Here is the happy couple (courtesy of Reuters - we weren't actually invited to the ceremony!) and they certainly do seem to be genuinely in love and enjoying every minute. Also, DD has been reading out amusing comments from Twitter, which added to our enjoyment.
This photo shows only a very small part of the city, which was where the Emperors of China lived with their court, including wives and concubines, and is absolutely huge! Once people were admitted to the city, few were able to leave, never seeing the outside walls, family or friends ever again. 
Here is DH walking on the Emperor's special road between the Temple of Earth and the Temple of Heaven. Only those of royal birth were originally allowed to use this route, and there were lower parallel routes for the rest of the court. 
The next day DH was at work, so I went on a tour of the Hutongs (the old part of Beijing with lots of narrow streets and old houses) by rickshaw. This was fascinating, as I had a lovely English-speaking guide called Nancy, who took me to sample different Chinese teas, as well as a visit to a family home. If you're ever in Beijing, I can recommend this tour wholeheartedly.
Here we all are at the top of this section - Patrick seems especially pleased to have made it!
I was advised that the best way to come down was to sit down, and not to stand up, as it was very steep. This proved to be good advice, and apart from the damage to the back of my jeans and my dignity, much easier than the more conventional way adopted by DH and Patrick!
Next stop was Shanghai, where a walk along the Bund, the promenade along the side of the river, is a must. On one side of the river are the 19th century buildings which housed offices and warehouses for the opium trade - you could think you were in any European city looking in that direction. On the other are all these ultra modern buildings including the Oriental Pearl Television Tower (the pointed tower on the left) which has lifts to the top and provides fabulous views of the whole city when the weather is clear.
The weather was pretty good that day, and from this level you can see the numbers of high rise buildings in Shanghai. It's a very modern and very lovely city. 
Last stop was Xi'an to see the Terracotta Army. Although I've seen lots of photos and films about this, there's nothing better than seeing them face to face, as it were. The numbers of warriors and the amount of work which had gone into them was absolutely mind-blowing. Seems a shame that the point of making them was for the emperor to take them with him into the afterlife, and it doesn't seem to have worked! 
While we were in Xi'an, we hired bicycles to ride round the (restored) city wall. Well, we actually hired one bicycle (it was a tandem) and this is the view I got while pedalling. DH's profile is stunning (of course!) but you can also see the width and height of the wall, and the length of it. The whole wall was 8 km long, and took us about 80 minutes to cycle - including a refreshment break! 
Bicycles are still popular in China, although most people travel by car, making the roads very congested. There are still some hardy types though, like this man who looks to be moving house, or at least moving wardrobe and bedding!
And finally, a little fabric. I didn't manage to buy any for myself (it was mainly silk, and any cottons were shirting fabrics for the local seamstresses and tailors to make shirts to measure). However, here is a beautiful Chinese robe to drool over. Here's to my next visit!
Interestingly, I went to the Bramble Patch, which is my nearest quilt shop, to add a couple of purple fat quarters to my stash for this project, and apart from the batiks there was literally only one purple fat quarter in the whole shop, and that was of grapes! I've obviously chosen a very unfashionable colour, which is just about par for the course! 
This one is gender neutral too, and it's amazing how the yellow border brings out all the yellow strips to make it very cheery.
The last one is streak of lightening, in pink - this one's not gender neutral! I'm going to take the finished quilts to show the ladies who made the blocks, and then they will be off to Project Linus. Maybe now I can get on with some of my own sewing!
Those half square triangles in the middle aren't accurate enough, so when I joined the triangles on the side, not only did I lose all the points, but the resultant block was too big. So what did I do? I trimmed it! How stupid was that! Now I have a block which is eight and a half inches square, but has very little else to recommend it! (I don't need to wonder why, instead of unpicking it, I'd trimmed it! We all know the answer to that question!) Back to the cutting board!
They were such a friendly group of ladies, and here they are all busy hand sewing and chatting. (The conversation ranged from the theatre, sports, burglary, the colour of our school underwear to male nudity! A good spread of topics! ) They all worked really hard, and in one morning achieved enough diagonal strippy blocks to make 3 cot quilts!
Here are the blocks laid out for one top, ready to be assembled and bordered. I was glad when lunchtime arrived, as I'd run out of Vilene foundations, and nearly run out of strips! We all enjoyed the morning, and they are keen to have another sewing day in the autumn. I'll look forward to it!
Much time has been spent by me making the costume for Oberon. 
Then I dyed some of the calico (I bought a whole 25 metre bolt) for the leaves which will be made into creepers to decorate the set. That was fun, and even more fun when I got people at the rehearsal to cut out some leaf shapes when they were waiting to go on! Crafty!
There has been sewing too. My teaching was a log cabin class, and I had to make some blocks up for samples. I had forgotten what such a versatile block this is, and have decided to make a quilt in this unusual pattern, which is in 'Quilts of Illusion' by Laura Fisher. She says it is a streak of lightening variation, and I suppose it is, when you focus on the dark zig-zags. I have just used darks and lights, and really like how it is coming along.
These hexagon blocks were joined together in the start of a quilt and then donated to Project Lnus. I rearranged some of the blocks to make the quilt into a rectangle, bravely cut through the edges to straighten them, bordered, layered and quilted. The fabrics are a bit 60s, but I think it makes a pretty Linus quilt.
Roll, roll, cotton boll has all its borders on, and since DD kindly took the papers out of the string blocks, I'm ready to layer it up. One of the best thing about this quilt is that I didn't have to buy a single piece of fabric to make it! All the fabric came out of my stash! How good is that! I have always liked Bonnie Hunter's designs, but I'm getting to like them more and more, and have started making leaders and enders to use up my scraps, which is very satisfying!
This quilt was made using other people's scraps. I was given a bag with lots of toning scraps in lime green (it looks yellow in this photo), black and white from the 'Authentic' range. I was able to use the scraps to make 9-patches, which have been alternated with black to make this very sophisticated Linus top. Now for some layering up!
