I had a lovely day teaching on Wednesday, it was nice to drive to the coastal town of Yeppoon and spend the day with 12 enthusiastic quilters. It made a nice break from staring at a computer screen for 14 hours every day.

I have two more little jobs to do on the new releases and then I'm finished, praise be! I need some time to myself. I joined the gym recently, so now I can say "As my trainer said to me the other day...." or "My trainer says..." I also have an excuse to buy workout gear, a fancy towel, an MP3 player and a super-duper drink bottle. Must put all that on the shopping list.... Honestly, everyone else has those things! I'm the only one there in daggy track pants, Don's T-shirt, a recycled Pepsi-Max bottle and reading Harry Potter....

I'm scratching for photos to post, but there has been a rash of string-pieced stars on the blogs lately, so I will contribute another one. Just a little one, but it's cute. I made it at the same time as the Irish Star, I must have been completely obsessed with that pattern. The diamonds are about 3" along each side, and I printed the foundation pattern onto very light-weight interfacing. I fused it to freezer paper and ran it through my laser printer with no problems. It hardly added any bulk, and gave me a sewing line to join the units together. I would definitely use this method again on other small patterns.

My other picture is of a quilt that I hand-quilted over a period of 10 years. I just kept losing interest in it, and it's very rarely cool enough to hand quilt comfortably here. Even in winter I usually have to take my shoes off to cool down if I'm quilting. Our definition of cold weather means that I can wear my hair down and wear socks. Apart from that it's pretty much T-shirts all year round. And I don't like it.

This quilt was entered in an exhibition in 2001, so I had to finish it. Every morning I sat in my comfy chair with the fan on me, and quilted through an episode of the Golden Girls, and an Aussie drama called Country Practice. I didn't particularly like either to begin with, and I loathed them by the time the quilt was finished, but they got me through the boredom. I haven't quilted another quilt this heavily, but I'm about ready to have a go. It's been a while so the bad memories have dimmed, and with the DVD revolution I can watch anything I darn well please to keep me happy.

And because I'm feeling homesick today, I'm including a picture of a settlers cottage outside our home town. Mereth and I have always loved ruins and abandoned houses, and this little house out in the country always fired my imagination. I wondered at the lives of the people who built it and lived there in isolation, even though now its only 15 minutes out of town. A trip into town and back would have taken all day for them.

Over the years it has crumbled away, and last year I realised that if I didn't photgraph it I might find it just a pile of stones next time I go home. This picture is so quintessentially Australian; the stone cottage with the redbrick quoins, the scrubby trees and the combination of burnt yellow grass and brilliant sky. It spells home to me.