Still at the Kilt and Thistle Shoppe in Salem, Oregon, I search for my tartan. William is a man who knows his tartans and is happy to show me my colours on an aged monitor similar to the one I first played Donkey Kong on. We scroll through the 5000 tartans contained in the database […]
The Tartan Radar
…in which I continue my quest to become 100% Scottish by venturing into a Scottish Shoppe in Salem, Oregon My pace slows as I register the wail of bagpipes filling the synthetically bright, subterranean-level shoppe with their insistent drone. I am instantly sobered by their sound and assailed with sudden doubts about my ability to […]
Additional Badgers
Driving toward Salem, we seem to be heading straight into a rain cloud. It looms forbiddingly on the horizon. This Salem, an un-witchy one, is the capital of Oregon, home to a population of 140,000, a stately university campus and dozens of imposing government buildings. It also boasts an impressive tally of no less than […]
The American Way
I’m back in Portland after my first Highland Games and on the phone to my mum. I tell her about the knight with the chain mail and the visor and she guffaws. I tell her that the only recognizable bits of our Scotland were a few chocolate bars, the fish and chips, and the pricey […]
All fun and Games
Portland Highland Games – my first ever Highland Games, is not actually in Portland. It’s in Gresham, Oregon, a good 45 minutes’ drive from the city – a small distance in North American terms, almost the entire width of the country at some points in Scottish terms. Erin, Michelle and I make our way to the […]
Tartanry
Is Scotland the only country that does not force its Catholic schoolgirls to don tartan? We got to wear bouffant light blue taffeta frocks and straw hats at my elementary/primary school, though, so we didn’t get off… Scot-free. In high school/secondary we wore a yawn of grey items, stripy green and yellow ties and green […]
