All Square

I offered to make a bed quilt for my son and his girlfriend for Christmas this year and showed them all sorts of different patterns that I'd have been happy to make. And what did they choose? Simple squares with a few appliquéd hearts! They liked a simple country look. Well, who am I to argue, so that's what I've made. Hundreds (480 to be exact) of squares in reds and blues, with a bit of white thrown in for good measure. I've decided to have this one long arm quilted, as it's so huge and I know I would make a bit of a mess of something that large if I tried to quilt it myself. I dropped it off at the shop yesterday and they've promised me that I'll get it back in time to finish the binding before Christmas.

Actually, I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out.

Scotland - Sunday

I've just realised that I forgot to publish this once I had finished writing it, so although it's a bit late here is the account of our Sunday in Scotland.

On the morning after the wedding we had a leisurely start, and then drove to Glasgow, about an hour's drive away. The weather was chilly, but dry, so after lunch we decided to take the open top bus tour of the city. It's an amazing place, much improved after a rather grim past. There are wonderful buildings, many museums and galleries and public gardens and it looks as if shopping would be good too, as we spotted many designer shops. Here are a few of the photographs I took from the top of the bus.

Has Dr Who landed in Glasgow?

The main square

Wonderful autumn colours.

The River Clyde

No, it's not the Darwin opera house!

After the bust tour we had a wander around - luckily most cities are now open for business on Sundays - and then returned to the airport for our flight home. We had quite a long wait, as our flight wasn't until 9.45, and then we drove home and collapsed into bed after a very pleasant though tiring weekend.

A dramatic day

What a day we had yesterday!

We woke to heavy snow, which hadn't been forecast, so was a great surprise. But Ruby and my younger son, who was staying with us for the weekend, were delighted. Alexander is 28 now, but still gets as excited by snow as he did when he was 8.

Shortly before nine o'clock there was a sudden power surge, and all the lights flared brightly. Then a few seconds later we started to hear pops and bangs around the house and various televisions and other things went bang, with sparks and smoke. It turned out that a power cable had come down and the power company advised us that we should turn off the mains fuse. 

We breakfasted on bread and butter and marmalade, instead of the cooked breakfast I had planned. Luckily we were able to boil the kettle up in our camper van and have hot drinks. 

We soon discovered that it was a live cable that had fallen. We realised that it was live because one end was in a puddle and a friend and her dog walked past, the dog went into the puddle and jumped a foot in the air! Luckily the dog was unharmed, though rather surprised ( I nearly wrote 'shocked' there, but that seemed to be a rather bad pun!). After hearing this the power company vehicles soon arrived. Apparently the freak snow storm had caused chaos in the area and many problems with electricity supplies.

Fortunately, we had booked a table for lunch in a nearby restaurant, so didn't have to have more bread and butter for lunch. 

The power wasn't put back on until about half past four, but when we started switching things on we still had major problems, so had to cut the electricity again until the problems were sorted out. We finally had power again at about six o'clock, so didn't have to resort to candles for long.

But the damage the power surge caused was amazing. We've lost two televisions, two DAB radios, the microwave, Christopher's beloved coffee machine as well as countless cables and light bulbs. The loss adjuster is coming today to see the list.

So,  a very dramatic Sunday.

Scotland - Saturday

On the Saturday morning of our stay  in Scotland we went for a drive in The Trossachs mountains, beautiful countryside and the autumnal colours were wonderful. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera so wasn't able to take any photographs - a good excuse to return to the area sometime in the future! The wedding was at three o'clock, and took place in the Village Hall which was right next to the loch and had stunning views. It was a lovely sunny day, though pretty chilly, and we were able to take lots of photographs outside.

The hall was decorated by the bride and groom and their families, with paper chains, chinese paper lanterns and paper pom-poms in bottles on the window sills, which later became table decorations. There were more paper pom-poms tied to the chairs down the centre aisle.

Number One Son, the best man, and his girlfriend. Can you see the little paper windmill he has in his button hole? The bride had made them for the men instead of giving them flower buttonhole decorations. Such a good idea at this time of year when flowers are so expensive, and fun too. Oliver gave an extremely funny best man speech a bit later on, after we had eaten.

My best man.

The bride and some of the family. I think the groom had left her at this point to go and organise something or other. I loved her dress, just dressy enough for a wedding, but not too dressy for a low cost, country wedding with very little pomp about it.

For the meal we were sat on a table with Oliver's girlfriend and some of the groom's school friends, so we were surrounded by young people, which was great fun as we remembered the two young men from Oliver and Douglas's schooldays.

In the evening there was dancing, including disco and Scottish dancing. We left quite late to walk back to our hotel, about a fifteen minute walk. Unfortunately we had forgotten to take torches and there was no street lighting, so we just had to hope for the best, hope that we didn't fall into the loch that run along side the road, or fall into the mud at the edges of the road as there were no pavements, or get run over. Luckily we got back to the hotel safe and sound.