Yesterday was an unusual Saturday for me - I went to a felt flower-making workshop. In 6 hours we made 20 felt flowers of no known species to be glued around fairy lights. The six hours weren't quite enough so I have to go back Monday to glue mine on but I'm quite happy with the results of my labours. Everybody produced something different - one idea, one teacher, five idiosyncratic outcomes. Remarkable. To be surrounded by all the colour and creativity was heady excitement enough, but it was very satisfying to feel that I had really got something to take home and enjoy, that I hadn't just made a complete mess of it as I feared I might. Unlike the last felt workshop that I did some years back this was much more gentle and manageable for a dodgy back and very dodgy lungs. Still it was quite intensive and I left with renewed respect for the mother-daughter team who make all the glorious felt hats, scarves, bags, brooches, ear-rings, wall-hangings, etc. etc. on sale. They start always from scratch - once they even died their own wool but now they have less time they buy in ready dyed hanks in colours of their own choosing. No felting machines here, no using industrial felt for bases, the process is always the same: lay out the strands of wool on bubble wrap in the chosen shape, wet, roll, insert plastic webbing (the stuff that is used by scaffolding firms to collect debris) roll some more, reverse, roll some more, soap, fidget it about with the hands, begin the fulling process by shaping, washing, drying. When I did it last time we were working on big pieces and using those bamboo window blinds rather than meshing. I couldn't manage that nowadays! The weather is wild and can be everything within the space of and hour, sun wind, rain, sleet, warm, chill. It was very pretty when I first arrived at Logie Steading - the photos don't do it justice.

Snow! The gloriously dry, warm, sunny weather disappeared in a gust of wind yesterday bringing in sleet and dark grey skies. It had to happen. I like proper seasons. At least I try to!

Stir-up Sunday (or should it have been Saturday for the Wee Free observers of the Sabbath?) just passed and dutifully I made the four big fruit cakes expected by the various branches of the family. I forgot to take the cake's photos before I doused them in brandy and swaddled them in greaseproof and tinfoil to sit in the garage (coolest place and carless) until required. It isn't a chore once I get going - with care I can use the same lining for all four cakes - but I'm still wondering when I can pass the baton to a daughter. Sophie is the most likely candidate. She likes cooking. Chloe doesn't. Sophie is a cook after my grandmother's heart, rarely following any recipes but going by instinct and throwing in the ingredients she's seen a television cook using without too much worry over quantities. It seems to work. She makes the best apple crumble I've eaten, much better than my own.

This weekend it the turn of the puds and copious steam throughout the house. There will be more of us together to eat the main one this year so I'm planning to make the usual recipe then add a supplement, Mrs.Beaton's Figgy Pudding which doesn't have to be made before Christmas eve. There will have to be a trifle too, for Iain. There will be too much. I always go over the top and do too much. I should have been a Victorian cook. Maybe I was.

A friend did one of those Arvon writing course and came away determined to write her autobiography, mainly for her own benefit and as a sort of therapy. I was just embarking on a rehash of mine having lost one version to the last computer crash. We decided to have a weekly meeting to goad each other on. I hardly need goading because I can write so much at a sitting - verbal diarrhoea really - but the energy has gone out of mine because I've done it before so I thought it might help. What it did, unfortunately, was to halt me in my tracks. Her life has been so much more interesting than mine, besides which she has an aunt, alive at 101, who has been able to give her the most eloquent cameos of the life of their family before during and after the wars, including the birth of my friend's father. She even remembers what the weather was like! I have nothing like this. To make matters worse I've been reading Isabel Allende, 'Paula' which is often autobiographical. Allende's writing is so rich and saturated with her colourful Chilean upbringing that I'd almost decided I'm too bored by my own
unadventurous childhood in a safe English village to continue. Then today I read in the Inde that Diane Keaton's mother said 'Every living person should be forced to write an autobiography.... too go back..... ' so I am going to press on and try not to fall asleep. Another piece of good advice found in an Arvon publication is from Alan Bennett - don't start at the beginning start with a time that interests you and let the rest emerge around that. Words to that effect.

Apart from these activities I am now entering the panic-about-Christmas-presents phase when I overspend hopelessly because I'm rubbish at spotting the perfect gift for people.....

Well the new format hasn't gone away so I may as well get used to it. I could look out for the options as suggested by Chillside but for today I'm not bothering because I have enough complications with a home hub that is playing up. I can only take so much jiggling about with technology at any one time! Not much to say at present anyway! Just dropped in to say this... and to complain about the number of Christmas cakes still to be baked. I'll be OK once I get going.

Well either the blogspot has gone mad or I have. It's all changed and I'm not reassured at all. Nothing much happening in my world anyway but I had a Thought or two to share with the outer world. All have vanished in the confusion. The weather is so good that that is confusing too. This time last year we were already ankle deep in snow.

Grandson is home with a gastric episode. We hope it isn't catching as it hasn't been the 24hr variety, more 75hrs. I think I'm going to stop pretending I have anything worth saying and see if this works.

The shop has been selling out of oat bran since Kate Middleton got thin for her wedding by following the Dukan diet. What I didn't know, but do now a friend has informed me, is that essences of all the foods banned on the regime are available so one need never yearn in vain for cheese, or chocolate, or fruit because the flavour is available. To those like me who self medicate with food, and flavour is what it's all about, it now makes perfect sense. Nothing can quite convince me that I wouldn't miss a nice bowl of sloppy polenta of a chilly evening but I suppose there has to be some self sacrifice involved.

I shan't be doing the diet, too expensive and I really cow
Don't cut out fruit -seems daft- but yoga, oat bran porridge with blueberries for breakfast, plus some costly slimming pills loaded with seaweed and pomegranate oil have finally begun to make a difference. Mainly it's the yoga I think, but I keep up the pills.

I don't look slimmer but I do feel better. The moment I started to feel less lumpish and sluggish I also found I didn't want to eat so much!

Really it's as well to sidestep the NHS or at least do what one can without them. I heard today of a chap who tried to top himself over the weekend. Luckily he botched the job and was admitted to hospital overnight but released on the morning with no follow-up suggested because a psychiatrist had had a quick word with him and declared him not to be suicidal!

I'm still finding my way around the new toy. Nice autumn weather here and some outings for me, the most notable being a trip to g'son's school for a day of talks put on by the Scottish Opera, a sort of show-and-tell about the staging of the Barber of Seville which was in Inverness last week. The highlight of this event was the 'cover' (opera term for understudy I learned) who came in to sing an aria from the BofS. A large girl with poor dress sense was what my friend and I muttered when we first saw her - but that was before she started to sing. Wow! It wasn't a large room and she nearly shot us all out of the windows. I love volume! She was also jolly, with the loudest laugh I have ever heard. Her encore piece was from Wagner - 'Wagner lite' she called it, not Valkyrie stuff, but still lightbulb-smashing stuff. Not a soprano luckily so not nerve shattering; mezzo soprano I suppose. I'm not a fan of opera, just went along because it was really good value with lunch included in the refectory where Sandy eats twice daily. The food was excellent, with lots of choice so his grandfather was pleased to know he's getting value for the school fees. We didn't see him because he was doing a seamanship course, sailing in cutters at Buckie.

Then on Friday the ex and his wife gave a party for the tenth anniversary of their arrival in Scotland and the beginning of his retirement. They rarely give parties which is just as well for me because I feel bit ill-at-ease - not sure of my role or position there. As it happens most people they know I know anyway and some were actually my friends before they were theirs. Still it felt weird and I've had a couple of nights-worth of nightmares with the past coming up to haunt.... Everyone says I do so well when in fact there is no choice. I'm very fond of my ex and for that, if for nothing else, I have to make it work, but there are also the children, grown but still our children and wanting to see us getting on. The demon mind with its cohorts of emotions just make everything more fraught than it should be.Yesterday a friend took me to seafood restaurant up the coast that I hadn't been to before. Very nice Cullen Skink - not too salty for once. Fireworks last night in the local park which I heard but didn't see. Daughter and g'son were shaking buckets collecting for next year's display. Today - well, I might just stay in my nightdress.