Alchemy...

... seems to have been this weekend's theme. Or at least, transformation...

Before any of the crafty stuff, John Humphreys did a magical thing with words in this Saturday's Today programme, in his essay on the 40th anniversary of Aberfan. Reading the transcript isn't enough; you need to hear him delivering it in the audio clip.

Meanwhile, I dyed - mainly for a project I can't blog about - but did, on the side and last weekend, turn this:

into this...

by the judicious application of purple... (There should be more purple in the world).

I cooked (which used to happen a lot more often than it does these days...). But a pan of lasagne, although delicious, isn't that photogenic if you only remember to take a picture when it's been partly eaten and the rest has been stashed in the freezer.

And I cleaned. It's amazing what a walk through an Apple Day festival on a cathedral green will inspire; in this case a whacking great bunch of inexpensive sunflowers, the perfect background of the piece of felt I made at Wingham three years ago, and no space at all on the table. So here it is, as cleared-up as the house gets (note large quantity of yarn lurking in corners).

I've just realised how many craft-attempts there are in this picture, from the slightly wobbly vase I made in pottery several years ago which still pleases me, to the slightly wobbly felted vessel made with tapestry wool earlier this year... The completely non-wobbly basket on the table behind the vessel, made by Stewart and a Christmas present the year before last, was full of tags and labels when I took the picture, but a neighbour came round with some pears this evening. I think they look like little green seals or something... it definitely feels as if some sort of conversation's going on...

The cats are, obviously, displeased with the expanse of table. They like this sort of arrangement;

preferably with the option of kicking small fragile objects off the edge. I have a very exciting flame-like pattern on one corner of my (really quite new) mobile's screen thanks to a leap-with-flying-flail from Tilda on Friday morning...