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Did you ever wonder about the unsung heroes in our industry? You know- people who measure and cut fabric for us in shops all day long, those who package internet orders, create the fabrics, produce the products, editors of our craft magazines... Well, this month was a frantic 'organising' (or if you're from the USA- 'organizing') one for me, and I was blessed to be helped out by several 'Wonder Women'.

Christmas blessings everyone! Duncan and I hope you have a wonderful time with friends and family, and some solid stitching time too. I'm trying to get all the looser ends tied up before the holidays start. Poor Spencer is really starting to get over having nap time, but Mummy keeps making him go to bed so she can get at least an hour's work done each day!!! It's not my fault, Duncan makes me.

Back from Holidays! Although, it probably shouldn't have an exclamation mark. There needs to be a punctuation mark which conveys profound emphasis with depressive overtones. Can't think of one. But I'm not going to stoop to using emoticons. We had a great time, but as Simon said, "They should never have changed their tourism tag line from 'Beautiful one day, Perfect the Next' - ever since then the weather's been ordinary." We had cloudy cool weather the whole time we were up there.

Duncan is rather miffed at me. I've created a girly pink quilt design. Horrors. He's thoroughly ashamed of me. However, he did stop mid tirade when he spotted the girl dragon. He started polishing his scales almost immediately. I think he's smitten.

Work, work, work- and the quilt top is finally finished! Hooray! Thanks to Marg for getting it sewn up in time for my talk too. The good thing about preparing for a talk is the amount of cleaning that gets done. 'Now where did I put that picture of...' means that the quilts get put away, the patterns get sorted, the floor gets semi cleared and the loungeroom gets the in progress stuff sorted and stacked away.

Some of you might have seen the recent July issue of Homespun. I've got a project in it; 3 christmas carol wine bottle holders. I also created these three versions as gifts for Benjamin's Kinder teachers last year. You might recognise the pattern if you subscribe to Homespun. If you wish to create these, retrieve Vol 11 No.12, use the fish templates on the pattern sheet at 80 percent. Find Moda Odessya fabric and away you go! The pattern can be adapted for any theme I guess- have fun!

My husband enjoys pointing out to me that I have fingers that look a lot like ET. Knobbly, long and not much flesh underneath the skin. (However, my middle digit doesn't glow- when I raised it at my husband in reaction to his teasing, it just stayed unlit.) So when we have this freeeezing winter weather in Melbourne, it's very hard for my fingers to warm up to stitch with ease. And it has been freeeezing! Duncan has been lightly toasting his own toenails every morning before getting up.

I can't believe it's May already. My baby is turning three next week. Where did all that time go??? I've been flat stack, but I'm starting to think that being a Mum means that you never get out of 5th gear. Out of necessity I've become a nocturnal creative creature. The days are spent cleaning. (Mind you, my house is never clean, but you spend all day cleaning it so it doesn't get worse.)

It was my birthday in March. My darling husband drew me a card, which I shall share here below. (Yes, I am the artistic one in the family.) He was keeping the boys company whilst they drew their masterpieces. 'What's the green things with little legs? says I. 'They're leaves.' says he. 'The tree represents you, and that's the leaves gently starting to fall off.'

My husband is never shy rubbing it in that he's younger than me.

What an absolutely awful month it's been for many people in Australia and New Zealand. Floods, cyclones, earthquakes, fires... you name it, we've had it. Our house came through the Melbourne downpours OK, but we did have to do some bucketing for a couple hours to save water coming in the front door from the courtyard run off! I've lived here for 19 years, and I've never seen that amount of rain fall in such a short time before. 'Well done Mum for saving our house!' said Benjamin.