Summer holiday

It's been quiet around here, because we spent almost a week at Simon's parents' holiday house at Port Hughes, about 2 hours north of Adelaide. We had a wonderful time, with the boys (James included) out fishing most of every day and bringing back more than enough for dinner, and me mostly sewing. Unfotunately we've had a shocking heatwave which lasted until after we got home, and even with the a/c on full, it was siumply too hot to sew during the last few days of it.

Here's the study while I was pulling out what I needed to take with me to quilt; the 2 tubs on the table, plus pne other, were what came with me. Plus the machine, and my latge cutting mat and ruler which don't fit in the tubs!

I also took this:

The day we left I went with Daddy and we bought this, my Christmas present from my parents. It's an Olympus E620 DSLR. It;'s not the prettiest or most popular DSLR (which I had to get over!) but it has a couple of essential and fairly uncommon features.

The first is the live-view full vari-angle monitor. The second is somewhat technical and I've forgotten the details already, but suffice to say it will do a better job than most of giving me sharp quilt edges. Olympus is known for fantastic lenses, but not great bodies.

I finished this baby quilt for a little girl whose name I've only just discovered means 'Star':

I started another and got it ready to quilt:

And then I couldn't face dealing with it in the heat and moved on to my sister-in-law's wedding quilt. The wedding's in WA (Western Australia for the non-Aussies) in March. I've made the 3 8in stars and have 8 of the 6in stars almost made. But there's still well over 20 each of the 4in, 3in and 2in stars to go!

And the holiday snaps - more of Eleanor than James, because James spent so much time out in the boat fishing with Daddy and Pop!

At the beach (2-minute walk) after dinner one night; it was still HOT:

Too much time spent Wii-ing...

Playng with my new camera after Eleanor's nap...