It's wonderful weather here at the moment, cool and a soaking rain falling quietly. There has been rain on the fire ground too, and the official announcement is that the fire has been 'contained'. This is great news, and everyone is hoping  that the rain  predicted in the next few days will finally put out all the hot spots and end this nightmare. The fire started from a lightning strike four weeks ago, a  natural event, and now another natural event can finish it.

Of course that won't really be the end of it- then comes the clean up and the danger from all the falling trees will make this hazardous too. And we will be looking at these poor scorched hills for years until they recover. Fortunately some of the wildlife has evaded the fires, but now there will be nothing left for them to eat, or cover from the elements. Over 34,000 hectares were burnt out, Sigh.

And to add insult to injury there has been a severe weather warning issued and some parts of the state, including here,  are being warned of flooding and huge winds; it's all slightly crazy. Flooding in the UK, snow and ice storms in the US , bushfires and flooding here, the world's gone mad!

To celebrate the wonderful coolness I'm making a batch of tomatoe sauce, from 9kg of tomatoes that I froze earlier this year. Now that the over 40C weather has gone (for at least a week anyway) I'm heating up the kitchen with delicious smells of spices and onions, garlic and tomatoes. It usually takes all day to cook down and the whole kitchen ends up a sticky mess, but the end result is worth it.

Once it's set to bubble  away for a few hours I intend to go in the sewing room and set together some blocks that I've been finishing off. I'm going to try to choose a border straight away instead of letting it stall at that point.

 I recently went through my projects and there were far too many that 'just needed a border'. Some have sat like that for years and years, so I'm making a conscious effort to deal with them.

 This little top needed the the triangle border sewn to it and the wider cream border.

 It only took me half a day when I finally got to work on it and did the maths for the little spacer border in between. I let the smallest things put me off, and I'm going to try and get over that particular  failing of mine.