Breaking news

City of Edinburgh Council has published a map detailing the proposed traffic diversions which may come into force during lengthy tramworks on York Place. A pdf is available in the file at the foot of this page.

Residents in Albany Street and Heriot Row will not be happy. Neither will those in Abercromby Place, not least because the Council cannot even get the name of their road right.

Say hello to Catherine Robb, whose new shop – Kathy's Knits – will open at 64a Broughton Street on Friday next week.

'Knitting is my lifelong passion, but in Edinburgh most smaller shops supplying wool have vanished, to be replaced by big chains and ordering over the internet. It's all become so impersonal.'

Kathy plans to reverse that trend, bringing a friendly touch and 30 years' experience to the new venture. As well as the chance to buy wool, knitting equipment and related paraphernalia, there will be time and space for customers to work, chat and exchange tips.

Canonmills residents have been left fuming after the weekend inundation. Here, former 'Stop the Chop!' campaigner Ani Rinchen Khandro tells the Spurtle why.

It gives us no pleasure to say 'We told you so!' to Edinburgh City Council. During the recent heavy rainfall, the so-called defences not only failed to protect property but actually contibuted to their flooding. This is hardly surprising for the following reasons:

Standing in front of Dylan Lisle's new paintings at the Union Gallery, it is difficult sometimes to get past a kind of jaw-gaping admiration for his technique.

Lisle deploys the methods of past masters – for example, 'Vermeer and Van Eyck’s monochromatic underpainting and glazing, Caravaggio’s complex layering and the Venetian technique further developed by Titian' – to render his chiaoroscuro-lit (mostly female) figures and draperies in exquisite detail, capturing skin tones, fur, feather and fabric textures with more than photographic accuracy.

Heavy rain has again caused flooding along the Water of Leith, although so far not on the same scale as in April 2002. Basements on Warriston Crescent and in the Stockbridge Colonies have been affected.

Eccentri:city – a showcase of contemporary jewellery – launches next week at Whitespace Gallery on Gayfield Square. All the objects are inspired by Edinburgh.

Readers may reasonably expect deeply pitted pieces filling with rainwater and brown sauce, but they will be pleasantly surprised.

Truly astonishing quantities of water fell from the sky and dropped on Broughton yesterday.

The heavens opened at about 6.15pm, and a six-inch-deep pool soon formed behind the diversion barriers on York Place. A medium-sized ocean found its way into the tram-holes beyond, but another then cascaded along Broughton Street at high speed, resulting in the bizarre spectacle of pedestrians and motorists hydroplaning downhill towards London Street.

Anyone else beginning to tire of Broughton's summer damps?

We think we've discovered the perfect antidote. Home and Abroad is an exhibition of sunshine-infused works by husband and wife Joe and Gaye Broadley, currently showing in the Bon Papillon gallery on Howe Street.

Joe is largely self-taught but studied part time at the Glasgow School of Art.

In an ideal world of transparent government in which the powers that be were only too willing to share and explain the facts and figures behind their decisions, we wouldn't need a Freedom of Information Act.

However, as Edinburgh citizens have learned to their cost in recent years, this is far from being an ideal world.

Under the Act's terms, everyone has a legal right to see information from Scottish public authorities.

Hot July brings cooling showers, which is good news for anyone hoping for eternal monsoon season in Spurtleshire. If you close your eyes and imagine really hard, you can pretend you’re in Sri Lanka. (Because they have monsoon season there. Come on, you could have worked that out from the context).
 
If, on the other hand, you’d rather go oot, there will now follow a not particularly helpful list of things to do and places to go this month. Hold on tight.