Rainbows and sun

Well, at last the rainbow quilt is finished. I can claim no credit for the design, which was made up by someone much cleverer than I. But sadly I don't know who this was. The idea just came from a random photo on the internet, which I slavishly copied using fabrics that I (mainly) had. I did have to acquire some of the low volume ones, and Thimbleanna, my quilting guru, very kindly gave me some of these. 

It's really very simple compared to some of the wonderful creations one sees on the internet, but I'm not an ambitious quilter. And I only do some fairly basic hand quilting, but I enjoy this. Machine quilting can be lovely, but fiddling around with needle and thread while watching television is more my thing. 

I had to go against my principles to include orange (don't like orange) but rainbows do contain orange, so I put some in. Grudgingly. I much prefer blues and greens. It fits a single bed, and annoyingly, when it's put on a bed, the orange is quite prominent - just at the bend of the pillow. Ho hum. 

It's for Littlest Granddaughter. If she gets fed up of the rainbow colours she can always turn it over. 

It's the last day of the school holidays here and we went with the Edinburgh Two and their dad to the Botanics for a walk and lunch. It was a beautiful day but coooooold. 

This is how high the sun gets at midday here in mid-winter. Not very high! We had a lovely time with the family, though. So lucky to have them here. 
 

How to spend lots of time

I haven't really

been doing much

except cutting up fabric (and tidying the garden a bit).

After cutting the fabric up, I've been sewing it together differently.

I don't like orange at all - it makes me feel slightly ill -

but you have to have it in a rainbow. Luckily I've finished the orange stripe and am now on to the yellow one. 

Such a waste of time. But such fun. And I do like having something to show for my days. Something, I suppose, to leave behind.

I didn't invent the pattern, but am copying it from a photograph that I found somewhere, a couple of years ago maybe. Thank you to the clever designer; I wish I could give you credit. 

Bits and pieces

It's been a very un-newsworthy ten days of coughing (but not Covid), during which we've done nothing much except (in my case) finish Medium Granddaughter's dragon quilt. It's very bright and a bit higgledy-piggledy and not at all adventurous in any technical way, but was nice and easy to make. 

I carefully used up more or less all the dragon fabric I'd bought - the big rainbow dragons, the much smaller but also multi-coloured ones and the dark blue - and had fun putting in some other favourite materials, quilting lots of hearts and such like. And then Big Granddaughter said she wanted a dragon quilt too so I had to get some more dragon fabric to make hers, next year. 

For the back, I used bits and pieces. So thrifty... .

And after we'd started coughing a lot less, we had a flying visit from Daughter 2 and a friend this weekend, and also Son and family. Here he is, having transmogrified from Dr D to Mr Criminalsson, a change which sees him pursued round the garden by Superwoman and Santa, ie his son and his nephew, who are policemen. They catch him; he escapes; they chase him again. It's a simple game but hey, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel about something similar. 

I was intrigued by what Frances said in a comment about English "streets" being different from English "roads". I don't live in England, but I don't think they are. (Are they?) One can live on either. I suppose the big ones - motorways and such - are always roads rather than streets, but roads can also be small. I think both tend to be a bit bigger than those called Close, Gardens, View, Terrace, Avenue... but not necessarily. And you would probably talk about "the main road" in a town and "the main street" in a village, so I suppose that would be because of their size. But one could have houses on either. 

 

Colours

It's been funny weather recently: either beautiful sunshine or rain, often alternating in quick succession or indeed both happening at the same time. I suppose perhaps it's just that it's autumn. 

We walked down to the local park one day recently and saw a display of different apple varieties. It was surprisingly interesting. They all had notices saying when they were developed and by whom. One of these said that its apple had been around since 1200. Really? I can't remember what it was called, but don't recall anything in, say, Chaucer, about any named varieties of apple. I'm intrigued to know where the records for this apple are, but I suppose the information must have come from somewhere. Or maybe it was a typo. The others tended to be from the 1800s or in some cases, the 16- or 1700s. Anyway, the room smelt wonderful - I'd never before thought of apples as being particularly fragrant. 

I'm making two quilts at once - quilting a dragon one for Medium Granddaughter and just beginning to sew together a dinosaur/vehicle one for Small Grandson (both at their request). I decided just to do simple squares for him because he's only 3, and won't care, but having cut out the nine-patches in a variety of fabrics, decided that it was all too busy and recut them in self-colours, or solids, as it turns out that Americans call them. So I have a lot of four and a half inch squares left over. 

I think I've fiddled with it since this picture, but I like it much better. 

Talking of liking things better, I had a little revelation recently. When Son went to New Zealand about 15 years ago, he kindly brought me a bit of blue glass, which has sat in the sitting room since then. I was dusting it the other day and noticed that it had a little signature on the top. Funny, I thought - such things are usually signed on the bottom. Experimentally, I turned it over. 

Oh! 

Biggest Granddaughter (9) painted my portrait the other day. I like my cheery smile and slim figure (if only). At the top, she drew some objects that she associates with me, which I thought rather sweet. These include a rainbow, many cups of hot beverages, my handbag, patchwork, biscuits (they don't get biscuits at home, oops), flowers, a watering can, and the magic pot. This last is a little wooden canister that sometimes has chocolate in it for visiting grandchildren. They call it "the magic pot" and fantasise that the magic pot fairy fills it up. You can also see this fairy illustrated. 

Autumn is happening at the Botanics too. Such yellow rudbeckia.

Such pink nerines. 

Such pretty foliage.