Hogmanay

Our wedding anniversary was on the 27th (that was a fast 46 years; oh dear) and we took ourselves to the Botanics. For the first time ever, we got the cafe to ourselves. Where was everyone else?

The weather was dull, but perfectly pleasant. I love the Botanics in any weather.

Then the Edinburgh family came home from Son-in-Law's family down south. We collected them at the station. Edinburgh certainly has a lot of lights at this time of year.

The next day we gave the children their presents. Here's Big Grandson poring over a book about buses.

Yesterday, I took them to the local trampoline centre. They bounced.

Biggest Granddaughter also did this death-defying trapeze thing. She's very brave and also tries hard to do gymnastics, despite (I fear) not being blessed with the right genes.

Big Grandson watched. (He has the family cautious genes.) "I'm certainly not going to do that," he said. Wisely. 

I'm between quilts at the moment - I'm about to do one for a friend and she's coming down soon to discuss fabrics - so have been fiddling around during these quiet days, using up odd scraps of fabric. So thrifty: it's not as if I have a (small) cupboardful of unused material or anything... . But it's fun - not sure where I'm going with it yet.

My heart goes out to all my Australian bloggy friends - how terrible and terrifying these fires are! I hope you and yours are all safe.

And best wishes to all for 2020. The world needs to pull its socks up, I feel. Let's hope for better things soon.

(And while you're at it, world, please stop saying "Auld Lang Zyne". It's "ssyne"-  with an s-. It's just a variation of  "since". Not "zince". This is beginning to drive me sliiiiiightly mad.)

Sewing wonky items

Littlest Granddaughter likes putting things over her wrist (and round her neck - such as electrical cables) so I decided to make her a tiny little lined tote bag to carry around on her wrist. And here it is. I post it not because it's a miracle of craftswomanship - which it certainly isn't - but just because I'm surprised at my (slightly wonky) achievement. I did use to make things when I was younger - not clothes (much) but loose covers for the odd chair, drawstring bags for nursery shoes and so on. And I do make curtains and cushion covers, though haven't done this much in recent years. But I'd sort of forgotten that I used to like doing such things. Quilting has reminded me and it's down to Thimbleanna, who exerted gentle but firm persuasion to get me started on that - thank you, Anna!

And of course Mr Google helps a lot nowadays.

As usual, we had the Edinburgh grandchildren this afternoon.

As usual, they were very busy.

We're so lucky. They're now seven and five - years which have gone in a flash. In the same time again, they'll be fourteen and twelve and getting all grown up. I need to get in lots of cuddles before they're too sophisticated to want to come to Granny's on their school half-day!

Visiting Baby M

I've been up staying with Son and Daughter-in-Law, assisting with the baby so that they could catch up on some sleep. She is, naturally, very adorable. Here she is with the cot quilt that I made two years ago in the hope that one day, a suitable recipient would come along.

Daughter 2 came to visit and presented Baby M with the blanket she's been working on.

Isn't it nice?

Baby M's big sisters seem remarkably unperturbed.

The sun shone on us.

Then I came home and Grandson drew a picture of me. "I need white chalk for your hair, Granny." Gee, thanks, Grandson. I like to think that my hair is grey with brown bits, but I suppose chalk doesn't come in that colour. "One of your hands is rubbing your tummy." Yes, I can see that.


How I miss Baby M, with her so-soft little cheeks, big puzzled dark blue eyes, quiet snuffles and questing mouth. I'm so sad that she's far away. But I missed the others when I was up there with her. And yes, I do know that I'm lucky to have grandchildren at all.

The good and the bad

It's been an eventful and not altogether wonderful week. However, on Wednesday we took the little ones to the beach. I don't know how many visitors to Edinburgh realise that we're a seaside city. We ourselves went to Barcelona for four days without ever seeing their seaside.

They had a lovely time. It's amazing what a difference 19 months makes to their artistic ability.

The face on the left represents Grandson's mum; he's on the right. She's sad because "it's not her birthday for a long time. I'm happy because my birthday is very soon". I think he wanted to make sure we weren't forgetting... .

The tide was quite far out, though coming in - Cramond Island, peeping out from behind the trees, is not an island only at low tide. You can see it at low tide in the first picture - it's on the horizon in the middle. From time to time, people walk out to it and then get stuck there when the tide comes in. I'd like to point out that the stout lady in white isn't me.

And then on Thursday, there was this. The Scotsman took a gamble on the result and got it wrong. There is much consternation among everyone we know. Most Scottish people voted to remain in the EU. Now the Scottish Parliament has decided on another referendum for Scottish independence because Scots are being forced out of the EU by the English vote. I can hardly bear this.


I really don't think that complicated things ought to be decided by referendums (referenda, I suppose). Most people, and I include myself, don't know enough to make a sensible decision. Goodness me, those who're supposedly experts disagreed about the right answers, so what hope do the rest of us have?

However, to return to trivialities, I've finished the quilt that I'm about to give to my piano teacher as a thank you present. She might prefer a bunch of flowers... .

After four and a half years of lessons, I've decided to give up - not playing, just lessons. I quite enjoy stumbling through the pieces in the privacy of my own sitting room and feel that I've used up my quota of saying "I can play this at home!" as I mess my latest tune up in front of her. Also, I keep having to miss lessons because we tend to go away in term time rather than the school holidays, which are also piano holidays.

She's absolutely lovely and very encouraging and I shall miss her. So I made her this quilt, which is very simple (like my piano playing) and yet required quite a lot of work (like my piano playing). I'm ashamed to say that the only fabric that I had to buy specially was the one with the treble clefs on it. All the rest was from my stash and it didn't make a noticeable dent in it. It's all your fault, Thimbleanna!

This was the quilt I made for Daughter 2 last year. You can see the resemblance - mainly because quite a few of the fabrics are the same.

And, for further comfort, the garden is looking very flowery.

Big sigh. Let's hope everything isn't going to be as bad as everyone predicts.

Aesthetics

It was a beautiful day yesterday and we went up town to see the Arthur Melville exhibition. It was excellent. Here's a photo of Princes Street Gardens, just beside the gallery, with the Castle lurking behind a tree. Very Edinburghish.

And here's the Scott Monument - Gothic and somewhat impractical, but ornamental in its way.

And here's the shadow cast by the said Scott Monument on a reasonably nice elderly building, which fits in quite well with the rest of Edinburgh's architecture.

But look at the building behind it, which is nearing completion.

Here it is from the opposite direction. In the background you can see the pleasantly wiggly, domey, spirey skyline of the Old Town. Now, call me an old fuddy-duddy but how on earth did anyone grant planning permission for that lump of glass in this context??? - just round the corner from Edinburgh's main street.

I tell you, when I rule the world there will be some changes. Granted, glass buildings in historic cities are not the world's biggest problem by a long way. But - hmm.

More pleasingly (and you have to concentrate on the pleasing things sometimes or you would despair) the hyacinths that Daughter 2 gave me at Christmas time are opening beautifully.

And I've cut out 430 pieces of fabric to make my next quilt top. Yes, a perfectly sensible thing to do. Or at least a harmless one.

Various ways of spending time

This is one of our favourite places in Norfolk - Burnham Market. We always visit it when we're staying with my aunt. One of its attractions is the second-hand bookshop, which always has lots of the kind of books that I enjoy: memoirs and diaries and letters of the sort that never get into major bookshops. Then I have several happy weeks of reading musty volumes by people that no one's ever heard of.

It's also a pretty little place.

On a slightly different topic: colouring books for adults seem to be everywhere nowadays. I cannot imagine being so bored that I would want to spend time with one of these. And a friend at choir tonight was saying that she had a sore neck because she'd spent so long crouched over a difficult jigsaw. I've never seen the attraction of jigsaws.

But Mr L and I do spend part of most days doing cryptic crosswords. And cutting up perfectly good pieces of fabric to sew them together again can't exactly be described as a sensible use of time.

But then there are the grandchildren. It's not a waste of time to go to the playpark with them.

 

Even though they won't remember a thing about it in future years.  

Come back, Anna!

 

 

Anna - http://www.thimbleanna.com/ - very kindly brought me these fabrics to add to my stash. I've always loved the combination of blue and mushroom - she must be psychic. They were all nicely tied up but I washed them so that they wouldn't shrink any more (because that's what Anna does and I always try to follow her instructions) and they're now slightly less neat than they were when she presented them. Anna is a crafting genius and makes quilts of great beauty, unlike the beginner's things that I produce.

 

 

She also gave me this Anna-made little pouch for keeping sewing-related items in. Isn't it lovely?

The fabric is a map of New York.

And some genuine sewing-related items to put in it.

Thanks so much, Anna!

I needed her over the last couple of days but she'd heartlessly gone back to the US. I've been putting the binding on the quilt that I've been doing on and off for most of the year (not that it's complicated; just that I'm slow) and while the previous bindings have gone on without much difficulty, this one required a bit of unpicking once sewn on because the quilt was slightly puckered where I'd made the final join in the binding. This was because the final join was a tiny bit inaccurate, so that the binding was fractionally shorter than the quilt. It was barely noticeable, but if you've spent many hours cutting up, sewing together and then hand-quilting, you don't want to be forever annoyed by puckers. Then once I'd unpicked that bit of binding, made it slightly longer and done the final join again, the join itself threatened to be a bit wonky. Anyway, after much fiddling, I've beaten it into submission. Is this a good use of my dwindling number of years, I ask myself?

When I've finished hand-sewing the binding on to the back, a peaceful task which even I can't mess up... I hope... the annoyance will probably have receded.

I shall never understand how Lynley  of http://lynleyquilts.blogspot.co.uk/ can make a new quilt every weekend, more or less. She must be superhuman.