Colours

I've spent quite a lot of time this week making quilts for the Unbloggable grandchildren, with the hope that these might be finished by Christmas. They did ask for quilts, though I wouldn't be surprised if they've forgotten! It's not a thing one can do quickly, or at least, I can't. One day we went for a walk by the river and (you'll have to take my word for it) a kingfisher darted under the bridge we were standing on and vanished with a streak of shining turquoise down river. And as we stood there, it flashed back again and up in the other direction. This is the river. Naturally I didn't manage to photograph the kingfisher. They're fast! Anyway, it was beautiful. 

The grandchildren have been guising, or as non-Scots call it, trick or treating. Daughter 2 made a broomstick for her little one. Unaccountably, it didn't fly, so had to go home by bike. 

We went to Glasgow to have lunch with friends in the original Charles Rennie Mackintosh Willow Tearooms, refurbished in recent years. I do love this Glasgow-style turn-of-the-century archiecture. 

Here's the restaurant

and here's one of its windows. 

Years ago, the daughters and I fell in love with George Walton, a contemporary of Rennie Mackintosh, who like him was an architect and designer who would design not only the building but the stained glass windows and the door handles and furniture and indeed everything he was allowed to. The above is a window in the coach house of The Leys, a Walton house in Elstree, near London. I hope the coachmen appreciated it. I liked it so much that Daughter 1 adapted the design and we got this made for our front door, below. I really love it. If we ever move, I shall have to take it with me or get it copied or something. Maybe if the new owners were to swear on their granny's ashes not to get a plastic door and throw away my (not actually) Walton panel, I might be persuaded to leave it. 

Sorry Walton, I hope you don't mind the plagiarism. 

And the garden blooms on because we've had no frost yet. 

It's full of cosmos - so much pink daisiness. 

And allysum and begonias and fuchsias. 

But on the walk past the golf course, autumn is definitely here. 

Mr L has just come back from a rugby match at Murrayfield. Look who was sitting quite near him. Yes, it's HRH. She's a patron of Scottish Rugby Union and attends most of their matches. Rather her than me, but she's very faithful. She's by quite a long way our hardest-working Royal in terms of number of official engagements.