It feels like we've been through a battle here, and it's finally over.  The last five days have been pretty terrible, temperatures ranging from 104 to 114° during the day, not much relief at night time.  It was horrible having to be out on the bike delivering mail, but luckily we got it done each day before the temperature went above 102°.  Who wants to be outside when it's that hot?  It's madness.

 I was all prepared to sit it out in the air-conditioned shed, but the a/c decided it wouldn't work in that sort of heat.  Sigh....  So Dolly and I just sweltered through it as best we could.  I had all the fans going, and kept a wet tea-towel draped over her; I could deal with the heat a lot better than she could.  I read five books, but the Ipad got so hot I was a bit concerned that it would shut down.  In the end I had it balanced on a frozen gel pack to try and make it run cooler.  At least paperbacks aren't likely to spontaneously combust as you read them!  And I was sick of reading, but there was nothing else to do.

And then there was a power blackout to make life even more miserable.  And a huge bushfire about 40k away, that cast a pall of smoke over the town.  It hasn't been a nice time just lately. 

But what a relief to have a cool change, a little bit of rain, and the energy to want to do something.  So far this morning I've tackled the laundry and taken the dogs for a walk in the cool of morning, and now I'm waiting for the rain to stop so I can get out in the garden and see what survived.  I had three layers of shadecloth over the most vulnerable plants, and I think most of them are OK.  The next week is supposed to be cool, and I'll be very appreciative of that.

I'm so glad most of my dahlias are OK; I might just be addicted to them now, seeing as they are so beautiful, and they don't mind our ridiculous temperatures.

I did manage a bit of sewing done before the heatwave; all the mystery blocks are up on the design wall, waiting to be sewn together.  It was interesting going through the links for the Celtic Solstice and seeing what other people had done with the pattern.  I really liked this version, by Sharon Mallow Woerz, and so did Mereth, so that's how we're putting ours together. 

I absolutely love the border, I will definitely use that on another quilt.


I will be keeping track of the fabric in/out this year, so this is a nice start in the Used column; Bonnie's yardage calculations are 11 yards, but only half came from my stash, so Mereth and I can each claim 5.5 yards.  I think that's a very generous estimate, but I cut my lot from scraps and all the leftovers went into the strip drawers, so I'm counting it all as used.  I made a dent in the cheddars, and that's a good thing.

I've still got to do my post about what I want to achieve in 2014, it's mostly written, I just need to refine it a bit.   But not now, now I'm going to go and SEW something!!