Thrilled and not so thrilled

Saturday was Edinburgh Doors Open Day and Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law 1 took Grandson to the bus garage. They saw around it  and got a ride on a vintage bus. Grandson was very happy. He was even happier that the bus company was selling off old bus stops - or at least the signs from the tops of bus stops. Son-in-Law 1 bought one for him without realising that Nanny and Gramps from Worcester, who were visiting, had also bought one. So Grandson now has two (different) bus stop tops and he is thrilled.

He made signs for himself, to transform himself into buses of various numbers, and now conducts bus rides round the house, ideally with passengers.

He also created other bus stop signs to go along his routes. In this case he seems to have written some of the information backwards.


 We had Daughter 2 for the weekend and Son, Daughter-in-Law and Baby Granddaughter M for Saturday overnight, so everyone else came over and Grandson and Granddaughter L met their new cousin, which was lovely.

Then on Sunday afternoon, Mr L, Daughter 2 and I went to the Botanics, where autumn appears to have started.

And since then I've been cutting out a steam train quilt for Mr L. (This isn't the final arrangement.) I'd been watching a video of Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt company, in which she demonstrated a "really quick and easy" method of making four-patch squares, so decided to try this. Alas, Jenny's idea of speed and ease isn't exactly the same as mine. It's a very clever idea, which would never have occurred to me (though I'm sure proper quilters do it all the time). You sew two big squares together at the left and right edges, with the fronts of the fabrics facing each other; cut them down the middle vertically; and then open the bits out, sew them together sideways and cut them in half vertically again, resulting in your four-patch square. Easy. Hmm. Easy if you're Jenny. If you're me... well, let's say that it allows you to make quite big mistakes with something you've laboured over for quite a while, and thus to waste quite a bit of fabric. These four-patches look all right from a distance but two of them are mysteriously slightly too small and I think I'll have to recut them. I'll just do it the slow but safer way this time. We live and learn.

(Thank you, by the way, to the non-blog-owners who've been leaving nice comments. They are much appreciated. If you had a blog, I would visit it and say hello.)