Tapestry often seems banished to a no man's land between art, craft and design. But with the opening of a stunning new creative centre and a home for Dovecot – which houses Scotland's Dovecot Studios of tapestry weavers and rug tufters – this ancient art is coming out of the shadows. The premises, which opened last week, combine a centre for craft and design allied to a working studio making it the world's top place for tapestry. This gallery and workspace, created out of the shell of Edinburgh's Infirmary Street Baths, looks set to create quite a splash.

Carpetright added its name to the growing list of retailers reporting deepening gloom on the high street, warning yesterday that its sales have fallen by more than 15 per cent in the UK and Ireland during the past three months.

Lord Harris, the chairman and chief executive of Carpetright, warned that next year would be one of the toughest in his 50-year career, although he forecast that the carpet retailer's fortunes would improve in the second half of 2009.

Like Carole King, DeShannon bridged the Tin Pan Alley model of post-war pro songwriting and the singer-songwriter culture that superseded it: she was a technical songwriter who could come out front and sing.

Today I want to turn my attention to the urgent question of what to do with all those things around the home that have reached the end of their useful life but which you haven't got the heart to throw away.

Sales at John Lewis took a hit last week, providing further evidence of a slowdown on the high street as consumers tighten their belts.

When Sam Duckworth – better known as Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. – sidled, suited and booted, on to this Brighton stage, it was for the first time in 11 months. Duckworth has been busy writing and recording his new album, Searching for the Hows and Whys, and putting the legwork in to his own fledgling recording company, Mannequin Republic. The lack of recent live performances proved a stumbling block for Duckworth, as he scrabbled his way through the first few songs of his UK tour.

Another week, another tragic story about Brave Kylie. No, not the cancer, which is firmly in remission, and it is nothing to do with mean, malingering ex-boyfriends either.

The media's strained and ambivalent relationship with Gerry and Kate McCann was highlighted again last week by the reaction to news that they were in talks about turning the story of their daughter's disappearance into a film.

A picture has a frame. I don't mean the piece of plain or decorative woodwork that's put around it, sometimes upstaging it with dazzling gilding, and often casting an inch-thick band of dark shadow right across its top. I mean simply the picture's edge or edges, where it comes to a stop, cuts off. These outer limits are usually straight, usually four in number and usually in a rectangle.