Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
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knittedpixel.bsky.social
Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
@knittedpixel.bsky.social
Scottish designer, creator & dreamer. Insatiably curious human being. Typography obsessed. Things I 💜: music, exploring creativity, photography, books, travel, culture & art.

I sometimes write stuff here: https://catmcl.substack.com/
Pinned
I wrote this essay primarily on the Great Tapestry of Scotland, but it also reads as a potted history of Scots, our literature, arts & culture, and contributions to science and industry, amongst other things!

I also embroidered the 🦄 - our national animal!

Enjoy: open.substack.com/pub/catmcl/p...
Making History
The story of Scotland in stitches
open.substack.com
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Overnight, he crept to the window with a silver fingertip and a pocket full of old spells, pressing fern-fronds and feathered leaves into the glass like a secret blessing. Each crystal etching, a rune - winter is here.

#BlueSkyArtShow #Cold
#WeekCforCloseUp
#Abstractia
#PhotographersOfBlueSky
January 24, 2026 at 11:44 PM
The #BlueSkyArtShow theme today is #Cold ❄️ so here’s a wintery scene from a couple of years ago.

#Galashiels #Scotland #Snow
January 24, 2026 at 12:57 PM
The story of a long-lost Rabbie Burns portrait - just in time for Burns Night!

Brings back fond memories of “babysitting” some of Raeburn’s most famous paintings during my time working at the National Galleries of Scotland. 💙

youtu.be/StBuAumI-es?...

#RobertBurns #HenryRaeburn
The Lost Portrait of Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn
YouTube video by Blackie House Library and Museum
youtu.be
January 23, 2026 at 8:37 PM
I have never visited India (yet!) but Yash Sheth’s atmospheric photographs of the monsoon season in Mumbai really bring it to life. ☔️

wepresent.wetransfer.com/stories/yash...

#India #photography #culture #monsoon
WePresent | Yash Sheth photographs monsoon season on Mumbai’s streets
Photographer Yash Sheth has spent five years capturing monsoon season on the streets and grasslands of Mumbai
wepresent.wetransfer.com
January 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM
One very lovely small copper butterfly, found while walking around Thornielee Forest in the Scottish Borders. 🦋 (Thankfully I had my trusty Canon DSLR with me!)

#BlueskyArtShow #one
January 17, 2026 at 2:35 PM
I love this. I have lived through a lot to get them, and actually kinda love them anyway. 🩶

#GreyHairDontCare
January 15, 2026 at 11:42 PM
Late-night #Bloomscrolling. Working on a gift for someone who taught me many moons ago when I lived in Berlin and went to school in Potsdam. 🌹

#TraditionalArt #Botanical #Rose #FlowerDrawing
January 12, 2026 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Ready to push your chair back and have a little boogie? I thought so 😎
Posted before😉.. The beautiful #Birds at #SuffolkOwls and their version of: 📷💚✨
🎶🦉 Chuck Berry 🪶🎸🎶
🎶💃🏻’You Never Can Tell’🦉🕺🏻🎶
#Owls #Nature #Photography #EastCoastKin
January 12, 2026 at 10:01 PM
@manekinekohub.bsky.social I think these ones mainly came from Hong Kong, as my dad spent time living & working there 😊

#ManekiNeko
January 10, 2026 at 9:31 PM
I always enjoy playing with colour. This is a detail of a meditative painting I made back in 2021. Definitely want to make more art this year!

#Vibrant #BlueskyArtShow #Painting #AbstractArt #MakeArtNotWar
January 10, 2026 at 5:03 PM
I loved this #vibrant splash of light at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh.

#BlueskyArtShow
January 10, 2026 at 10:37 AM
Sharing these beauties again 😍

#BlueskyArtShow #vibrant #Bloomscrolling
Another #vibrant offering for the #BlueskyArtShow - saw some absolutely stunning peonies at Priorwood Gardens near Melrose Abbey today. 🌸

#BloomScrolling #PeonySeason #Flowers #ScottishBorders
January 10, 2026 at 1:56 AM
How’s this for #ThickTrunkTuesday?! 🪾

A glorious sequoia, or giant redwood tree, one of a few that stand guard at the entrance to a local woodland here in the Scottish Borders. (I like to visit them regularly and pay my respects 💚)

#Arboreal #Tree #Scotland
January 6, 2026 at 10:31 PM
Happy new year! I hope 2026 is kind to you all.

I went for a brief Ne’erday walk and found some flowering quince - proof that even in the dark days of winter, there are little glimmers of hope if you look out for them. 🌺

#Bloomscrolling #Blossom #WinterWalk
January 1, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
That's the bells!!
A very happy New year to all of you from me in Scotland. May 2026 bring great things to you. Lang may yer lum reek.
This is an oil pastel painting of Edinburgh Castle.

#HappyNewYear #Scotland #EdinburghCastle #Painting #OilPastel #Art
January 1, 2026 at 12:01 AM
Betwixt one year and the next. A strange, yet oddly familiar, liminal space.

#Edinburgh #Scotland #FromWhereIStood #LiminalSpaces
December 31, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
December 29, 2025 at 7:07 AM
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains.

Hole’s “Live Through This” remains one of my favourite records of the 90s. 💟
December 28, 2025 at 3:38 PM
#BlueskyArtShow #Holiday

A little red cardinal has decided to perch on my tree. 🐦‍🔥
December 27, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Those we love don’t go away they walk beside us every day.
Unseen, unheard but always near.
Still loved, still missed and very dear.

This can be such a hard time of year.
A huge hug to you if you need it, whatever the reason.
December 27, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Tonight’s Christmas Eve moon with a favourite unicorn standing atop the Mercat Cross on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

Making this a Moonicorn - see, when you have a mythical beast as Scotland’s national animal we can make up all kinds of shit.

May Christmas be full of love peace smiles & happy memories.
December 24, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Poem of mine published in the latest Christmas / winter anthology from @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social
www.blackboughpoetry.com/news
December 24, 2025 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
December 24, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Cat McLaughlin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️
Remembering that time the Ross Fountain froze

#Edinburgh @edinburghcastle.bsky.social
December 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM