Point break

I give thanks for catching up with yesterday's Bake Off and discovering it was caramel week. One of yesterday's nutritional queries was regarding why butterscotch was allowed in my diet but not toffee. As I suspected - the renal team didn't expect anyone to consider making their own with simple permissable things like butter, sugar and cream (Apologies to anyone reading this who is on a weight loss diet...I know my idea of dietary injustice differs from yours!) Luckily I've few complete teeth left, and am not yet diabetic so I am going to have to have a go... I give thanks for being amazed, as I have been at Celebrity Masterchef recently, by how much I seem to know about food compared to many contestants, especially since I've not actually tried most of the techniques or ingredients I can name. Perhaps not knowing anything about meat means I have extra memory for other areas...

Feeling very much a waste of space at the moment I give thanks for spending some more time making stuff for the upcoming craft stall to raise funds for the library. Whether in the grand scheme of the universe this is of any real value, well, who knows? But it gave me a sense of being a bit useful and maybe my efforts might make some smiles if not some cash. I'm full of creative ideas as usual but the trick is to start things I can actually get finished within the time frame and while there is still love for the projects to incorporate in the stitches. Like food, crafty things turn out far nicer when not made with a sense of duty or resentment in the hands. I've now completed 2 cushion covers, 6 dangly hearts,  14 mini stockings, a bedside rug/cot blanket and just have a little cushion to finish to match with that and I'm done and can move on to something else. Something to make me smile seems a good idea....It's so hard not to keep descending into glum just now.

I give thanks for deciding the new skin on the inside of my elbow was tough enough to take the bending and stretching required to change not only the duvet cover but the quilt itself for the autumn version. For losing myself in a patch of almost summery sunshine on the almost empty beach...watching the dark stripes rise and become a line of baby breakers. For the friendliness of the folk in the town's businesses, so just going about your own is a pleasant occupation. For a madness of magpies in the trees just now chattering to each other in lots of different pitches. It was hard to tell quite how many as they kept well hidden among the leaves apart from when they flew from tree to tree but it could have been anywhere between eight and a dozen I reckon...