Burns Supper

One of the things that goes along with being a bagpiper is regular exposure to Robert Burns, the national poet and near patron saint of Scotland.  In Scotland people just call him "The Bard".  You may know him as the author of Auld Lang Syne.  I have to say, I think Scotland is pretty cool just for having a national poet, and for regularly celebrating and revering someone who writes beautiful words for a living.  This esteem I feel for the Scots is only slightly tempered (for me, anyway) by the wacky gatherings held in Burns'  honor every year.  I've attended some doozies.  

Robert Burns' birthday is January 25th and each year, all over the world, Burns nights are celebrated with much tartan, scotch, and Scottish brogue...both real ones and those valiantly attempted.  The best Burns suppers are gastro-literary  events with audience participation and a liberal sharing of verse, anecdote and song.  There are a few rules governing a Burns supper that are always adhered to:  

There must be ample access to scotch. 

 There must be Scottish music.

There must, specifically, be bagpipes...lots of bagpipes.

 A roaring fire is a bonus.

There must be speaking and reading aloud the poetry of Robbie Burns. 

And there MUST be haggis: a huge sausage-like dish made of sheep innards, oatmeal & spices which is stuffed inside a sheep stomach and boiled. Mmmm, yum.   It must be escorted in by a lone piper (this is called the Parade of the Haggis), then addressed (yes, I mean talked to) by the master of ceremonies   A Burns poem is actually read to the haggis before it is ceremonially pierced with a sharp dagger and served.  It must be eaten with mashed neeps and tatties (turnips & potatoes), which are pretty good.

A rowdy and jovial night is usually had by all, thanks to the scotch and the poetry.  You need to be careful not to drink too much, though...since expelled haggis is something that a person should never have to see.

Meet Your Maker, Part II

Me, part deux…

When we first moved to Seattle, I started waiting tables at an Indian restaurant and going to school for my master’s degree in teaching. My future mister tried a couple different career paths, eventually settling into a financial field. We lived in the Fremont neighborhood “the center of the universe” and got a puppy named Molly.


I finished graduate school and quickly got an ESL teaching job. I was frequently mistaken for a middle school student in the halls at school. I’m about the same size as most of the students, and apparently I looked pretty young (I hated getting carded then…now it makes my day). I loved my job and the young immigrants that I got to work with. They were (still are, in fact) interesting, industrious and engaging. I often feel a pull back to the classroom that I may follow at some point, or maybe I’ll just travel the world to visit the places they all came from.


But I was busy. We had one, then two, then three little chunky-cheeked babies. I gardened, made soap, sewed slip covers, made baby food and changed diapers. I decorated one house, then another. We finally landed in a part of Seattle that we just love: Ballard. It reminds me in some ways of the small town where I grew up, but is still very much a part of the city. I also like that it has the only Nordic Heritage Museum in the United States. My son’s soccer team chant a few years ago was “Lutefisk, lutefisk, lefse, lefse! We’re the Ballard Vikings! Ya, Ya Betcha!” Priceless.

My older kids have started school and we now spend lots of time in 4-H, music lessons, hockey and soccer. I am one of the founding members of Elliott Bay Pipe Band and do my best not to embarrass my banditos. It helps that I have 28 years of piping experience to fall back on. I try to grow lots of berries and vegetables, sew things, and learn something new whenever I can. I try to be faithful and mindful of the earth and the trees and the creatures around us, like my parents always have been. I try to be careful about what we consume and what we throw away. I try to do, more than I talk. I also try to stretch a penny as far as it will go (Granny Gretha) and wash out our Ziplock bags many times before they get thrown away (Grandma Evie). Stewardship takes many forms.

So that’s me, for now. I have big plans for the future. I have not gone back to teaching or learned how to knit yet, because I am budgeting my time in the event that I become the overlord of a vast soapmaking empire. We’ll see what happens.

Meet Your Maker

…soapmaker, that is.

It has been suggested to me, by people whose opinion I trust, that when someone makes a handcrafted product like I do, folks like to know a bit about the person who made it. I struggled for a while with the question of whether or not anyone actually wants to read about my personal history, or if I am secretly harboring a huge ego that can only be fed by a me, me, me entry. I finally decided to go ahead with this post since maybe my kids will be interested someday. We’ll see about that.

So, then…here’s a little bit about me, Anne.

I grew up in North Idaho. My earliest years were spent on a ranch set between the Selkrik Mountain range and the Rathdrum Prairie. I lived there with my parents, brother, and lots of extended family. My people are an eclectic mixture of Scandinavians with Celtic connections. I guess it’s just one big gene pool anyway…those Vikings did get around a lot.

The creative and care-taking occupations are well represented in my family. Pretty much everyone is a teacher, a preacher, a counselor or a musician. I spent my childhood playing on the ranch with my brother and cousins, making forts, tagging along after my parents and grandparents, and watching Gilligan’s Island and Hee Haw.

When I was eight, my parents parted and I began to divide my time between the ranch and my mother’s house in nearby Coeur d’Alene. My younger brother and I comfortably went back and forth between the ranch life with our livestock-raising father and the “city” life with our college professor mother & stepfather.

My parents’ separation was a catalyst for all sorts of independent activity for me…I became a better cook, a better seamstress, a better gardener…all because I had more responsibility and wasn’t just depending on them to take care of things for me. I became my brother’s chauffeur too. Yes, I got my driver’s license at the age of 14. Thanks Idaho farm-friendly driving laws!

I was a complete overachiever and teacher-pleaser in high school. I got good grades, took AP classes whenever possible, played several instruments, edited the school newspaper, was on the debate team, in Model United Nations, went to Girls State (in Pocatello!) and was class president my senior year. I listened to folk and alternative music, cut my hair in a spiral bob which normally covered half my face, and secretly spurned people with tans. I did not date. Nobody ever asked me out. Ever. I wore a red blazer in my high school yearbook picture. See...Sheesh.


I decided to go away to college in Minnesota because I had connections there (it is the Scandinavian Mecca of the U.S.) and because it was sort of far away. I attended Macalester College in St. Paul, a Presbyterian school with its own bagpipe band. I played in the band, studied History and Art History, and tutored immigrant kids in English as a Second Language. I also studied abroad in Scotland for my junior year at the University of Glasgow. It was here that I met my polar opposite (at least on paper), New Jersey-born husband. Funny story.

We dated from afar for our last year of college and then decided to make our next move together. We weren’t sure where to put down roots, just that we would put them down together. Seattle ended up being our destination because it was enough of an urban area for his taste, and enough of the Northwest for mine. Good choice.

Follow-Up...Me, part deux.

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Piobaireachd...huh?

Piobaireachd is ancient, classical bagpiping music. It's not the type of music that you would hear in a pub, or probably tap your foot to. It's the type of music that would make you cry and remember your Scottish ancestors...even if you have no Scottish ancestors, like me. Any lucky traveler who happens upon a piper playing Piobaireachd on a foggy Scottish hillside might think they've died and gone to heaven. Literally. It's very haunting.

Like much of jazz, Piobaireachd is a variation on a musical theme. It starts with a relatively simple melody line (the ground) and then adds new and more complex embellishments and variations with each repetition. The number of repetitions can go as high as 20 in some cases, which makes Piobaireachd pieces quite long, compared to other pipe tunes.

The word Piobaireachd means "piping music" in Scots Gaelic. The Gaelic term preferred by most pipers is Ceòl Mòr, which literally means "big music"...as opposed to Ceòl Beag (little music), which describes most tunes you may have heard played on the pipes. Piobaireachd is kind of a hard word to pronounce. It sounds something like peebrokd, with some fancy back of the throat noises going on.

I grew up as the stepdaughter of a McLeod. The MacCrimmons were hereditary pipers to the chief of Clan McLeod of Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye and were considered to be the preeminent practitioners of Piobaireachd (couldn't resist) in Scotland for many generations. There's even a great children's book all about the beginning of the MacCrimmon line of Pipers to the Chief. When I was young, my stepfather was the director of the Coeur d'Alene Summer School of Piping and Drumming, and Piobaireachd which was sponsored at the time by the Spokane Piobaireachd Society. I spent a part of most of my summers growing up listening to world class pipers and high quality Piobaireachd. I loved it and was marked indelibly by my experiences there.

All of this is the intro to the fact that my friend and bandmate Tyrone Heade just won the World Amateur Solo Piobaireachd competition in Scotland this past week!! It's no small feat, and we're quite proud of him!

Highland Fling Soap

I thought I'd use this blog also as a place to give more information and background on some of the soaps I make, ingredients that I use and projects I've been working on:

One of the first kinds of soap I started making (in the early 90s) was a GREAT smelling bar made with honey, oatmeal and beeswax. The beeswax is added because honey makes the soap really soft and hard to get out of the molds. Beeswax firms it up and contributes to its color and natural scent. The soap is a beautiful amber with little flecks of ground oatmeal (which I use a coffee grinder purchased at Value Village to make). I made and loved this soap for a number of years before I decided to start a soap business.

When I needed a label and a theme for it, something Scottish seemed like an obvious choice. I have strong associations with honey, oatmeal and Scotland...and bagpiping, of course. I've played the bagpipes for the past 27 years and am a founding member of the Elliott Bay Pipe Band here in Seattle (since 1992). The bagpiper on the label was a tribute to those long-time friends in the piping world. After a name change or two, I have finally settled on "Highland Fling Soap." Check it out!