Taniwa

I'm cold

2012-02-03T11:53:00.007+09:00

Japan has been hit by a cold front. It is probably not very serious and where I live we get very little snow but still, I am freezing!!! My complaints annoy Tetsu to no end.

This is what I wake up to in the morning. Do these photos even capture what I see?

This LOOKS like a lovely impressionist painting. No. That is my bedroom window. It is the view of the forest looking through the window AND ALL THE FROZEN CONDENSATION ON THE WINDOW!!!

A few of our windows and doors have been frozen this week and we have to bang and thump at the frame in order to even get out the back door.

When I grumble that I don't think our house has insulation, Tetsu retorts that there's nothing that can be done about it now. When I suggest that there is such a thing as putting in double windows, he just shakes his head and tells me to think of the cost. And besides there doesn't seem to be insulation under the floors either so not a lot of good new windows would do.

"Isn't this the 21st Century? There is such a thing as central heating in America."

This is hitting below the belt on my part. We are not in America and Tetsu tells me to count my blessings; a lot of people in the world live in worse conditions.

And so we let the water run all night so that the pipes don't freeze. We bang windows to open them in the morning. We move our little space heaters from room to room. By the way, we aren't poverty stricken. Many of my friends are in the same boat. The advice from them is:

"Use a squeegee every morning to catch the condensation."

"Keep a towel along the window sill to sop up the moisture."

"Spray the area with alcohol to keep the mold at bay."

Japan has the technology to make refrigerators that will talk to you! Why don't they just construct a warm house for the normal resident.

If I had one of those refrigerators that talked to me, it would probably say,

"Close the door. You're letting all the cold air IN!"

Crazy Goose Chase quilt border

2012-02-02T14:42:00.005+09:00

The Crazy Goose Chase quilt (Buggy Barn design) is a flimsy! (Again.)

After consulting with Mrs. Furui I put together a thin border on only one side of the quilt making it into a rectangle. The original pattern had resulted in 5 left over stars and so I made one more and with 6 stars the pattern stayed symmetrical. I suppose I might have given more thought to color placement or even made more stars and added another border on the bottom of the quilt, but this is enough.

There aren't many places in my house to lay out this flimsy to take a picture and obviously this isn't one of one. That lump in the middle is Chip playing hide-and-seek.

Now to making backing and sandwich the flimsy for quilting.

Kimono quest

2012-02-01T08:37:00.006+09:00

Recently I've been visiting recycle shops to look at old kimonos and obis. Someone has asked me to find them a nice used kimono and I am on a quest. While kimonos are unaffordable at regular price, in the recycle shops one can find nice kimonos for about a 10th (or more!) of the original cost. But so many different kinds!

And the glittering obis are amazing too, but what is a Westerner going to do with an obi? They make nice table runners... or wall hangings... Though many of you who have been following my blog since last year and have seen obis, (remember? Mrs. Kaneko's mother-in-law's obis fell into my hands) I'm showing pictures of a couple that I have found recently at about $50 an obi.

And would you look at this picture I found on the Internet. It is a picture of all the accessories and things one needs to wear a kimono! No wonder there aren't many people who don't dress traditionally anymore. I may have a kimono (Tetsu's mother's) but I don't have the proper under kimonos for the type of kimono. Nor the proper obi, nor the proper slippers, nor all the ties, nor the matching handbag etc. etc. Just keeping all that straight deters young women from wanting to wear kimono. (Not to mention the cost!)

And when I say proper I mean that if one is of a certain age then you can only wear certain kimonos. Or depending on whether you are married or single, or depending on the season, or depending on whether you are going to a wedding or a school observation day or a funeral. It would be a major faux pas to wear the wrong kimono to an event in the wrong season!

In the kimono advertisement next to the picture of a kimono set, the shop was offering 14 pieces (bags, socks, ties, kimono, obi, slippers etc. etc. etc.) for a special price of about $5000. Regular asking price for all that was $15,000!

No thank you. I'll stick with Tetsu's mother's kimonos or the recycle shops.

Translating

2012-01-31T08:38:00.009+09:00

Yesterday a book came in the mail. Ahh~~ I remember this... Last summer I spent two or three months (and hours and hours and hours) helping translate a book for the prefecture. I consulted with the original translator (I don't read Japanese so someone translated into English and I corrected the translation), I sent in my final copy and I was paid well. But I never heard hide-nor-hair of anything after that. Do I really want to know? I was getting frustrated at the translator and with trying to keep close to the original Japanese...The translator sent her work to me while I was in the States and I resented having to work on my vacation. I pouted and ranted and told everybody that I was NEVER going to do translation work again!

Yesterday I peered into the postal envelope. Yep a book. Wow. A good sized book!

Not bad... not bad... I leafed through a few pages. Japanese on one side of the page, English on the other. No glaring errors and I am not going to look for any. (I'm sure there must be a few I missed. Gulp.) The book goes directly onto my shelf

I had been so frustrated with this translation attempt but seeing the final product makes me slightly proud to have been a part of it. No, my name isn't anywhere in this book and I had nothing to do with the contents but still I helped out a bit.

I'm sorry that I grumbled about the original translator. I hope she is proud of herself too.

Sushi

2012-01-30T14:33:00.009+09:00

Tetsu and I made the rounds of recycle shops yesterday and for dinner we stopped at a revolving sushi place. I have posted about these places before but so long ago I guess I'll do it again.

Sushi restaurants and bars can be expensive and many businessmen will conduct business over sushi but young families and people who are not picky about their sushi, love to go to revolving sushi restaurants. Depending on the restaurant, each plate runs a little more than a dollar and the sushi runs by your table (or counter) by a conveyor belt. When a restaurant is crowded, the sushi gets taken off the belt faster than it can be made!

But what if you want a type of sushi that hasn't come by recently?

Nowadays at each table is a touch screen and a person can order the type of sushi, the number of plates, and specify with or without Japanese horseradish (wasabi). In this restaurant, the sushi arrived at the table on a differennt rail/belt by Bullet Train, special delivery! It stopped directly at our table and then hurried back to the kitchen to bring another load to another table. Busy place!

Lots of interesting food running by the table on the conveyor belt. Let's see... besides regular seafood sushi there were deep fried squid tentacles... French fries... Tiamisu dessert!

Tetsu and I ate 14 plates between the two of us. Well, conveyor belt sushi might not be the real thing (I think the rice balls are made by machine) but it is actually quite good! Tetsu and I haven't been to a real sushi bar in years! And the price is right!

Cat photography

2012-01-29T08:24:00.011+09:00

Yesterday I took off with my friend Mrs. Nakazawa and went to a photo exhibition. Mrs. Nakazawa and I are old time "cat-lover" friends. And for the past couple of years she and Rumi-san have been coming every month or so to do patchwork.

On Friday Mrs. Nakazawa and Rumi-san came for patchwork and showed off their latest quilts.

Same quilt in different colors... (and interestingly, Mrs. Nakazawa's turned out smaller.) A great first try at a largish quilt! (and the first time using a sewing machine, quilting with a hoop etc.)

Mrs. Nakazawa forgot something on Friday so I took it to her yesterday morning.

"What are you doing today, Tanya?"

"I'm going to visit a cat photo exhibition. Are you going?" (I knew that she had tickets, she had offered me some the day before.)

"Yes, I'll probably go later on today. My car is being repaired this morning."

"Let's go together!"

And within 10 minutes we were on our way.

The photo exhibition was amazing!!! Only photos of cats by a wonderful wildlife photographer named Mitsuaki Iwago. He is quite well known in Japan especially for his cat photos. As would be expected, no photography allowed at the exhibition but Mrs. Nakazawa and I spent nearly an hour oohing and aahing and laughing and sighing at all the beautiful, beautiful photography of feline activity. (It made me want to go out and buy a professional camera and take pictures of my cats all over again!)

(Actually I have one of Mr. Iwago's book so this picture is a photo of one of his photos.)

There was a gift shop set up at the exhibition's exit where books and post cards and files etc. were being sold. We decided that many of the goods could be bought in regular bookstores so we bypassed the lines there. And then, at the far end of the room was a booth of hand crafted items...

"Oh! Look at these! They are so cute!!!"

Mrs. Nakazawa and I both started pawing through the bags and aprons and hats and things that were all hand painted.

"These are one of a kind and if you'd like I'll paint your name on anything too."

The nice artist was organizing the bags that we'd tumbled here and there while looking at all of them.

Both Mrs. Nakazawa and I came home with hand painted-personalized items. I'm such a sucker for cat things! (But I think everyone at the exhibition was too. The line at the gift store wound back to the entrance!)

"La-la-la ♪~♪~♪~! Look what I bought!"

I modeled my cap for Tetsu. I can just hear the neighbors when I go out walking Choco.

"There goes that crazy cat lady."

And while talking of cat photos, here are a couple I took last night.

"Vel, you might as well come up and join us on the sofa."

And so he did.

"Hey guys, Dad got to the sofa before us tonight!"

Maybe we need two sofas.

Cooperation

2012-01-27T09:03:00.005+09:00

Oh dear, not much going on yesterday and today. And yesterday was a patchwork day but I never once picked up a needle!!

Mostly Mrs. Furui and I laid out our projects and gave each other advice. Mrs. Furui has designed a small piece to go at the top of my Crazy Goose Chase quilt and if I add that then it will be the right dimensions for a bed quilt.

"How are you going to quilt this, Tanya?"

Yes, that is the question. The Crazy Goose Chase will be pretty big for my domestic machine and there I go again hesitating to do overall quilting designs... I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

As for Mrs. Furui's project, she is designing an applique quilt for the hospital that she volunteers at. But her pattern calls for shadow quilting and it will mean more expense and a LOT more handwork. Instead she was thinking about needle-turn appliqueing the whole quilt.

"ARE YOU CRAZY! Do you know how long that is going to take you? And all those cute little BERRIES on this quilt? You won't have time to do anything else for months! And then you're going to give the quilt away?"

I don't have a problem with her giving away the quilt. I have a problem with her having another project taking priority over all her other unfinished projects not to mention intruding on her leadership and expertise at the other projects we are trying to get off the ground.

"Look, this could get done a lot more quickly if you machine stitched the raw edges. Could you accept a project that wasn't completely hand done?" (Mrs. Furui is such a purist).

"But Tanya, I don't know how to do raw-edge-machine-stitch-applique..."

"Ahh! But I do! If you promise you won't complain about my skills and the outcome of freehand machine applique stitching, I'll do it for you."

"Okay, then I'll do the hand quilting on your Crazy Goose Chase quilt for you!"

I wonder if we are saving each other time or just making more work for the both of us...

But it's more fun embarking on a cooperative effort!

Sales

2012-01-26T09:17:00.006+09:00

This week someone asked me if I would make them a quilt on commission. I'm afraid I declined. Has anyone ever done that?

It has always seemed to me that the amount of time put into making a quilt would never justify the cost and effort. The materials may only run $100 (think of that batting and backing too!) but all the time sewing and quilting runs into hours and days and months and sometimes years! And someone is going to buy this at even minimum wage? I don't think so! I feel sorry for the "handmade quilts" I see at Walmart or Penneys. They DO seem to be loosely quilted (not that well) but someone in China or Indonesia or somewhere has still spent hours making the quilt and it is being sold for $40?! How much was that person's time worth?

Occasionally I have gotten involved in selling small handmade things for church or kindergarten bazaars. Coasters, bags, even knitted caps. But I remember one time years ago when manning a booth some little obaachan fingered the wares and then said to her friend,

"Too expensive... Let's wait until the end of the bazaar... The prices will probably go down."

It made me sort of sad... I'd spent hours making patchwork bags and was trying to sell them for $15 apiece for the church... not for my own pocket. But someone still thought $15 was too expensive and in truth, some of the bags were sold later in the day for about $8. From then on I decided I would give away quilts, not sell them. It is more important for me to see a smile of surprised delight or know that somewhere someone was enjoying an unexpected gift (donation quilts included) than to make a little bit of money that wouldn't pay for the time put into the quilt making.

I'd be lousy at running a business.

Cat cushions

2012-01-25T08:21:00.004+09:00

Think our cats like the heated mat on the sofa?

Making progress

2012-01-24T09:13:00.007+09:00

I put together the Crazy Goose Chase flimsy yesterday.

Wow, a lot of bias edges so it pulls here and there (or I just wasn't careful about not stretching the fabric when sewing.) Still, if this ever gets quilted, the waviness might quilt out. (Please do not tell me I made a mistake on block placement somewhere! I've checked and it looks all right to my eyes but I'm not going to look any closer!)

The real problem though is how to add length to this quilt. It is a wonderful square quilt with the pattern being centered, but adding more at the top or at the bottom is going to be a challenge without messing up the symmetry or softness of the colors. I'll have to talk with Mrs. Furui before I try figuring out how much more length needs to be added.

In the meantime I'm still making stars for the Star Within a Star quilt.... I'm so middle of the road minded that I am trying to add more white, more stars AND use the nine-patches too. According to my calculations I need 12 more stars.

This doesn't look like it will be done for a LONG~~~ time...

Girls' Day exhibition

2012-01-23T08:15:00.014+09:00

Yesterday I was invited to go to a local exhibition of Girls' Day dolls. It is still a bit early in the season to talk about Girls' Day but since I took the pictures...

Most Japanese families, if they have daughters, will have a display of Girls' Day dolls. The dolls represent the Emperor and Empress and their attendants during the classical period of Japanese history. The placement of the dolls, the implements each doll holds, the miniature decorations and the colorful ornaments all have special meaning.

The two dolls on the top tier are the Emperor and Empress. On the second tier sit the court ladies. The third tier holds the imperial musicians. Below them are the court ministers. Under all that are the miniature furniture and household implements.

In our home, Leiya never had any Girls' Day dolls, mainly because we couldn't afford them! They are tremendously expensive! But besides that, they take up so much room to store during the year and then take up a good portion of the room to display. Sort of like Westerners and their Christmas ornaments, the Japanese housewife has to dedicate a day to bring out all the dolls, (and probably even make a place for the display to begin with!) set up the tiers and place each ornament in its proper place. They may invite friends to come and admire their doll display and have a small tea party with green tea and bean sweets and then March 4th will come and everything must be put away. If a mother is tardy in putting her dolls away, the daughter is in danger of marrying late!

Nowadays many families will opt for buying a smaller display... Less dolls but maybe more elaborate dressings and decorations. They would certainly take up less room to store and are no less beautiful!

Yesterday's exhibition had displays from the 1800's up to present day. Gorgeous! But the pre-school children's handmade Girls' Day dolls made of paper cups, straws and paper plates made me smile.

Ready for Girls' Day (March 3)

2012-01-22T08:20:00.009+09:00

I finished the Girls' Day quilt. I wonder if one can call this a quilt. It is a small tapestry only about 12 inches tall and 20 inches wide.

I used foundation papers and starch to make all the pieces first and then hand appliqued them to the background. The fan shape with the flowers was a little difficult to put together because I just turned under the edges and didn't use binding. The hand quilting is freehand.

This is not a particularly original quilt; the pattern was in one of the Patchwork Japan magazines that I've had around for years. Hopefully I will be able to just take the foundation paper pieces to my friend and let her use the same ones instead of making a whole set again. (I started this quilt as a sample in the first place.) And if I get really ambitious I'd like to see how I could arrange this quilt using the collage process and tulle rather than applique.

But I have other things I need to get done so for now I am finished with the Girls' Day quilt!

Escape

2012-01-21T09:16:00.007+09:00

Yesterday I spent quite a long time up in the sewing room (nothing to show there yet). Because Toi and Patora don't get along with the other cats, this winter they are living in the sewing room. Locked in the sewing room! They know how to open the door so I have rigged up a locking system! Pretty soon I could hear Mi on the other side of the door meowing. She set up quite a racket and I finally opened the door to let her in.

Nope. Mi doesn't want to come in. She bounded down the stairway and I followed.

In the Japanese room, Cleo was sitting by an open window. AN OPEN WINDOW! Oh dear, Vel opened the window (and the screen) and went out exploring! Vel knows how to open windows and doors too. I'll have to remember to keep that window locked too. I counted up the cats. Yep, only Vel is gone. Maybe Cleo and Mi thought it too cold and too wet to go outside. Usually those are the three cats that make an escape.

I looked out a few windows before before braving the weather. And there was Vel sitting on a outside table. He certainly didn't go far!

Vel was quite pleased to come back inside. Maybe he didn't want to get his paws muddy. Chip spent a lot of time spitting at hissing at him. Too many outdoor smells?

"Stop that!... You are just regretting that you didn't take the chance to go out too."

Mi was very happened to have Vel home again.

"Velvet, I love you! Don't leave me again!"

Two half finished projects

2012-01-20T08:32:00.005+09:00

It's snowing today! Yeah! (Because I don't have to go out at all today!) This may be a full sewing day... I have one student scheduled to come this morning but I have a feeling she'll call and say she can't come. She really hates driving in the snow...

Yesterday was a pretty full day of sewing too. I spent time upstairs putting the blocks to the Crazy Goose Chase quilt together into rows. Well, partly put together. If my student doesn't come today putting the rest of the blocks together is on the docket for this morning.

Looking good, looking good. It has much more of a "pink" tint than I expected but with all those maroon pieces in there it shouldn't be surprising. Now the only problem is that this is going to turn into a square quilt and I really wanted a rectangle quilt to give to the Ronald MacDonald House. So even when I'm finished sewing this together I'm going to have to figure out some more blocks to make this longer.

And I got sidetracked with some applique. The pre-school principal where I teach on Mondays asked if I had a pattern for a Girls' Day quilt. (Girls' Day is March 3rd.) She wanted to make a quilt, maybe for the preschool. I have a cute pattern, not very big, so I brought her the book and she jumped at it!

"I want to make that! I don't think I'd be able to get it made by THIS March, but surely by NEXT March I could sew at my own pace and get it finished. If you'll help me."

I'm happy to help her but of course, I've never made the quilt myself. I came home and got started. I had to make one stop at the craft store to see what was available in kimono style prints and found some small cuts (not fat quarters... they don't sell those in Japan.) After making the applique pieces I got started on the sewing.

The FIRST problem is that the girl kimono cloth is made of chirimen crepe rayon. I knew that when I bought the fabric but I figured that since this is going to be a decorative quilt and not get washed, that I could mix fabrics without any problems. True and false. True chirimen is made of silk but that is expensive and the little craft shop didn't have any. Rayon chirimen is lovely and easy to sew BUT when I spray starched it for ironing a sharp edge, the chirimen "shrank"! Well, it scrunched up... That is what rayon chirimen does... So I ironed it out flat again and made applique edges without using starch. So far so good. (I wonder what will happen during the rainy season...)

The boy kimono is made from heavy cotton so it should be okay.

For the picture these are just laid out on the background fabric. The sewing will get done in front of the TV today.

All in all, there is a lot more work to making this than I thought there was going to be and I really wonder if the principal, who is a non-quilter/sewer, is going to be able to do this. Maybe this would be a better collage type project with me offering to do the final machine quilting instead.

We'll see how it goes today.

Two sayings

2012-01-19T08:25:00.006+09:00

Well, I spent a week looking for my camera.

I e-mailed three of the four students that had come for English on Tuesday morning (the last lady is very put together and besides, I didn't have her e-mail address... ) I cleaned out closets, I looked in unlikely places. Furniture got moved, the car got cleaned out.

I made one trip to the electronics store. I spent hours looking at the Internet comparing prices, specifications, reviews. I followed links and advice given on my blog Comments page. I looked at blogs with great photos combing posts for hints on cameras.

I evaluated my needs for a new camera... Do I want a professional one? No, too big to carry around. I use a camera to post pictures on my blog, not to make prints. I don't need a wonderful video function.

I consulted with Mrs. Ochiai. I counted the spare cash on hand and checked my bank account.

I even pushed the BUY button on Amazon.com choosing a somewhat expensive camera, but a few minutes later canceled the purchase when I realized I had to pay by credit card (not pay on delivery or convenience store payment). I didn't really want to get Tetsu involved in MY camera purchase (it's his credit card). I wanted to buy it myself so decided to make another trip to the electronics store.

Tuesday morning came around again.

"After English today I will buy a camera. By this afternoon I will have a new camera in my hands! It is a shame that I lost the other one but what fun it will be to play with a new camera... A camera is a necessity for me." (I'm always careful about making unnecessary purchases.)

A few minutes later I got a phone call.

"Tanya!!! Y-san has your camera!!! (The one student I hadn't e-mailed.) She didn't realize she put it in her purse last Tuesday! Did you buy a new camera? No? Oh, thank goodness! Y-san is running home to get it now!"

The ladies had been talking about my missing camera while they carpooled to English Tuesday morning.

"Camera? Camera? I found a camera on my dining room table about the time I cleaned out my English bag. I thought it was my husband's... or my daughter's... Oh my! It was Tanya's?!"

Y-san handed me my camera when the ladies arrived at my house. Everyone was so happy that the mystery of the missing camera had been solved.

...except I really had been getting excited about having a new camera... which is now no longer a necessity...

Thank you Lord for the safe return of my old camera. Now... do I need a SPARE camera?

"The person who waits too long loses the opportunity."

or

"Haste makes waste."

Tea break

2012-01-17T09:47:00.005+09:00

Shopping in the grocery store I came across a new series of ice tea. Milk tea, straight tea and lemon tea. The name caught my eye and made me smile.

"Break on the Desk"

Break WHAT on the desk? The carton? Anything else that happens to be on the desk?

At least it didn't say "Breakdown on the Desk". I'm sure that has happened to people before...

I know... I know... "Have a tea break AT your desk".

I bought the milk tea and am enjoying it AT my desk.

9 patches... add or not add?

2012-01-16T08:33:00.003+09:00

I'm sewing 9 patches while I sit in front of the TV. Sewing BY HAND! I'm not sure why... I thought that my Star Within a Star blocks were a little boring alone and I wanted to add a little more movement. Thus the 9 patches. But now that I have half of them made, I'm not sure that this is what I want or not. What do you think? Again, this is from my cell phone so it is a bit blurred... And I didn't lay out all the blocks...

I liked the idea of 9 patches because I was hoping they would bring out the small square inside the stars and I was expecting the 9 patches to lead the eye here and there and cut the white a bit... but maybe they just make the whole thing too busy.

So I have this... With 9 patches.

Or this.... without 9 patches.

Should I keep making 9 patches? (BY HAND!)

Cameras, cameras, cameras

2012-01-15T08:26:00.002+09:00

SNC. Sigh.

I think I've given up. Yesterday Tetsu and I had church cleaning duty and then we went up to Central Nikko to go to a spa (Tetsu's favorite pasttime. If I have a book or my Kindle then I'm willing to go have a quick bath and sit and read for an hour.)

About 20 minutes from us is the tourist center of Nikko with a couple of Japan's most famous shrines and temples, and 15 minutes beyond that are the plains and lakes and waterfalls of Nikko. If you have ever been to Nikko you've probably visited either the waterfalls or the temples. And the Toshogu shrine is a favorite place for traditional weddings.

Yesterday as we drove through the shrine area we saw a kimono clad wedding party standing in front of a picturesque Japanese bridge.

"Oh look! What a perfect picture!.... if I had a camera...."

On the way home we stopped for noodles for lunch and then went to the electronics store. And I looked at cameras and cameras and cameras. I'm really a terrible shopper. I don't know what I want, I find better and think I want that. All the numbers and pamphlets and samples left me confused... I came home to look on the Internet which hasn't made anything any plainer.

But I'm weakening... I really need a camera.

Seeing stars

2012-01-14T08:43:00.006+09:00

SNC. (Still no camera)

Well putting that frustration aside...

I did some sewing yesterday and have managed to finish making all the blocks for my Crazy Goose Chase. Last week I spent one day sewing the dark geese and another day sewing the light geese. And this week I sewed dark stars and yesterday, light stars.

This stack-and-whack type of sewing is interesting... A lot of guesswork... like which corner do I match up (because after the first seam the pieces are no longer the same size). And what part of this piece is excess and what part is important. I THINK I did it right. Since this is a Crazy Goose Chase quilt, the pieces are pretty wonky, pointing this way and that... The stars have different sized points etc.

You have no idea what I'm talking about right? It is impossible to explain. I need a picture!!!

Okay. How about this? I took it on my cell phone. Not great but better than nothing.

My blocks are ready to be put together.

And when I'm downstairs in front of the TV I've been sewing stars for my Stars Within a Star quilt. I'm not sure about the block placement on this... I'm sort of thinking this needs something more within the quilt... And probably a border because alone this isn't going to be a size that will fit a bed or something (of course no bed for it to fit on but that's besides the point.)

So that is what I've been doing when not looking for my camera in odd places.

Looking for something?

2012-01-13T09:01:00.003+09:00

Still no camera.

I've looked in litter boxes, cleaned out closets, pulled the piano away from the wall. I've emptied snack drawers and waste baskets. I've checked pockets and gone through my scrap basket scrap by scrap. No camera... This is getting serious.

Years ago Tetsu and I went to a local hardware store to buy some paint. It was a small store with shelves of different heights along the aisles. Tetsu drove us to the store and we looked at paint cans with Tetsu reading the small print on the back of the cans. And when we left the store he realized he didn't have his glasses.

Now he HAD his glasses when we went into the store. He uses them to drive. And he often pushes his glasses up on top of his head when he reads... Or lays them down... So somewhere in the 10 minutes that we were looking at paint the glasses got put down (well, they weren't up on his head.) We looked up and down all the aisles we had been in (not many). We took out cans of paint and looked behind them. We checked on top of shelves, under signs, inside work shoes. No glasses.

We explained the problem to the cashier and left a small sign taped to the register with our telephone number asking to be contacted when the glasses were found... as of course we expected them to be. The only place they COULD BE was in the hardware store!

Nobody ever contacted us, the glasses were never found. Sometimes we still wonder how those glasses could have gotten lost in such a short time in such a small place. But they did.

My camera must be sitting beside Tetsu's glasses (though I haven't been to the hardware store in weeks.)

Well, I know one way to find my camera.

GO OUT AND BUY A NEW CAMERA!

I'm sure, that as soon as I walk into the house with a new camera that the old one will turn up. Isn't that usually the way things work?

A walk in the town

2012-01-12T08:30:00.014+09:00

Still no camera. I've contacted students asking them to check their purses but no one has found it. That means that in 20 minutes time I managed to lose my camera somewhere in this small house...

So... What sort of pictures do I have in my files?

I couple weeks ago I took an hour's walk with Choco heading into town a bit. I never got around to posting those pictures so I guess that is the topic for the day. Maybe Takumi and Leiya will enjoy the memories associated with these sites (though neither child reads my blog regularly...)

The first picture is directly behind our house... on the other side of the forest. Everyday Choco and I go walking towards Mr. Nantai. Takumi and Leiya rode their bicycles along this road to the jr. high.

After about 20 minutes of walking Choco takes a drink in a little stream that runs through the fields and past farms. I think this is a man-made stream with water fed by wells and pumps because there are times when it is completely dry and times when it is rushing with water. The farmers have a whole system of directing water from this stream to their rice fields.

These are little ojizou-san that can be found along roadsides and near cemeteries. The day before Choco and I had walked by these ojizou-san and they were still wearing their faded, weathered hats and bibs. But on this day someone must have just re-dressed them for the new year only hours before we passed. They were all brightly decked out!

This is Takumi and Leiya's jr. high school. Let's see... The second or third set of windows from the right... On the second floor. When Takumi was a second year student at this school he tried jumping off of that balcony and landed on his face. You can read about that in this post...

And this is the school where Leiya punched a wall and broke her hand. I have mixed memories about this jr. high school...

And here we are walking over the overpass on the main street. Not so main... Hardly any cars around at all!

And this is where Choco and I were headed... To the post office. This is a brand new post office just built last month. (Takumi and Leiya, you wouldn't recognize the area anymore!)

And a final picture of the gasoline station where Takumi had a part time job for awhile in high school. The school regulations didn't really permit students to have after school jobs but we felt it was a better way for him to spend his time than getting into trouble.

So much for the tour of the town... I had planned to do some sewing today. Or shall I go looking for my camera again?

Lost

2012-01-11T08:21:00.003+09:00

Yesterday when I was writing the post about Disney Sea and it actually took quite a while to upload pictures and choose a few and rearrange them in the post. And when I looked up at the clock, I had only 20 minutes to get my house in shape (and myself) for the ladies class which would arrive at 10:00.

I vacuumed, I washed dishes and started laundry, I plumped pillows and brought out snacks. My ladies' class came and we shared what we had done over New Years. And just as they were leaving some other friends that I hadn't seen for awhile, showed up so as one group went out the door another came in.

"Oh, I haven't seen you in such a long time! I want to take pictures!"

No camera.

That's right. No camera... I looked high and low for it all afternoon yesterday. Tetsu helped me look for it last night.

Now... It COULD have gotten knocked to the floor and the cats played with it and now it has disappeared behind or under something (we turned the sofa over...)

It COULD have dropped into one of the ladies' bags and mistakenly been taken home... No phone calls yet saying someone discovered a battered camera in their purse.

It COULD have ended up in some odd place in my frenzied cleaning. Tetsu thinks this is the most likely. I've checked the freezer and inside the washing machine. I've checked under blankets in made up beds. No camera.

You know, if I don't find it soon this is going to affect you all! How can I have a blog if I don't have a camera??!!!

I will keep looking today.

In the meantime here is a picture (that I downloaded with the rest of my Disney Sea pictures yesterday morning) that I snapped right off the Disney Sea waterfront in the evening. Mt. Fuji!!!

I hope this picture will hold you until I find my missing camera.

Surprise!

2012-01-10T08:53:00.006+09:00

Guess where Tetsu and I went yesterday!

TOKYO DISNEY SEA!!!

Tetsu's been talking about it for awhile but I couldn't get in the mood... It's too far away. Choco would be out in the yard all day and most of the night in the cold. What are two oldies going to be doing at Disneyland?

When I was a child my family went to Disneyland A LOT! We lived only about 20 minutes away. I got tired of Disneyland!

After Tetsu and I moved to Nikko we took the kids to Tokyo Disneyland quite a few times. As we wandered around the park yesterday Tetsu and I recalled memorable visits. The time we took our dog with us and left her in the pet area. Takumi was 6 or 7 years old and just before closing hours he disappeared in the crowd. As Disneyland staff sent out "lost child" alerts throughout the park, we realized we needed to get the dog out of the pet area before they completely closed up and so Tetsu dashed there first. And there was Takumi, waiting OUTSIDE Disneyland in front of the pet area.

"I knew you wouldn't leave without Shoko (our dog). So I figured this was best place to wait."

Anyway, yesterday Tetsu and I left at 6:30 am and headed for Disney Sea. We arrived around 8:30. Hey, not so far away after all! The park opened at 9:00 and we waited expectantly. We've never been to Disney Sea! What is past those gates?

A volcano!

Oh, too much to describe! Tetsu and I had absolutely no idea of what to see or where to go so we followed the crowds racing here and there to the various park areas. Mermaid Lagoon. Arabian Coast. Mediterranean Harbor, American Waterfront. Lost River Delta. Mysterious Island. Port Discovery.

Of course there was a lot of waiting everywhere but Disneyland does a good job of making the wait interesting with lots of things to look at. And there is the FastPass system which helps a lot.

Although Tetsu and I did feel a little ancient (the only other people there our age were accompanying grandchildren) our hearts were young and there were many, many things that amazed and delighted us!

As evening fell, the lights came on and that made Disney Sea even more magical! We had planned to leave about 6:00 but Disney at night is irresistible and we stayed until nearly 9:00. (Poor Choco!)

I'm afraid this was the only picture of the two of us that I got... and it isn't very good, but I'd better include it as a record of our trip.

There was a wonderful water show near the end of the evening... One that we weren't expecting at all!!! Such beauty made with lights and spotlights and animation, and color, water and fire! Very, very exciting!!

Tetsu and I had a wonderful time and I'd love to visit Disney Sea again!

A leisurely quilt show visit

2012-01-08T08:49:00.007+09:00

Yesterday Tetsu and I planned a outing with a few errands. Buy dog and cat food... pick up some new bifocal glasses...talk to the car dealer. Nothing exciting.

But on the way, Tetsu made a detour and dropped me off in front of the cultural center.

"I read in the newspaper this morning that there is a quilt exhibition here today. Why don't you go look at the quilts while I go talk to the car dealer."

"Wow, what a nice surprise. Thank you so much. Call me when you get back near the cultural center and I'll meet you outside."

Once at the small exhibition I was looking around when my cell phone rang.

"Did you find the exhibition? I'll be back in about 30 minutes."

No problem with finding the exhibition. The problem was that my cell phone suddenly announced the there was no more battery power left. "Please recharge your phone."

HOW!?! Not at the cultural center!!!

There are few scenarios that I can think of that can make for a full blown husband and wife disagreement. How many times has he told me to keep my cell phone charged. Here I am on one side of town with a dead cell phone and my husband is expecting to contact me by phone. Once he figured out that my cell phone was dead and he'd have to park his car, (paid parking) and come looking for me in the cultural center, he'd be a very grumpy person and we might as well forget doing the rest of the errands together.

I FLEW out of the exhibition and began running down the street.

"Convenience store..... Convenience store..... Where is there a convenience store when you need one?! They are usually on every corner!"

I ran up to one corner, looked up and down the street, ran to another corner. No convenience store. Should I just go back and stand in front of the culture center and pretend that I spent a leisurely 30 minutes looking at quilts? By now Tetsu might have called to tell me he was heading back. Should I go back into the exhibition and wait there? If he knows I have a dead phone he'll come looking for me there... Keep looking for a convenience store!

I found one! I found the battery corner, and I found the portable recharger for my type of cell phone. I grabbed it and pleaded with the girl at the cash register.

"I need to recharge my cell phone immediately! Is this right and can you show me where my recharge outlet is on my phone? How do I use this!!!???"

There were a few tense moments while I waited for my cell phone to reload.... Yeah!

With a few minutes left, I went back to the quilt exhibition and took some pictures. When Tetsu called to say he was cruising around the back of the culture center, I was able to trip lightly out the back door and meet him on the street.

"Did you have a nice time? Were there some good quilts?"

"Lovely, just lovely."

Warning!!!

2012-01-07T08:35:00.005+09:00

KANEKO-SAN!!!! DON'T LOOK AT THIS POST!!!!

Okay. Do you think that will warn her off?

Yesterday was the last day of the holidays. This weekend Tetsu is home and school and work etc. starts for me on Tuesday. This means that my extended sewing time is coming to an end. And when I realized that, I realized that I hadn't made any progress on remaking Mrs. Kaneko's quilt. Here I've been thinking about it for months, putting it off until the holidays and the holidays were almost over with nothing being done.

Be bold! Make that first cut!

And so I did. Gulp!

I wanted to save as much of the original quilt as possible... so I was careful not to cut through any fabric that might be reused.

And this is what has happened to Mrs. Kaneko's quilt. See... I didn't want her to burst into tears.

Okay... okay... Don't panic... Tanya, you are making this a better quilt. It will take time and some thought and effort but it CAN be done.

What does a panicked quilter do? Call her mentor. Mrs. Furui.

In less than 45 minutes I was over at Mrs. Furui's house with the cut out blocks and the left over quilt wreckage... plotting the next step. Mrs. Furui took a picture of me for historical reference.

Okay. The next step... Between the two of us, we decided that it would be best to lap quilt the blocks (they are held together by the long-ago quilting around the blocks) and then put the blocks back together later. And then use a new backing for it all.

As we were discussing, the kindergarten principal came visiting and though she knows nothing about quilting she knows her Bible.

"The Bible says something about sewing old wine skins to new ones... I think you should have left the quilt the way it was."

Too late now! I can't give the quilt back to Mrs. Kaneko in this condition!

Never fear! I WILL make this into a beautiful quilt. (Again.) I left Mrs. Furui 4 blocks to lap quilt for me...

Kimono shirts

2012-01-06T09:45:00.009+09:00

A few days someone asked to see the kimono shirt that I was wearing. I have a feeling I wrote about each of the shirts I made back in 2007 but I can't find all the posts so you'll have to read it all here again if you are a long time visitor.

This post about cutting up the black and white kimono is sort of interesting... You can see the original kimono jacket that Tetsu's aunt was wearing at our engagement ceremony. Go check it out and have a laugh!

Kimonos are fantastically expensive things, all hand made. Most are made of silk though winter ones will be made of wool. The simple cotton summer kimonos are called yukata, not kimono. When I say fantastically expensive, I'm talking about hundredS of dollars. Hundreds and hundreds! A kimono is a lifetime purchase, something that will be worn for generations and generations, passed down and cherished.

Except if you have a foreign daughter-in-law... Well, actually very few young women wear kimono nowadays, except for an entrance ceremony or graduation. It is no longer considered everyday wear. Until the year that Tetsu and I were married (not long after his father passed away) Tetsu's mother still wore kimono daily. She said that Tetsu's father didn't like her wearing western clothes.

When Tetsu's mother gave me a box of her old kimono I knew I would never wear them as is and so I chose a few I especially liked, borrowed a sewing book from the library and started cutting and sewing. This is a great act of courage to cut up a kimono!!!!

I have made two shirts and two vests.

One thing about sewing with kimono is that since it is so expensive you want to get the most out of the cloth. Another thing is that the designs are overall and it is nice to leave the fabric in as big a piece as possible to show of the original design. For that reason, my shirts are just long straight, square blocks with similar block sleeves. I liked the overlapping collar just because it reminds me of the original kimono.

Now, these could be said to look like a sack I'd thrown over my head... No form, no body fitting darts and curves. Just straight. Well that is good for hiding extra flab... and the shirts are comfortable. Most people just notice that I'm wearing a remade kimono and will comment on that. I get a lot of comments when I wear my kimono shirts and I know it is not because of my great sewing, nor how fantastic I look in them. It is because this foreigner has cut up an expensive kimono!!!

A couple of other interesting things I've noticed about my kimono shirts is that when I wore them in America not one person commented nor asked about them. I felt very out of place like I was wearing a Halloween costume or something. What I wear in Japan does not always go over so well in the States (and vice versa). So I don't take my kimono shirts with me to the States when I visit anymore.

Another thing about kimono shirts is that I know that they will remain in my closet for the rest of my life. Just like Tetsu's mother wouldn't consider throwing away a kimono (give them to Tanya) I will never be able to throw them away or take them to a recycle shop. They are valuable pieces of attire (whether they look good or not). For that reason, I hesitate to make more... I already have too many clothes in my closet! I don't need another kimono shirt that will live there forever!

Still.... I have some beautiful kimonos that could turn into great kimono shirts... Maybe I'll go take them out of the box and look at them again...

Holiday sewing

2012-01-05T08:16:00.008+09:00

We're on the last couple days of New Year's break. I'm spending most of the mornings sewing and putting in an hour or two of correcting someone's thesis. I like to do correcting though it usually takes more time than I expect it will.

Sewing. I started the Crazy Goose Chase! A couple of years ago, Julie of Joe Tulips Quilts, sent me the pattern after I commented on her lovely quilt. The pattern has been on my bookshelf for over a year but I felt it needed undivided attention... like a school holiday. It is a Stack and Whack type of pattern, one that I've never done before, thus the concentration needed. I also was getting frustrated by all the fabric that I have that doesn't get used and thought that this would be a good way to mix and match a large quantity of scrappy fabrics at one time. (Isn't it interesting that we have all this fabric yet, when we want to make something, nothing seems quite perfect? With all the stuff in my drawers why did I have such a job finding 16 dark fabrics and 16 light fabrics? If it isn't dark or light then what is it?!)

I spent Monday and Tuesday choosing fabrics and cutting them out. Gave that roller cutter a workout cutting through 16 fabrics at one time! I need to go buy a new blade this week. Yesterday I began sewing the first blocks. After today's post I'm going upstairs and seeing if I can put together all the "Geese" blocks. Progress report tomorrow.

I also have done my homework on the bazaar quilt and put together all the tree blocks I was supposed to make. Yeah! That's done. And I've been working on stars for the Star Within a Star quilt. I didn't take pictures of those and still have at least 10 more to make. So you see I've been working on crossing things off my list! (The Alabama Beauty is still calling to me...)

And if I find that I have extra time on my hands, there is a BOX of quilting magazines waiting for me! Julia of Sasebo sent me a 50 pound box of quilting magazines!!! Talk about a treasure chest!!! I will spend some time pawing around in the box and looking for border ideas for the Bible quilt that still needs to be remade...

I LOVE the holidays!

Spending New Year's

2012-01-04T08:20:00.008+09:00

More on New Year's celebrations.

Traditional Japanese New Year's food consists of lots of decorative dishes that have various meanings associated with them... long life, happiness, good luck. They are all artistically arranged in lacquered boxes... Unfortunately, our family has never much liked the traditional dishes and so I gratefully skip all that preparation and just toast pounded rice cakes and serve with a variety of toppings... Let's see.. From the top there is sweet bean paste, sweet potato paste with chestnuts, sweet, soy bean powder, sweet beans and butter. I guess we like sweet... And to the far left are the toasted rice cakes... Three types... Tetsu and I ate too much.

One day Tetsu and I went to a pottery town (Mashiko and Kasama) and wandered around a pottery festival. We did this last year too but this year didn't buy anything. Instead we spent some time walking (are resting) in a pottery park that I find magical. Selected town artists have built displays in various corners of the park and it is interesting to stumble upon different works as one walks through the forest and park grounds.

Odd little blue pods with sparkling stars twinkling through the forest shadows.

A ceramic wall.

A pottery bookshelf complete with ceramic books.

A ceramic "bus station" with only luggage waiting on the "platform". (Remember... this is all pottery!)

And I love this display of a thousand sparrows sitting on rails.

But the cutest encounter of the day were these sweet little Chihuahuas dressed in kimono. Happy New Year!

Obaachan

2012-01-03T08:21:00.006+09:00

Tetsu is back at work today. He had two days off and we did things like go to the hot spa (Tetsu's favorite pastime), visit his mother, go shopping and visit a pottery festival.

Let's start with Tetsu's mother. Obaachan just turned 87 last week and she lives alone in a prefecture apartment. Tetsu's older brother lives in another prefecture and by tradition, she is supposed to be living with his family, but Obaachan prefers to live alone. Tetsu's sister lives nearby and looks in on her quite a lot. Tetsu and I live about 30 minutes away and Tetsu visits weekly. (Me, not so often... twice a month?)

There were times when Obaachan and I tried to live together but that didn't work out too well. I don't take that personally because what old fashioned mother-in-law wants to get used to living with her foreign daughter-in-law. It didn't work out for Obaachan to live with Tetsu's older brother's family or sister either, so it is not just me! This arrangement as been satisfactory for the past 30 years though as Obaachan gets older, I'm not sure how long we can maintain this lifestyle.

Obaachan has meals brought in to her daily and has a care worker who does shopping for her and helps clean up her very small apartment. Obaachan is still pretty capable. Her mental faculties are excellent though she can't see or walk well. Of course, according to Obaachan, she is on her last legs and won't be around next week but she has been saying this for 30 years.

Frankly, Obaachan is not very cheerful and it becomes depressing to be with her for very long... Long tales of the misfortunes in her life and how she has been/is being wronged (by doctors, care workers, her own children.) That is why she is living alone. But occasionally we catch Obaachan on a good day, or coax her into talking of cheerful things. Yesterday when Tetsu and I visited, we brought rice cakes and sweets (which she loves) and she chatted quite awhile with us. Sorry about the pictures... the light was behind us but it was an accomplishment just to get her to pose.

I got her laughing when she noticed the shirt that I was wearing was one of her old kimonos that I had remade.

"I THOUGHT that looked familiar! At least you got it out of a box."

Though I worried that she would be horrified by the desecration of her expensive kimonos she has always been quite pleased to see me wearing them (albeit in a different form).

So, we made Obaachan happy with a New Year's Day visit. A good way to start the year!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T08:50:00.005+09:00

Happy New Year from the Land of the Rising Sun!

Tetsu and Choco and I have taken our morning walk and eaten our New Year's pounded rice cakes. Although it is a Sunday, the post man has already delivered New Year's post cards (they all come in one lot!) and we've enjoyed looking through them. Some are computer printed, some are hand drawn. 2012 is the year of the dragon so all of them had a dragon illustration on them somewhere (and on the stamp). Sorry, no dragons on our New Year's cards. Only furry animals.

As usual, it was my job to put together a New Year's card this year. The biggest problem is putting all those animals on it! (The people get lost!) There were years when I would send our family picture to the camera shop and have them make cards for me. When they started charging me extra for each picture incorporated in the collage, Mrs. Ochiai stepped in and designed cards for me. One year I threatened not to have animals on the card at all, but relented when someone reminded me that they ARE family. And now I've figured out how to do a basic job myself. (If anyone is interested, everyday in December 2010, I posted past years' New Year cards.)

At the start of January 2012, I have on my list of Quilts to Do:

Work on remaking the Bible Quilt
Hand sew more stars for the Star Within a Star Quilt
Start a Crazy Goose Chase Quilt (first time you heard about that one right? I just thought that one up yesterday)
Put together the Alabama Beauty

And throughout the year I'll probably be working on more quilts for the Ronald McDonald House. What fun!!

The new year has started! Wishing you joy and peace. Thank you for visiting last year. I hope you'll be back this year too.

Busy in 2011

2011-12-31T08:10:00.006+09:00

December 29th was my mother's 90th birthday. Although I didn't get to be in the States for it, both Leiya and Takumi were able to celebrate it with her. I haven't heard the details yet but I think the two of them bought an arrangement of flowers from our family. (There's not a lot that Mother needs or wants these days.)

Happy Birthday Mother!

So we are at the end of the year. Tetsu and I did end of the year cleaning for most of the day yesterday and finished writing New Year's cards. (We're way late on that job). Today I'm making cookies and lining up some hand sewing for the holidays.

At the beginning of the year I got into the habit of saving the spools from the thread that I was using. Some of these were half used anyway but saving them gives me an idea of how much sewing I got done this year. That's a pretty good record of the work going on in my sewing room. (And this doesn't include the pre-wound bobbins that Mary sent me in June!)

And the results of all that sewing was this:

All sizes of quilts. Two bags. And I've included the bazaar quilt and Mrs. Furui's birthday quilt that I worked on with friends. I guess I've kept busy this year. I hope my fingers will be as productive in 2012!

Taro-kun's walk

2011-12-29T07:41:00.005+09:00

A couple of weeks ago my neighbor's dog passed away. Taro-kun was about 15 years old and for the past few months has been doddering along. Taro-kun and Choco were "sometime friends" and could sniff at each other without having a confrontation. When Taro-kun was younger, he would occasionally slip his collar and I would spot him in the rice field and bring him home. (And Mrs. Sumi has done the same for me when Choco escaped!)

Every morning, Mrs. Sumi would take Taro-kun for a walk (sometimes along with another of her many dogs) and Choco would make a lot of noise and let me know they were passing the house. I always had a supply of dog biscuits for Taro-kun and Mrs. Sumi and I would stand by the forest talking about our concerns for our animals.

In December Mrs. Sumi and I both knew that the next few weeks would be hard, but I was able to give Taro-kun a dog biscuit when Mrs. Sumi carried him home from a walk the day before he passed away. And I was able to offer my shoulder to a sobbing Mrs. Sumi early in the morning the next day before the rest of her family was awake.

Taro-kun stood guard at the corner of our neighborhood and I will miss seeing him sitting under his own personal cherry blossom tree...

Last May I happened to snap a picture of Mrs. Sumi and Taro-kun in front of my house coming home from a walk. This week I decided to try and portray their morning routine in fabric and this is what I came up with. I hope Mrs. Sumi will be comforted. She is a good friend and Taro-kun was a special friend to me too.

A Japanese house

2011-12-28T08:09:00.006+09:00

Thank you for commenting on yesterday's post. I see I needed to put a few more details into my explanation...

Traditional Japanese houses are wooden and have numerous uniform size tatami mat rooms set up against each other and separated by sliding "paper" doors. The rooms that have windows will also have paper shades as well as glass windows.　　

My house is NOT traditional though like many houses built nowadays, there is (was) one Japanese tatami room where we sit on the floor. (The other rooms in my house are pretty western though we sleep on the floor in the bedrooms.) I remember hearing a story of a Japanese/American family (wife American) who when building a house decided not to include a tatami mat room. The builder was horrified!

"Where will your husband officially greet your future son-in-law if he doesn't have a formal Japanese room to sit in?"

Tatami mats are uniform in size and a Japanese room will be measured by how many mats can be laid out. A mat is about the size of a small narrow door. Our Japanese room has 6 mats. That is normal. Larger rooms will have 8 mats. Poor working college students will live in a 4 1/2 mat apartment (and that's all there is! 4 1/2 mats.)

(This is a apartment floor plan I took off the Internet. You can see the two 6 mat rooms, a 9 mat living room/dining room/kitchen with flooring, one closet in orange, and a bathroom.)

At the end of the year, another job for a traditional Japanese family might be to have their Japanese mats refurbished, but this is a job for a professional, not one that someone will do themselves. Mats are made of packed rough straw blocks and then thin woven reed/straw mats are sewn to the top. When a top mat wears out, it is flipped over to the back side and resewn to the rough blocks. And when the top reed/straw mat is beyond use, it can be replaced. Another nice thing about tatami mats is that when one gets worn looking (for example in front of the door), the whole block can be shifted to another spot and a less worn mat laid down in its place. Tetsu removed our mats entirely a few years ago after numerous cat accidents. (There are some pictures of our removed tatami mats on those links above.)

Paper doors between rooms and on the closets, are also lightweight and removable and it is supposedly fairly easy to replace paper that gets stained or worn. There are always lovely oriental looking designs on paper doors... Mt. Fuji, flying cranes etc. I've never changed the paper on my doors (though they need changing.)

And then there is the light, white paper on the windows that I changed yesterday. Tetsu came home early and when I told him I couldn't get the one wooden lattice off of its rails, he LIFTED the top railing (supporting the second floor!) and with a lot of grunting and pulling on both our parts, we were able to get the lattice out and later back in. Tetsu! My hero! Like SUPERMAN! Lifting a house!!!

When Tetsu and I were engaged to be married, my American family and friends asked what they could send as wedding gifts.

"What color are your walls going to be? Your carpet? Your curtains?"

"Ummm. No walls (just the sliding doors). No carpets. No curtains..."

"Tanya! What kind of house are you going to be living in?!"

End of the year chores

2011-12-27T10:28:00.005+09:00

I'm already hard at work this morning and ready to take a breather. I've just spent two hours changing the paper on our windows in the Japanese room.

This is a typical end of the year project for Japanese families though I don't do this every year. The process itself isn't so difficult but taking off the old paper and washing the wooden lattice takes time... Washing away the dust and glue residue used to hold the old paper.

There are many ways to repaper windows these days and I chose the easiest... iron on! The window paper (plastic in my case... It is a little stronger against cat claws) has iron on bonding like interfacing. But the last time I did this I must have used double sided tape which made for a mess getting off (easy to put on). I will not use that stuff again! Or I could go the old fashioned way and use papering glue (the really old way was to dilute and mash cooked rice!). One year I tried Elmer's glue and it took days to get that paper off and I had to sandpaper down the wooden lattice!

I'm sure all this isn't very interesting but re-papering windows at the end of the year makes me feel very Japanese. I actually have two more windows to go but can't get the one wooden lattice out of its window rail by myself. Stuck solid. Hmmm... I wonder if our house has become tipsy since the earthquake.... The windows may have warped....

Anyway, the paper has little cherry blossoms on it and makes me wish spring were closer!

The family at Christmas

2011-12-26T08:55:00.007+09:00

Merry Christmas! It is December 26 already here in Japan and our Christmas celebrations are over. Our little church had Christmas Eve services with about 25 people and afterwards we made and ate ice cream sundaes together.

Earlier this week a package arrived from Takumi! My, my, what a surprise! (Hmmm. Poor Takumi doesn't have any money... Tetsu and I felt a pull at our hearts knowing that he had been thinking of us.) After the Christmas Eve service we opened presents, Takumi's being the first to open. His'-and-Her's coffee cups. And STRANGE ones at that! We love them! The cups are crooked... they look like they are sinking into the table. Takumi knows how I love quirky things. Tetsu and I give a clink of thanks to Takumi when we drink coffee now!

From Tetsu I got socks and leg warmers and flowers! Some of you who have been following my blog may remember Tetsu's dilemma with buying me a birthday present a couple of years ago. He wanted to buy me flowers but couldn't work up the courage to go into a flower shop. This Christmas he bit the bullet, barged into a flower shop and bought me flowers! And a lot of flowers at that! Who says Japanese men aren't romantic? (Well, I have said that about my Japanese man... but the older Tetsu gets, the more romantic he gets too.) We had to go to the recycle shop yesterday to buy a vase that would hold Tetsu's flowers.

And finally, I gave Tetsu the vest I'd knitted him. It fits just fine and he looks very nice in it. I'm not the most romantic person myself but he knows that it was knitted with lots of love.

I THINK that Leiya is in California now... maybe staying with Takumi, maybe with my brother's family. I received an abbreviated e-mail from her saying "I'm buying Takumi groceries... from you... I hope that's okay."

Merry Christmas from the Watanabes!

The true meaning of Christmas

2011-12-25T09:10:00.014+09:00

A few weeks ago, Pat sent me a lovely little Christmas story. I'm posting it here along with some of my minor Christmas decorations.

Just a week before Christmas I had a visitor. This is how it happened. I just finished the household chores for the night and was preparing to go to bed, when I heard a noise in the front of the house. I opened the door to the front room and to my surprise, Santa himself stepped out next to the fireplace.

"What are you doing?" I started to ask. The words choked up in my throat and I saw he had tears in his eyes. His usual jolly manner was gone. Gone was the eager, boisterous soul we all know. He then answered me with a simple statement . . .

"TEACH THE CHILDREN!" I was puzzled. What did he mean? He anticipated my question and with one quick movement brought forth a miniature toy bag from behind the tree. As I stood bewildered, Santa said, "Teach the children!

Teach them the old meaning of Christmas. The meaning that now-a-days Christmas has forgotten. "

Santa then reached in his bag and pulled out a FIR TREE and placed it before the mantle. "Teach the children that the pure green color of the stately fir tree remains green all year round, depicting the everlasting hope of mankind, all the needles point heavenward, making it a symbol of man's thoughts turning toward heaven."

He again reached into his bag and pulled out a brilliant STAR. "Teach the children that the star was the heavenly sign of promises long ago. God promised a Savior for the world, and the star was the sign of fulfillment of His promise."

He then reached into his bag and pulled out a CANDLE. "Teach the children that the candle symbolizes that Christ is the light of the world, and when we see this great light we are reminded of He who displaces the darkness."

Once again he reached into his bag and removed a WREATH and placed it on the tree. "Teach the children that the wreath symbolizes the real nature of love. Real love never ceases. Love is one continuous round of affection."

He then pulled from his bag an ORNAMENT of himself. "Teach the children that I, Santa Claus, symbolize the generosity and good will we feel during the month of December."

He then brought out a HOLLY LEAF. "Teach the children that the holly plant represents immortality. It represents the crown of thorns worn by our Savior. The red holly berries represent the blood shed by Him.

Next he pulled from his bag a GIFT and said, "Teach the children that God so loved the world that he gave his begotten son." Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.

Santa then reached in his bag and pulled out a CANDY CANE and hung it on the tree. "Teach the children that the candy cane represents the shepherds' crook. The crook on the staff helps to bring back strayed sheep to the flock. The candy cane is the symbol that we are our brother's keeper."

He reached in again and pulled out an ANGEL. "Teach the children that it was the angels that heralded in the glorious news of the Savior's birth. The angels sang Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good will toward men."

Suddenly I heard a soft twinkling sound, and from his bag he pulled out a BELL,. "Teach the children that as the lost sheep are found by the sound of the bell, it should ring mankind to the fold. The bell symbolizes guidance and return.

Santa looked back and was pleased. He looked back at me and I saw that the twinkle was back in his eyes. He said, "Remember, teach the children the true meaning of Christmas and do not put me in the center, for I am but a humble servant of the One that is, and I bow down to worship him, our LORD, our GOD."

The original

2011-12-24T08:40:00.008+09:00

Twenty-some years ago, my friend Mrs. Kaneko moved into a newly built house. At the time, Mrs. Kankeo was helping lead a Bible study with some kindergarten mothers and when she built her house a group of us decided to make her a New Testament quilt. The original patterns were from Sandra Shigeno, but we arranged the blocks differently, added Mrs. Kaneko's favorite Bible verse etc. Mrs. Furui, Mrs. Okutomi and I took charge of the project and many of the ladies made blocks for the quilt. When the blocks were collected, we three "experienced" quilters put the quilt together. In those days we were exclusively hand piecers and hand quilters and the finished quilt was simply quilted around the blocks and left slightly puffy. Mrs. Kaneko, who knew nothing about patchwork or quilting was overjoyed with her quilt and has had it hung on her wall in her living room for the last 20 years. Every time I visited Mrs. Kaneko (and I visited a lot over 20 years) I would look at the quilt and think,

"We really should have quilted that. Someday, when I have some time I may just take the quilt home and quilt it."

And over the years the quilt has faded, collected dust and stains, and warped out of shape. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn't in such great shape to begin with.

(In 1992 I guess I took the picture because I'm not in here... Can you spot Mrs. Furui sitting on the floor at the left with a child in her lap? Mrs. Kaneko is next to her and to the right of Mrs. Kaneko is Mrs. Okutomi. And there is smiling Leiya on the far left! She was about three!)

Mrs. Kaneko is moving in March. She and her husband will be living in a completely different part of Japan. If there was ever a time to get her Bible quilt quilted, now is the time! I took it home with me the other day, washed it up and then took it to Mrs. Furui's house on Thursday to get her advice.

Mrs. Furui took one look at the quilt and gasped.

"Did we really make this? It is terrible! The seams don't match, the lattice is warped. The colors are pretty blah (even considering that it has faded quite a lot), the border is wrinkled! This is OUR work?!"

There wasn't much positive that any of us could say about this quilt.

"But Mrs. Kaneko has cherished this quilt for the past 20 years. She's given me permission to fix it up as I like... What do you think?"

Mrs. Furui and I have plotted out a plan for adding a little life to this quilt and fixing up some of the most obvious boo-boos. I want to use the original blocks (even though they don't seem to be uniform in size) but take out the faded and stained lattice and border. And Mrs. Furui will help me quilt in all the blocks... unlike the original quilt... I have until March to get this finished!

I've never remade a quilt before! Stay tuned!

A Tisket a Tasket finished!

2011-12-22T08:28:00.005+09:00

Yesterday I put the final stitches on A Tisket a Tasket quilt! I wanted to get it done so as to show my patchwork group today. Although I started this in January 2010, it doesn't really seem like it took so long. This was a Block of the Month that I found on the Bunny Hill website (it was free when I found it) and I dragged Mrs. Furui and Mrs. Harada into making one too. They have their blocks made but haven't put it all together.

(Hmm. While going to get the link for A Tisket a Tasket on the Bunny Hill website I find that there is ANOTHER applique pattern offered for free for the next few days. If you are interested you'll have to grab it up right away! I did!)

Though I'm not very good at applique and find it more tedious than piecing, A Tisket a Tasket was fun to work on. I did very minimal quilting and didn't add any pretty stitches but it is all done by hand.

This will go to a friend as a late Christmas present.

How do you do?

2011-12-21T08:27:00.003+09:00

Quicky post. (It's Wednesday.)

Tetsu and I went shopping on Saturday at the local department store. As I took a breather on a bench I noticed a slacks and trouser shop with interesting mannequins. They seemed very Japanese to me.

Now why would a store have mannequins in such an odd position? Of course to show how nice and neat their slacks look when you bow!

"How do you do? Very pleased to make your acquaintance."

Christmas badges

2011-12-20T08:26:00.011+09:00

We are heading into the last week of English classes and yesterday was Monday's last class. After spending months trying to think of a new Christmas craft I could do with buttons (someone gave me a large box!) I went back to an old favorite. Safety pin badges.

I must have done this with students at least 6 years ago because it was all new to the kids who come to me now. The children like making the badges and people always comment on them when I wear one at Christmas, so the parents are impressed too. Give it a try!

You need 11 or 12 safety pins of the same size. (Size 2 in Japan. 9 beads need to be able to fit on a pin.)

The preparation is putting 9 or 10 safety pins onto the base pin. The base pin has to be opened a bit and the other pins fed onto the BACK of the pin.... through that little loop. It is no harder than trying to get a key off of your key ring but you have to feed all the other pins on the same direction...

Once all the pins are set, the badge is ready for the children.

I drew up 5 or 6 Christmas patterns on a grid using colored pencils. Each grid is 9 beads square. (except for the JOY pin which needs 10 pins fed onto the base pin.)

After that I left it all to the children! Some chose to use the same colors I used, some were adventurous. You have to make sure they know which pin they are starting with and caution them about putting the beads in the wrong order (their picture will end up upside-down) but with an assortment of beads everyone has a great time!

Yesterday's class was mostly 2nd and 3rd graders and they had no trouble stringing the beads though there were a few poked fingers when closing the safety pins.

A last pin going through all the pins at the back will stabilize the whole badge.

This is a craft I will do again (in another 6 years when there is a new batch of children!)

Christmas pageant

2011-12-19T08:46:00.005+09:00

Yesterday was a busy Sunday; church and then the kindergarten Christmas program that lasted until evening.

The children's program was a success. Well, with more than a hundred cute children, no matter what they do the parents' eyes will be sparkling!

There were a few extra special moments. A few weeks ago when choosing parts for the Christmas pageant (a musical), one slightly autistic girl, M-chan, volunteered to be the innkeeper's wife. She was enthralled with the innkeeper's wife's costume of an apron and kerchief. And when deciding who would be the innkeeper, M-chan turned to another handicapped boy and said,

"You should be the innkeeper!"

K-chan cannot stand on his own nor does he understand much of what is going on around him but he does have a vocabulary consisting of a few words. "Bye-bye", "Ii yo (okay)". The teachers wondered how this pageant was going to go with two main characters who don't do much talking on their own.

Yesterday, when Joseph and Mary were traveling to Bethlehem, they visited the inn and the innkeeper's wife was prompted to say:

"There is no room in the inn."

Joseph: "Hmm. That is a problem. Is there anywhere else we can stay?"

Innkeeper's wife: "There is a stable."

Joseph: "Oh that would be great. May we stay there tonight?"

And the innkeeper, K-chan said:

"Ii yo." (Okay)

Oh, the exchanges of smiles amongst the teachers! The pulling out of tissues and handkerchiefs amongst the parents!

And the teacher who played the piano for the musical this year has had some health problems and wasn't able to practice as much as she'd liked to have. It was touch and go as to whether she was even going to be able to attend the program but she did a fantastic job and I noticed throughout her music score were little pictures that the children had drawn for her to give her extra support. When it was all over, at the curtain call, the teacher was sobbing and laughing at the same time and her tears drew more from the rest of us.

The children and the teacher should be proud of themselves!

Quilting? Not a lot

2011-12-18T08:33:00.006+09:00

I've not had anything quilty to show lately have I? I'm slowly hand quilting A Tisket a Tasket. It doesn't look very exciting because all I'm doing is stitching in the ditch, but maybe the simpleness will bring out the applique even more.

Mrs. Furui sent me an e-mail with pictures thanking me for my help on the Christmas quilt that she and her volunteer group have been making for a local hospital. (I made two blocks.) Mrs. Furui did all the hand quilting.

And this week I received a cute little chicken pot holder (made with cat fabric) from Callie. Doesn't it sit nicely on my kettle?!

Donations to Japan?

2011-12-16T08:31:00.007+09:00

Not too much going on. I ran errands. Got my hair cut. Bought winter ski pants (hopefully I can wear them while I do crosswalk duty. They look enough like my uniform but are WARM!) I think I have decided on a Christmas craft to do with the English classes next week and I bought beads and such for that. Went to the vet to buy cat food.

Last week someone asked me about the animals in northern Japan. They had seen a video about pets left behind and their plight. The person wanted to know if there was any way to send a donation to help.

I checked out the Internet and then talked to my vet yesterday. There is an organization, JSAVA, Japan Small Animal Veterinary Association, that is selling goods to donate to the centers helping the animal population in the north but I can find no way for someone outside of Japan to send donations to it. I wrote about this in an August post and you can see the T-shirt better there.

Many local veterinarians sell the specially designed T-shirts and handkerchiefs in their clinics and the money is sent to centers caring for rescued animals... neutering, feeding, purchasing cages and leashes, supporting care staff who rescue and feed the animals, walk dogs and locate new homes. My vet said that neutering the animals is the biggest job right now, as many kittens and puppies have been born, and then finding homes for the young. Cats that have been rescued are more content than dogs because they don't much mind being kept in a small space as long as they are fed. It is the dogs that are frustrated by lack of exercise and human contact.

I find all this so disturbing to think about. I don't have to go to northern Japan to know that there are animals who need help, there are some down the street from me. At the reception desk my vet has a donation box and I have decided that whenever I go I will put $20 in the box. (And with 7 animals I really do go quite a bit!) This isn't a short term problem. As long as I have animals of my own I hope I can continue to support the organizations that are willing to work for others.

If you can't help one of northern Japan's animals, think about helping a local animal organization near you.

Joy to the World

2011-12-15T09:25:00.006+09:00

Yesterday I was at the kindergarten for the Christmas program's dress rehearsal. I've shown similar pictures in previous years but I'll show some again. The eldest class, (age 5) are dressed in robes and hold lighted candles throughout the service. The Mothers' Choir sings softly throughout the service, the younger children carry penlights... After the Candle Service, the children perform songs and the finale is a Christmas pageant. The kindergarten's program will be this Sunday.

My blog friends know Mrs. Furui as my patchwork mentor but you don't know that she has also led the kindergarten's Mothers' Choir for more than 20 years (and tried to get me involved but I'm not much of a groupie...) And the wonderful pianist is Mrs. Takagishi, another patchwork group member (pssst... you've known her as our "least confident patchwork member".) Mrs. Takagishi accompanies the Mother's Choir and also teaches Rhythm and Music to the kindergarten children.

Now... will this video upload today?

Kizuna

2011-12-13T18:10:00.005+09:00

Yesterday Japan announced the annual Chinese character chosen by public ballot. The character chosen to represent this year was KIZUNA, which means bonds or ties.

Every year the Japanese Chinese Character Calligraphy Society challenges the public to select a character and then a calligraphy temple priest in Kyoto will announce the character by writing it in ink by brush. (picture from the Internet)

"Bonds".

In English the word isn't very impressive. But in Japanese the nuance is the connection between team mates, between family members, between people. And one of the reasons why kizuna was chosen was because of how the bonds between people during and immediately after the earthquake developed. Couples who had resisted marriage suddenly were made aware of the importance of their beloved and wedding "knots" were tied. Connections were made between strangers thrown together in evacuation centers. The compassion of the international community linked Japan to the wide world. Families found comfort in togetherness.

As many of you who have been reading my blog since March know, I was with Lorraine from Australia when the earthquake struck. We escaped from the bottom of a rock quarry and spent the next two days in a cold house keeping each other calm and trying to clean up. (Tetsu, stayed with the convalescent home). Lorraine and I were patchwork friends before the earthquake but experiencing a major earthquake together definitely strengthened the bonds between us. I understand how she feels about her family here in Japan maybe more than her Australian friends. She has seen me at my panicked, distraught worse. For the rest of my life, when I recall the hours of the March 11, 2011 earthquake I will see Lorraine's face!

When Lorraine and I were racing out of the quarry a young couple sped past us, the young man protectively leading the girlfriend to safety. As we all sat around outside hanging onto benches while the earth shook, the young man comforted the frighted girl even finding her something to drink from a nearby vending machine. It occurred to me that if that young couple hadn't been seriously dating before, the boy sure racked up positive points in the girl's eyes for his gallant actions after the earthquake! She will never forget him, that's for sure!

When I told one of my friends this story she sighed and said,

"Yes. My son was visiting Tokyo with a classmate (female) when the earthquake hit. They ended up walking for hours, had to stay in an evacuation center over night, huddled together to stay warm. He even brought the girl back to my sister's house until transportation arrangements could be made to get back to college. That relationship may be sealed thanks to the earthquake."

So here and there, new bonds between people were made this year and old bonds were strengthened as we realized how important our loved ones are to us. People have supported each other through radiation scares and the plummeting economy, and banded together to commit to rebuilding northern Japan. (Calligraphy care of Tetsu!)

I write to and hear from Lorraine in Australia quite a bit. She is even planning another trip to Japan in January! (Tetsu's comment was "a courageous woman coming back to who knows what!")

And when we sign off on our e-mails Lorraine and I always write,

"Love,
Your comrade from the quarry."

Yep. Bonded for life! KIZUNA!

Cold

2011-12-13T08:24:00.010+09:00

Grrr. I am a Southern California gal. I do not like cold winters. But here I sit in a cold Japanese house that has no central heating and poor insulation.

When I first came to Japan 30 some years ago, I lived in one of the coldest areas in Japan, Iwate Prefecture. Now, I've lived in snowier places since then (the west side of Japan gets more snow) but Iwate and the city of Morioka (where Tetsu grew up) is considered the coldest outside of the northernmost island of Japan. (Someone is going to remind me that there is a farther north prefecture on the main island that is pretty cold but Morioka is located in a basin and the temperatures really fall there.) ANYWAY, it was cold!

The first year I really didn't believe that humans were meant to live in Iwate. How could anyplace be so cold! I wore a heavily padded kimono coat CONSTANTLY, even to the classes I was teaching and I stayed close to the kerosene heaters not getting anywhere near the blackboards. I burned holes in the back of my kimono coats because I got so close to the heaters! This is slightly risque to say, but I wondered at the romance in my friends' life when both husband and wife wore long-johns and scarves to bed!

I have been back to visit Iwate Prefecture and though the outside is still breathtakingly cold, the houses are warm! (warmer.) Better insulation and heating in the newer northern homes...

Tetsu and I bought a nice fuel burning stove recently. It heats the living room well. JUST the living room. In the dining room where I teach I have an electric heater under the throw rug so that the ladies' toes stay warm (but often feet have to compete with cats).

Until recent years, Tetsu and I just slept in a freezing room (I remember when I lived in Iwate I would wake up with the frozen condensation on the blanket around my face!) but last year I bought a portable radiator and covered the bedroom door with one of my quilts. This year I'm thinking of buying window insulation (much like popping plastic for shipping things.)

And finally, we have a heated mat for the sofa so that Tetsu can stay warm while he watches TV. The cats absolutely LOVE the heated mat. Not much room for Tetsu on the sofa.

(The heated toilet seat is lovely but how long can one sit on a heated toilet seat?)

We are doing what we can to stay warm!

What's cooking?

2011-12-12T08:22:00.008+09:00

You people are going to know my kitchen well enough to come over and do some cooking for me!

I knew I was going to post about this when I showed my refrigerator because last week I bit the bullet and ordered a new gas range!!! And yesterday it arrived.

Our old range (two burners, 15 years old) started sputtering this fall. One of the burners wouldn't stay on for more than two or three minutes. That left me with ONE burner to cook dinner on! Tetsu wanted to fix the gas range... and he tried! Took it apart, brushed the gas outlets to clear them of debris, jiggled, wiggled and pushed buttons. A couple of times he even claimed that he'd fixed it! But in a day or two the burner wouldn't work again.

Now, I can't think of anything more dangerous than a poorly functioning gas range. And to be honest, I didn't really trust Tetsu's repair capabilities. A new range seemed to be a non-luxury, must be purchased item.

I could have opted for spending a fortune and revamping my kitchen to an electric Induction Heating system. That is the way many homes are going and for awhile this was lauded as the future mode for cooking in Japan. Because of the March earthquake and the scheduled black outs, some people determined that having an all electric home might not be the perfect solution and gas ranges are making a comeback. (Besides the initial costs, you have to replace all your cookware too....No thank you.) I did NOT want an IH cooking system which was a mighty relief to Tetsu.

I started on my quest of a reasonable gas range. For such a small appliance, there are numerous options nowadays in Japan. Did I want the high temperature burner on the left or the right? Did I want drip pans? Flushed heat for equal grill cooking? Water in the grill or waterless?

I knew I wanted a waterless grill. What does that even mean? It used to be that when grilling fish in the grill (it is called a fish grill... That's what Japanese grill in it. FISH!) the fish oil would fall into the pan and be hard to clean so someone figured putting water in the bottom of the grill solved the problem. Unfortunately I found it difficult to clean out the grill without spilling the messy water all over the floor. I wanted a WATERLESS grill (using Teflon these days I think...)

I also wanted flush grill heating (because when I flipped my fish to cook on the underside the fish would fall apart.) I didn't want drip pans because I wanted to be able to wipe up with a swish of a rag. (I dream of this range improving my cleaning skills). Okay... and while we're dreaming, throw in a thermostat and a timer. OOooh... Really going for fancy!

Tetsu stayed out of the purchasing process. I am going to buy myself a gas range. I am the one who will use it. After taking a survey with my friends and students I made a decision and then started combing the stores. Expensive! And then I went online and found what I wanted at a reasonable price. AND I PUSHED THE PURCHASE BUTTON AND BOUGHT MYSELF A NEW GAS RANGE!!!! I don't know what surprised Tetsu more. That I bought myself the fancy range or that I did it online. He was sure I would read the website wrong (in Japanese) and end up with something completely different.

BUT I DID IT! I have a brand new sparkling range in my kitchen! It is a set in type... (came in a box and I hooked up the gas hose and set it on the counter.) This too is pretty normal in the Japanese home. (As opposed to built in types that have three burners and a carpenter has to be called in to remove a counter or something.) It is Teflon coated all over for easy cleaning!

Last night I cooked on it and Tetsu politely suggested that the soup tasted delicious because of my new gas range. Flattery, flattery.

Now I have no excuse not liking cooking. Except that I'm going to hate to use my new range and dirty it up...

Lunar eclipse

2011-12-11T09:42:00.006+09:00

I am normally in bed by 9:30. Tetsu claims the TV after dinner and usually watches sports. If I have hand quilting or piecing to do I sometimes bear with the sports just to get my handwork done but I really look forward to reading in bed for 30 minutes or so. In the morning, Choco and the cats let us know that they are ready for breakfast around 5:30 and I don't find it that difficult to get out of bed, feed them and take a walk.

Last night throughout Japan, a full lunar eclipse was visible from 9:45 to 11:50. And it was a cold clear night so the moon was lighting up the countryside! And the eclipse won't be visible in Japan again for another 11 years. It seemed to me that a lunar eclipse was something to stay awake for.

Interesting... I'm not knowledgeable about astronomy so I probably didn't appreciate what I was seeing... Yes, that's the moon... Yes, it looks like a cloud is covering the moon.... Yes, the moon is hidden more than it was 30 minutes ago. This must be the eclipse!

Unfortunately, it is impossible to take a picture of a lunar eclipse with my little Sony digital camera. My hands wobbled. All I got was a spot in the sky or an orange blob. (Did you know that when the eclipse is full, the moon, hidden in the shadow of the earth, turns orange? It really did!)

At 11:50 I took my last glance of the moon from the front yard.

"Yep. That's the moon. Yep. I can now say I have seen the eclipse. Time for bed."

This morning Tetsu and I woke up after 7:00. Late for us! The cats were cranky and Choco was desperate for a potty run. I blame it on last night's eclipse.

And since I stayed up and took the pictures I'm posting them though I know they look like blobs.

Our refrigerator

2011-12-10T09:38:00.007+09:00

I'm afraid this is a boring post again today. I cleaned my refrigerator. Now why in the world would anyone write a whole blog post about that? And take pictures?!

This is my refrigerator. I decided that it needed a scrub before the end of the year (Japanese do all their spring cleaning at the end of December...) This refrigerator has served us well for nearly 20 years. When we bought our house and moved in, our American friends who were returning to Japan, left us all their furniture including their refrigerator.

Our refrigerator is very basic. Japanese kitchens do not have a water supply that will feed into a refrigerator (for an automatic ice cube maker or water dispenser). The Japanese housewife tends to go shopping daily and so a huge double width refrigerator with a giant freezer isn't really necessary. (And it wouldn't fit in the tiny Japanese kitchen!)

There is a vegetable compartment on the bottom, refrigeration in the middle, and freezer on the top. (Oops. I didn't really clean out the freezer... Just moved things around a bit there.) I have two ice cube trays that I fill by hand. I have heard that recent Japanese refrigerators have a tank that you can fill with water and THAT will supply water for an "automatic" ice maker, but we are not that technologically advanced yet.

Our refrigerator doesn't beep when the door is left open, nor have eco mode etc. If I really wanted to be ecologically minded I could buy a refrigerator curtain that hangs inside the refrigerator and keeps the cold air inside. That seems like it would be a bother to paw through to get to your food but I hear that it is a good way to save electricity... (Picture from the Internet.)

Tetsu noticed this morning that our refrigerator was shining. Gives you an idea of how long it had been since I last cleaned it!

Comments

2011-12-09T08:28:00.004+09:00

I thought Maggie's comment yesterday was so funny.

"I wonder if you ever read your comments."

Hah! Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am keeping a blog for myself and family not for the number of comments that come in! Comments are encouraging, enlightening, they make me feel like I have friends who care about me. But if I were just writing for comments then I might not write about the dull everyday things or I might avoid some topics.

But Maggie! I DO read every comment and strive to answer them (but sometimes get too bogged down and decide that most bloggers would prefer to be visited on their blog than get a reply to their comment). I think you are on no reply so I've never answered personally, but I do thank you for visiting!

What I DON'T do is respond to comments on my own comment page (I've seen bloggers do that). I sort of like to see how many people came visiting and with myself on there too I'd get confused. So you see... comments may be more important to me than I think.

And speaking of comments.

Lois~~~! TWO people asked on my comment page what takes you to the high seas for much of the year. They read YOUR comment on my page and would like more details! Go right ahead and fill us all in on the comments page if you feel inclined!

Knitting and piecing

2011-12-08T08:19:00.007+09:00

Now that I am done with Tetsu's Christmas vest I am back to doing random handwork. I took my four tree blocks to Mrs. Furui last week and in exchange she gave me another set of templates for another tree block.

"Since you're already finished..."

No deadline on the new block but without knitting to do I got it put together in time to hand it to her yesterday. It was almost like she was expecting it!

"Since you're already finished..."

and she handed me ANOTHER set of templates! Such a slave driver!!!

(I know that Mrs. Furui never cajoles, never pushes, never manipulates. That's why I love making things with her. And she is such a whiz about making those templates! I would never think of complaining about the homework I get from her when she is the one that does the hard work.)

I have also been knitting! Just when I get one set of needles put away I pull out another set!

This time I am making a scarf for Leiya. (Sorry Leiya, I'm blowing the surprise.) I really liked this variegated yarn that was fluffy in parts and smooth in other parts.

I found a nice pattern called Directional Scarf on the Lion's Yarn website, (I think you have to be a member of the site but it is free to join.) This isn't difficult and it is interesting.

And don't you like my little knitting needles? I found these in some yarn shop nearby and though I have the same size knitting needles the birds make me smile. (I also bought sheep needles in a different size). Talk about collecting things that one doesn't really need!

Bank talk again

2011-12-06T09:03:00.004+09:00

I've just spent 30 minutes talking with my American bank (again.)

Last week my mother , age 90, sent me a hand written letter and included a bank card. On the top of the page she wrote,

"I don't know when I wrote this. It has been on my desk awhile. G.L."

(she initials her messages... like I wouldn't know it is her?!)

My mother predicted that I'd be surprised at getting a letter from her and I was. It's been years since I've seen her handwriting! Looking good! She wrote that since the bank had sent me a new Visa card, that she decided to enclose a letter. Oh how nice. Newsy but hmmm... Haven't I heard this news before? Ah well.

I waited until this morning to try to activate my card by telephone (since I'm not in the States to use the ATM machine I couldn't do it that way.) And it didn't work! Story of my life with the bank. So I had to call and talk to someone in person and explain my predicament.

The nice lady verified and re-verified that I was who I said I was. She gave me a temporary PIN number. She said she would activate my new card and that I could cut up my old card. And I brought my old card out to look at it before cutting.

WAIT! The old card is valid longer than the new card! What does this mean? The nice bank lady went away for 10 minutes and came back telling me that I should use my OLD card and cut up my NEW card! And that the old card's PIN number would remain the same and my problem was now solved. Nothing was changed.

Now... why did we have this rigmarole? I have a feeling that along with the old news in my mother's letter, she also enclosed an old bank envelope... with an older card that never got sent to me (last year?). That may have been why I've had so much trouble with my bank this year...

The nice bank lady never hinted that I might be the culprit in this card game and she apologized profusely for any inconvenience (although I'm pretty sure the inconvenience came from my side.)

Got to love my mother for trying!

I got a nice handwritten letter out of it!

Seminar disaster

2011-12-05T08:35:00.004+09:00

On Saturday I was "required" to help with a city "Safety" seminar. I think the police department and the traffic safety office collaborated on this. My job was to stuff envelopes, greet people at the door and hand out reflector gloves. There must have been about 20 of us crosswalk guards doing odd jobs (some were sent out to direct parking).

It was a LONG~~~ program starting at 1:30 and I actually had no idea what the seminar was about. City Council members and the mayor giving speeches, police chief speaking on the importance of safety, a couple other people who I never figured out. While listening to the speeches I sat wondering WHY this was important. (Isn't that terrible of me?) The same words used in each speech, the same points...keep our children safe; the elderly population is growing and drivers need to be careful of them; Japan is trying to recover from an astronomic earthquake.

After speeches someone in the police department got up and read traffic accident casualty figures. Then someone else in the police department got up and read city crime figures. All the figures were written on a paper so I don't really see the need to go over it all in such detail. (I feel like such a bad city citizen writing the above.)

Next there was a small "musical" about watching out for those pesky elderly that are going to jump out at your car. The musical was put on by one of the young police officers and his wife and was really cute, but maybe grade school drama level.

Next a bicycle simulator was brought out on stage and another "grade school drama" was put on about being careful while riding a bicycle. The "grandma" who demonstrated the simulator wasn't very good at using the simulator so it took many falls and many restarts before she got the hang of it. She and another policeman did another skit about watching out for the elderly.

By the end of that everyone started filing out of the auditorium. I stood at the exit wishing people a good day.

"What are you doing! The main speaker hasn't begun yet!"

What? But it is already 4:00. I thought city auditorium was supposed to be empty by 5:00... But sure enough the main speaker was being introduced to the minimum audience who had stayed.

"Forget the introduction! I've spoken to over a thousand groups and this is the first time I have been kept waiting nearly an hour! I had a lot of very important information to speak about today (earthquake and disaster preparation and protection) but I'm going to have to skip most of it to be finished by 5:00."

The speaker was ANGRY!!

His talk was interesting but he let his irritation show throughout the hour.

"Do you know what this sign means? Raise your hands if you think it means this... Okay, raise your hands if your think it means THIS. Well, that sure proves how little Nikko city citizens know about safety. I label you WORST 1 of all the places I've ever spoken."

And at another point, speaking about fire prevention...

"...and first of all, yell out 'FIRE!!!!!!'"

and the speaker let out a scream that had us jumping in our seats... And I was listening carefully!

"There! That should wake up those of you who feel the necessity to sleep while I'm talking!"

As seminars go, Saturday's was a disaster.

A vest finished

2011-12-04T08:08:00.006+09:00

Yee-hah! I have finished Tetsu's vest! Hey, it looks good! It took me much longer to knit this than most of my winter knitting... the afghan stitch is tedious but makes for a thicker, less stretchy stitch. This looks like it is going to be a VERY WARM vest. I'm glad I'm finished with it though and probably won't use my afghan needed again for awhile.

Tetsu has seen me knitting this every evening for the past two months so this vest is no secret. Still, I'm putting it away until Christmas so you'll not see it on him for awhile. If I ask, please remind me that it is on a clothing box in the bedroom closet. I can picture me frantically looking for it on Christmas Eve!

Ouch

2011-12-03T09:00:00.005+09:00

Thursday I had to go for an endoscopy (stomach camera) checkup. The last one I had was 7 years ago and this time when I made an appointment the doctor said that technology had improved and the camera could be inserted through the nostril these days.

"Much easier on the patient."

I didn't know what to expect. The nurse did her prep stuff. OW!!! This is painful!

"Hmm. Let's try the other nostril. Feels the same? Okay let's go with the right side again."

I had tears on my cheek by the time she finished.

A few minutes later the nurse was back by my cot apologizing.

"I'm so sorry. I forgot to give you anesthetic. Let's do that all again."

I would rather have not but we did and it was a little easier but not much.

With the doctor the exam went smoothly and I saw my pretty pink insides. Looks good to me!

But I needed a nap in the afternoon. I sure hope I won't have to do that again for another 7 years. And next time I'll know the routine and make sure I get some extra anesthetic! OW~~!!!

Endurance race

2011-12-02T08:14:00.006+09:00

Yesterday was the neighborhood elementary school's annual "Endurance Race". The school (and others around Japan) has been doing this since education began. As can be expected, some kids enjoy this but a lot do not.

It was an cold day yesterday. All of the parents that turned out to cheer on their progeny wore fluffy down coats and mufflers that hid their faces. The kids were in gym shorts and t-shirts and stood at the starting line shivering!

"On your mark! Get set! Go!"

The first and second graders went around the school yard and then out the back of the school, along the roadside and back in the front gate (the first graders got a bit of a head start.)

A teacher brought up the end and when all those children had returned, the third and fourth graders took off with the bang of a starting gun. The third and fourth graders had to make TWO laps out of the back of the school, along the roadside and back in the front gate. My English student Soichiro made a star run coming in way ahead of everyone else! (He is usually not much of a star in other endeavors.)

The same teacher brought up the end of that group and when all those children returned, the fifth and sixth graders pounded around the yard and then had to do THREE laps out the back, along the road and back in the front. The very last girl over the finish line walked the last two laps and she was NOT a happy runner despite the fact that all the parents cheered her on and the same teacher trailing behind her kept up a running patter of encouragement.

"Come on K-chan! We're almost there! Don't give up! Yeah K-chan!"

As they turned the corner to go back into the school a little kindergartner, come to watch an older sibling, yelled out.

"Yeah Teacher! Don't give up!"

I guess so! That poor teacher ran the whole track 6 times. Albeit at the slowest child's pace...

Irons

2011-12-01T08:16:00.008+09:00

I'm still knitting. Tetsu's vest is almost finished.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Ide (the knitting wizard!) brought over her iron to show me. Mrs. Ide has studied knitting (at a school!). She knows all these tricks and tips for making something extra nice. The one tip she says over and over again is

"Blocking the knitted piece is the most important part of knitting."

Now I don't understand that. I spend weeks knitting parts, put them all together, sew in the dangling yarn ends and give the whole thing a few tugs before wearing. A couple years later I may send it to the dry cleaners. But Mrs. Ide says that's all wrong. It is important to steam iron each piece before connecting them, it is important to steam seams open, it is important to steam set the ribbing. Once steam set, you never have to do it again... Ever!

Okay... I tried steaming Tetsu's vest... with my cute little pink plastic iron. It seems to spit steam AFTER I set it back in its cradle. And I don't see much difference even after I steam iron my knitted pieces (sorry Mrs. Ide). Is my iron bad or is it me?

Mrs. Ide's iron is one that she bought 35 years ago for a couple hundred dollars (for an iron 35 years ago that's pretty expensive!) She bought it for the specific purpose of using it on her knitted pieces. (She has another iron for patchwork and regular clothes ironing. It has no temperature adjustment, it has no buttons. It is just very heavy and steams (but you are NEVER are supposed to touch the iron to knitted pieces! Just the steam.) I thought the brand name was interesting. Bamboo Co. LTD.

Mrs. Ide demonstrated her steaming technique on another friend's Work In Progress and I must say that her iron does a better job of steaming than mine.

Anyway, I will finish Tetsu's vest this week AND STEAM IT!

Sky high

2011-11-29T19:44:00.006+09:00

Somewhere on the other side of the mountains is an electric power plant and high tension wires extend from it going across the fields and over the farms and forests.

Yesterday when I was driving home from somewhere I looked up and saw little dots within the wires.

Crows? No... Too far up and too far away to be able to see crows.

Those... are... people up there! I stopped the car and took some pictures. I wonder if they noticed me down on the ground appreciating their hard work. How would you like to have a job like that? I'm glad other people can do it!

Stuff, stuff, stuff

2011-11-28T08:35:00.004+09:00

A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to be a "minimalist". I got that term from the book, Simplify, that I downloaded on my Kindle. Years and years ago (before blogging) I was a big follower of Flylady and my house looked pretty good. I had routines and decluttering zones and shopping lists. I religiously threw away 11 pieces of junk daily (it could even be a bread package tab... just so I'd hit 11.)

But once I started blogging I got away from visiting the Flylady website daily and my house has crumbled... or maybe better said, jumbled. Stuff, stuff, stuff.

One major problem is that I don't know where the dump is in our town. Taking things to the dump has always been Tetsu's job and HE only gets there once every 4 or 5 years.

Another problem is that there are no thrift shops in Japan. There are recycle shops where the shop offers a piddling for the few things you bring in but more often than not the shop tells you that you don't have anything that anyone would want (that's why I'm bringing it to the recycle shop!) and send you home with your box. It hardly seems worth the trouble.

And thirdly, garbage is set out in a community trash area... not in front of the house, so if you put your trash out on the wrong day then you get an angry block head (that's Block-head as in neighborhood block, not blockhead...) confronting you. What with paper going out on one day, burnables going out on another, cans and glass on another day and plastics on still another day, I am confused about when to throw away the old picture frame (wooden) that has metal tabs on the back (dangerous) and glass on the front (glass). And I am at my wits end about what to do with an old TV and computer printer and old carpets! So there they sit littering my bedroom.

I've asked Tetsu to go to the dump. He said it costs money to take things to the dump. WELL??? Does he want to start his own dump in our bedroom (and storage room and back kitchen cupboard?)

The other day Tetsu invited me to come to his convalescent home's bazaar. Bazaars are great places for people to get rid of their UNUSED stuff. It has to be unused though... Pretty dishes that were given as a wedding present (wedding presents are given to the guests at weddings), towels that your mother-in-law bought but you don't like... Those sort of things. I went to the bazaar and bought a bag of rice and a sturdy serving tray. Also a pair of bead earrings that a group made. I ate some fried noodles and fried chicken and had good time.

BUT!!! That night Tetsu came home with a box!

"Left-over stuff from the bazaar. I just bought it all for a few thousand yen as a donation to the convalescent home."

Bear chopstick holders. A bowl without a lid. Pretty plastic dishes. A wooden trivet. Candles holders, hand towels, a cow cup, a single portion size pot. A set of white dessert dishes.

So much for being a minimalist. I frowned at all of the stuff poking out of the box.

"So, what are we going to do with all this?"

"The ladies in the office predicted that you wouldn't be happy about all this stuff. They said, "Oh, your wife is going to be angry at you!" I'll put it in the back closet."

The office ladies know me better than Tetsu does. I guess the box will stay in the back closet until another bazaar someday.

Family news

2011-11-27T08:48:00.004+09:00

Yesterday I had my dose of family time.

First I called my mother to wish her a happy Thanksgiving. In years past my mother would call once week and we would talk for an hour on the phone (and the phone rates were high in those days!!) But these days she no longer calls and I know the conversations I'll have with her will go around in a circle without much news. On my side of the world, no children to talk about so I don't have much to tell her either. I know if I bring up the topic of cats that she will be horrified that I have so many (AGAIN! Maybe two or three times during the phone call) and I know that she will ask a number of times when I am coming again and then will be disappointed when I tell her I won't visit until summer. She misses me. We had a nice 10 minute chat and signed off with her telling me that she would go directly and tell my brother and Marcy that I had called.

A few minutes later I decided to go ahead and call my brother and Marcy myself and wish them a happy Thanksgiving too. Grandma (my mother) was over there already enjoying a turkey sandwich ( she only lives on the other side of the walkway) but Marcy said she hadn't mentioned talking to me. Well, that was what she went over there for! Such is the forgetfulness of old age, but my mother still can walk across the walkway and still enjoy a turkey sandwich!

A bit longer of a chat with Marcy asking her to do a couple of favors for me, commiserating with her about the lack of news from either of my children. Though Takumi only lives an hour away, he doesn't come by much. I tried to beg off her sending Christmas presents to Japan this year ... it costs way too much and there is nothing we really need nor want. I too find it hard to buy presents for Kiana (16) and Colin (13). We talked about 20 minutes. Kiana is driving now... My brother works too hard... Normal family news.

After hanging up with Marcy I found Leiya on the computer. She was at a friend's house for Thanksgiving weekend but Marcy had just called and suggested she fly out to California for Christmas. That would be nice Christmas present for our whole family. Leiya with her grandma and uncle's family, and maybe Takumi would even turn up.

And after chatting with Leiya my doorbell rang and our good friend Toshi Suga was standing at the front door with home made pumpkin pie in hand wishing me a happy Thanksgiving! (The Suga family was featured in those Thanksgiving pictures from a couple of days ago.) After reading about my lonely Thanksgiving, they took pity on me and brought me pumpkin pie and sweet sake for my cold.

All in all I felt very loved and cared for yesterday. And that's what Thanksgiving is all about!

Trees

2011-11-26T09:30:00.004+09:00

Mrs. Furui mailed me a pattern for next year's bazaar quilt. Though she only lives 30 minutes from me, I haven't been able to get over to her part of town and with the Bargello done I wanted some sewing at my fingertips. The last I'd heard our group was going to go for house patterns. And then someone suggested trees. And from what was in the envelope I guess trees won! Not really. THIS month everyone will be making trees. NEXT month we'll be making houses. We've got a lot of time. Who knows how our village will grow!

So these are my trees for this month.

And I'm back with no sewing at my fingertips...

UNTRUE!!! Tanya, finish knitting the vest! Get some hand quilting done! Put together the Star quilt and the Alabama Beauty! You've got LOTS to do!

My Thanksgiving family

2011-11-25T08:48:00.006+09:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American blogging friends and family! I heard that Leiya is spending the day with a college friend's family and I have no idea about how Takumi spends Thanksgiving. I don't think he knows how to roast a turkey.

My family has always been a small one. My father, mother, brother and myself. My mother was an only child so no relatives on her side of the family. My father had a disagreement with his only sister so I never met that side of the family. No cousins, no aunts or uncles; grandparents living in the Midwest while we lived in California.

When I was about 5, our family became good friends with a Japanese-American family and most holidays and weekends were spent with them. The fathers played chess together. The mothers went shopping together. We children played ditch and read comic books together. The other family's grandfather and my grandfather (when he was visiting) would converse in Japanese and make us Thanksgiving dinner. Rolled eel sushi... Chicken livers and water chestnuts... Pineapple and soy sauce spare ribs... And turkey. It wasn't a typical Thanksgiving dinner but I thought we were eating what everyone ate!

Until Tetsu and I moved to Nikko, our family too didn't do much to celebrate Thanksgiving. (Well, Tetsu hardly knows what the celebration is!) For one, my oven is not large enough to roast a turkey. Turkey? Where is there a turkey?! Japanese have absolutely no idea what a turkey is... not in the wild nor in the supermarket. My poor children were missing the American tradition of Thanksgiving with family!

However, as history tends to repeat itself, our Japanese-American bi-cultural family became good friends with another Japanese-American bi-cultural family, the Yamadas. The fathers did judo together. The mothers ate chocolate together. The children played video games and read comic books together. And for many, many years we celebrated Thanksgiving at Marlene's house along with other friends with US affiliations. Marlene had the big American oven and she ordered a turkey from some specialist store. One friend, who often made business trips to the States would think ahead and bring back cans of black olives and cranberry sauce. Yum! And the rest of us would pot-luck in pumpkin pies, green bean casseroles and salads.

Marlene and Kohei live in Hong Kong these days... Sigh. No more Thanksgiving dinners around here anymore... More than missing the dinners though, I miss Marlene and all the people that gravitated to the Yamada's house.

Happy Thanksgiving Marlene! I'm thinking of you!

(Oh dear... I'm posting pictures of people (and children!) without asking... But since this is from 11 years ago, do you think they'll forgive me? Tetsu isn't as gray as he is these days. And Leiya in the yellow looks nothing like she does now. Can you even spot grumpy Takumi in the one picture? He's wearing purple.) My good friends and family!

"Inside a Rainbow" finished!

2011-11-24T08:34:00.006+09:00

I am still battling my cold (it has been a week! I'm fed up!) and don't go out much and don't get much done. Yesterday was a holiday in Japan which meant I could sew or knit as much as I liked.

And the result was......

I FINISHED THE "INSIDE A RAINBOW" BARGELLO!

I had some trouble with quilting the borders on this. Early this year I had done full feathers (meaning feathered on both sides of the vine) on the Alphabet Soup. I was very happy with the result and knew I wanted to do feathers in the border on this quilt too. But once I got started I couldn't find a rhythm and ended up getting lost... I also didn't leave enough room on the far side for a full feather... Okay... Just sew what you can... and I did. And I think it came out very well. For feathers I've decided that the more you add, the better it goes. A lot of the crookedness gets quilted out on the second sweep...

The "Inside a Rainbow" will be going to some church friends who run a foster home called Rainbow House.

"Tanya, we have that large wall in the entry and since we call ourselves Rainbow House, would you consider making a rainbow quilt for the space? If you ever have any free time or the inclination to do so, we sure would appreciate it."

I didn't know how to make a rainbow shaped quilt. My friends left the whole pattern open and have never mentioned the request again. That left me free to play with the batik fabric I have but I wasn't very successful in making a rainbow shape using the Bargello method. When I started quilting this (after a couple months pinned to my wall) I drew in arcs with a chalk pencil and quilted anyway my heart took me. I suppose I was still striving for a rainbow shape...

Actually with all the color movement, you can't really see the quilting details but maybe in the right light...? I'm considering keeping this quilt around the house until Christmas because I'd really like to show it to my patchwork friends at December's meeting. A bit of pride showing its head there...

Thursdays quilts c/o Mrs. Ochiai

2011-11-22T08:14:00.005+09:00

Still no pictures from my camera.

BUT!!!

Mrs. Ochiai sent me pictures from the Thursday patchwork day that I missed. (I haven't heard yet about what was decided for next year's bazaar quilt.)

I see that Mrs. Ochiai was busy last month and put together all the stars from the swap game. She chose stars and has been making lots of her own because she wants to make two bed covers, one for herself and one for her husband. She's got one bed cover to the flimsy stage! She will probably be hand quilting this (I assume that because she has a couple quilts already that need to be machine quilted but she lacks inspiration to get started.) Mrs. Ochiai is much farther along on this project than I am.

And here is a top that Mrs. Furui has been making for the hospital she volunteers at. Well, will you look at that! So THAT'S how she is using the two yellow stars she asked me to make for her! Obviously I didn't have much to do with this quilt since I didn't even know how the layout was going to be. Mrs. Furui has another group of ladies that she is guiding in making hospital quilts and she must have been working on the Lone Star in secret. I never saw those red colors at Mrs. Furui's house before!

I do hope that I can show something of my own this week.

Afghan stitch knitting

2011-11-21T08:24:00.004+09:00

Let's see. I've not been out and about with this cold so my poor camera hasn't been out of my handbag for days.

How about a couple scenery pictures from BEFORE I caught my cold.

These were taken one morning when the fog had settled. I love the moon still hanging there over the mountain.

While I was housebound I tried working on Tetsu's vest. Sigh... I'm not sure this year's vest is going to be a success. For one this afghan stitch just takes too long. I'm probably never going to attempt such a big project again with it. I have lots of other things I need to get done this season and my plodding along with this is getting frustrating.

Another reason is that the stitch takes a lot of yarn (and Tetsu is a larger man than many Japanese men). Of course I figured that out late and had to go back and order more yarn. Even though the color is the same the lots must have been different because I can see a difference in shade... Rats. Well, Tetsu won't notice but other people probably will.

And lastly, while trying to make a pattern on graph paper (I do things the hard way) I STUPIDLY ERASED the first figures for the armholes. ... which means the armholes on the back and on the front are different. That's not a terrible mistake but it goes to show that my brain wasn't working well under the influence of cold medicine. What ninny would erase all the figures on a paper before realizing she needed those for the second half of her project? Me-Ninny.

Persevere Tanya!

Today I'm hoping I can go up and work on the Inside a Rainbow Quilt. I'd really like to get borders quilted this week.

Ah-choo!

2011-11-17T08:37:00.003+09:00

The weather turned cold in Japan this week. And because I like to keep up with the times, I caught the first cold of the season. Rats. And yesterday was a patchwork day! Mrs. Furui had a suggestion for next year's bazaar quilt and I was planning to be included in the decision making. Too bad. I ended up going back upstairs for an all day nap... So disappointing!

I hope I gain a bit more energy by this weekend.

Inside a Rainbow

2011-11-15T08:15:00.006+09:00

I'm still quilting the Bargello. I think I've decided to name the quilt "Inside a Rainbow". I keep quilting in border designs and it looks like a rainbow getting larger and larger. I need to think about stopping pretty soon. Too much of a good thing is... too much.

Our church had Blessing the Children Day on Sunday. This is similar to the Japanese custom of Seven-Five-Three Day where children are taken at those ages to the shrine to be blessed. Right now in our church we have about 6 families with children and they were called up to the front of the church to be prayed for. Small church, huh?

Cat news. I do not know what is happening with the litter of kittens down the street. But a couple of days ago a DIFFERENT neighbor was walking her dog and carrying a kitten. This is the same neighbor that considered taking Mi when we first found her. I was so disappointed when they decided not to.

"God, why do You give me these animals? Why won't You move our neighbors' hearts to take this kitty?"

Of course since then Tetsu and I have delighted in Mi and been thankful that God wanted this kitty to be ours. When I saw the neighbor carrying the kitten I stopped and admired it a bit.

"We found it. It is blind! We took it to the vet but there's nothing to be done for it. Well, then we'll just have to take good care of it. It has become part of our family."

Talk about being confirmed that God uses all things to work for the best! If our neighbor had taken Mi a couple of years ago they might not have so readily been willing to take in a handicapped cat. I'm so happy that both Mi and this new kitten have good homes!

And my son wrote this week telling me that he too has taken in a cat. I guess it followed him home from somewhere and though he and his girlfriend put up posters and went door to door looking for the cat's owners, the cat has moved in. I forgot to ask what he's named it.

Tetsu's comment was,

"Like mother, like son."

Takumi has always loved cats so I'm not really surprised.

Tokyo Disneyland

2011-11-13T08:14:00.009+09:00

Yesterday I attended a lecture for convalescent home workers. Obviously it was Tetsu who steered me to the lecture. He wanted me to hear the speaker who is a representative of Tokyo Disneyland. It was a fascinating lecture! Although Disneyland and convalescent homes don't seem to have much in common, the speaker's point was that as a "service", customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction need to be equal for an organization or business to run well.

Anyway, I gleamed tidbits from the lecture. The training of employees (called cast members in Disney language) in greeting people, smiling and making eye contact. All points that I have found lacking in regular Japanese society but that I strive for myself. The importance of hospitality... making guests (of the Disney park) feel welcome, happy and safe, this so often gets lost in the regular running of a business or in daily life.

Did you know that Tokyo Disneyland "cast members" were lauded for their calm crowd control during the earthquake of March 11 and immediately afterward? That story has become somewhat of a mini-legend already in Japan. 30,000 "guests" were at the park that day. 3,000 "cast members" were working. However, there was very little panicking even as the Haunted House swayed and the Monorail shimmied much like a snake above the parking lot. SMILINGLY the "cast" directed the crowds to sit along the streets while areas were cordoned off. (picture off the Internet)

In one shop a child was crying from fear and one of the "cast" offered the child a large Micky Mouse doll and told her to hold it over her head as protection from things falling.

"Micky Mouse will protect you."

The other "cast members" began the same action and throughout Disneyland, soft animals and dolls were passed out to the children until the shelves all over Disneyland were bare. Large Disney bags and garbage bags were made into makeshift ponchos to keep in body heat and the "guests" spent the night in the park instead of trying to make their way along roadblocked highways. When the kitchens were reopened, food was provided for the guests.

From a business standpoint, the earthquake was devastating to Tokyo Disneyland. The park closed down for two months because the parking area buckled and liquefied during the earthquake. I first became aware that Disneyland was back and running when the TV was announcing in June that Tokyo Disneyland had reopened and was welcoming in Easter. Easter? In June?

What must have happened was that Disneyland had planned to introduce Easter into Japan. (15 years ago they had successfully introduced Halloween to Japan) but the earthquake foiled those plans in March. Disneyland decided to go ahead with the Easter parade and decorations when it later reopened. (I took this picture off the TV in mid June.)

Anyway... though I haven't been to Disneyland in years, it was nice to hear yesterday of Disneyland's policies and successes. According to yesterday's speaker, Disneyland's success isn't due to huge business know-how. It is because of people and how they interact, how they respond to needs, and how they care about others. A good thing to note in any type of organization.

In Walt Disney's words.

"It Takes People"

Sort of makes me want to visit Disneyland...

Quilting... and ripping...

2011-11-12T10:17:00.003+09:00

I'm upstairs quilting~~~ Do I know what I'm doing? Nope. But I quilt a little, use the seam ripper to take out whole areas, start over again and just keep on going. If you don't hear from me I'm wrestling with the Bargello! (A good seam ripper is worth its weight in gold.)

A walk

2011-11-11T09:06:00.010+09:00

Yesterday Choco and I got in a long walk (after a morning of Bargello basting). I thought I'd show the scenery around here in 5 minute increments.

Okay, this is the start. 11:45 at my front door with Choco raring to go!11:50. We are at a neighbor's vegetable field. Icicle radishes, Sunny lettuce, Chinese greens (and chrysanthemums in the background.)

11:55. We have walked north and are at a hay field with a dairy farm in the distance.

12:00. I made Choco pose in front of the cows. Not dairy cows I see. "Let's get out of here! I don't like cows!~" (That was Choco. I happen to like cows.)

12:05. On a back road. For the next 15 minutes there wasn't much but rice fields and forests... Never saw a car or any people.

12:20. Back into an area with houses. These are Ukoko. Choco takes great interest in these fluffy chicks.

12:25. Oh dear. I'm not too happy with these things gracing our countryside but I guess if I use the cell phone then I can't complain.

12:30. This beautiful Ginko tree stands in front of the entrance to our neighborhood. It is at its peak for fall colors.

12:30. Whoops. I cheated and put in this picture of a "bakery". This is in the other direction from the Ginko tree. The girl that runs this bakery had her boyfriend build her this shed two months ago and they decorated it up as best they could. The girl spends most of her days in the shed baking (two large ovens) and she sells her bread from that small little glass shelf out in front.

12:35. Back at my front door. I bought a handmade berry wreath (can you see them hanging under the bakery window?) at the bakery, as well as an onion bun for my lunch.

Thank you for joining Choco and me on our walk. How about showing me your neighborhood too!

Blocked

2011-11-10T08:14:00.013+09:00

I seem to have reached a road block on sewing. I'm not getting anything done. Now that COULD be because I don't know what I should be doing, so I thought I should jot down my end of the year sewing "To Do" list here.

Finish Tetsu's vest (this is not sewing but part of my handwork projects and right now takes priority over all else).

Get the Bargello quilted. I absolutely know that the Bargello has been the major source of my sewing block. I just don't know what to do and there it stays, up on my wall. I don't want to do overall quilting. I don't want to do stitch-in-the-ditch. I want to do feathers but have no idea of how to start with a "blank" canvas. If I could just find some direction I might get motivated again. I've spent hours and hours looking through the Internet and old magazines. The ideas I like are way beyond my ability or have been done by long-arming.

Finish a few stars for our swap game. I've been lax in that department. By the way, the last person cut out the fabric to sew together into stars and I offered to piece them for her. Hum... Someone needs to be reminded that we're aiming for a 1/4 inch seam allowance! I'm left with about 1/8th of an inch!

Hand quilt the Bunny Hill applique quilt. Remember that one? It is still folded on the shelf!

Decide on a layout for MY stars in the swap game. Being not very creatively minded (especially this month) I just stare at these blocks too.

Put the Alabama Beauty quilt together. Oh my goodness, those poor blocks have been lost in the sewing room for months!!!

I'm sure there are more things struggling to get out of their boxes but off the top of my head those are the 6 I'm determined to finish. Obviously not all this year though... Too bad.

Today I'm going upstairs and start quilting the Bargello!!! I'm tired of waiting for some muse to whisper in my ear. Just Do Something!!!

Tuesday Mornings

2011-11-08T08:40:00.003+09:00

On Tuesday mornings I have a class of four ladies who come for English. Recently we are reading and discussing the book "Where the Heart Is" by Billie Letts. In years past we have read "To Kill a Mockingbird","The Phantom Tollbooth", "Sidetracked Home-Executives", "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle", "American Pie", "Holes" and "The Last Lecture". I guess I'm the one who chooses the books and we've certainly had a variety.

The ladies come from quite far away. They car pool and drive about 30 minutes to my house. Sometimes (like last week) we go out to lunch together. Once a year we try to go away for a day of sightseeing and once we even had a stay overnight! These ladies have been coming to my house weekly for over 10 years. Maybe closer to 15! I have a feeling that I learn more from them than they do from me...

For the first hour of "class" we chat (in English) about our past week. Places we've gone, arguments with husbands, funny incidents in our lives. A couple of us have sought out advice on child raising and more recently about living with aging parents. The "more mature" ladies, who have already traveled this road, are gentle counselors. Finally, during the second hour, we "study".

On my part, I make a pot of coffee and try to supply something to nibble on. This morning I'm making an apple crisp. But more often than not, my friends will bring rice crackers or cakes from their outings or chocolates that they've been given. I remember years ago when my children were still around, Takumi saying,

"Tuesdays are great. You always have some good leftovers from your Tuesday class!"

Tuesdays are not good for dieting but are a warm and happy time!

I'm posting the Apple Crisp recipe today... maybe for Leiya. She's been asking about things she can cook. This comes straight from Betty Crocker so it is nothing special. I added almond slices just because I had them... Looks like I used dark brown sugar rather than brown sugar. No, I didn't burn it!

Apple Crisp

4 cups sliced apples
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/3 cup margarine

Heat oven to 370 °. Arrange apples in pan. Mix remaining ingredients and sprinkle over apples.

Bake 30 minutes until apples are tender. Serve with cream or ice cream.

Quilt exhibit

2011-11-07T08:31:00.004+09:00

On Saturday, Tetsu found mention of a quilt exhibit about an hour away from us and we set out to see what it was about. It turned out to be a very small exhibit but the quilts and embroidery were fantastic. I'm afraid I didn't get the name of the group but one quilt (with all the flowers and insects) made it to the Tokyo Quilt Festival last year. I did ask if I could take pictures and was given permission.

I loved this golden tree! (I must have a thing for trees this year).

The leaves were tiny but oh so perfect!

And the embroidered acorns and leaves around the border were a nice touch.

The Christmas scenes embroidered on wool were so elegant. And don't you like the way those two quilts are hung! Branches!

This quilt was the one that went to the Tokyo Quilt Festival. The lighting wasn't great for photography but the spotlight really set off the quilt.

Each flower was beautifully appliqued and there were insects embroidered on the covered buttons here and there. A row of ants along the bottom too!

Ah... How tempted I am to get out an embroidery needle. But no! I remind myself that I decided my eyes no longer do embroidery! Stick to quilting Tanya!

A quiet week

2011-11-06T08:11:00.008+09:00

I have quietly not been getting any sewing done recently. My sewing room sits upstairs abandoned. Instead, Tetsu has been devoting his free time to me and our GPS enhanced car and we drive off and around. This is nice for the two of us but doesn't give me a block of time to sew much anymore... That's actually okay because I'm still plodding away on Tetsu's Christmas vest whenever I sit in front of the TV.

I've also been down and out because there are more cats and kittens in my neighborhood this week. My neighbor down the street was depressed herself when she came to tell me that a stray cat she had been feeding escorted a litter of kittens to her front porch this week. What can I say? I warned her about feeding the stray without getting it neutered. I offered to help pay for the neutering if she could catch the kitty but she said it was too skittish. So now she has four cats to contend with. And I've offered to help pay for neutering those too. I just don't want to go and get my heart involved, so I'm staying away from that end of the street. And then another cat showed up in the lot next to ours. That sent me to bed for three hours. If I reach out to feed or neuter or whatever then I can't put the cat back outdoors later. (This has always been the plan with ALL my cats and they ALL ended up being indoor cats.) Please Lord, help those kitties find families, but please don't consider mine!

So that is one reason I've been a quiet blogger this week. And another reason why Tetsu has been taking me out to enjoy ourselves elsewhere.

Miscellaneous news. I heard from the kindergarten principle that the bazaar raffle alone pulled over $2000 for the kindergarten. Alone! The years when Mrs. Furui and I were running the raffle we were THRILLED when we could hand over more than $500 to the kindergarten! Of course that raffle has really grown and there were over 70 prizes that day (coasters, pin cushions, tapestries) and as I said before, the mother's group quilt was fantastic, too. (Notice the too. I think our contribution was pretty fantastic also.) But still, for a smallish kindergarten with less than 100 families and a three hour raffle, that is pretty amazing!

Tetsu and I bought a heater this week. We are heading into winter. Our house is always cold. Our last kerosene heater was giving out on us. And after March's earthquake there were many people without electricity for a week or more. Even Mrs. Furui's neighborhood had no electricity for 24 hours after the earthquake. The government had the scheduled blackouts for a couple of weeks in order to save electricity and we huddled in blankets with with bottle warmers. (We may be faced with more this winter.) So electric appliances didn't work, but even our kerosene heater which ignites by electricity didn't work. This week Tetsu suggested a free standing kerosene heater that emits heat in all directions and doesn't need electricity.

There are merits and demerits to this heater. Of course, we still have kerosene fumes (which I've never been happy about). And I worried that the cats wouldn't realize the top of the heater is hot and might burn themselves. (They used to be able to sit on top of the electric kerosene heater.) So far they seem to understand that a heater is not a sitting place. We can keep a kettle or a pot of stew on the heater and cook dinner or have tea at hand while heating the house. However in the event of another earthquake I then I have to worry about boiling water or soup.... But the house stays warmer! And the moisture in the air hopefully keeps cold germs at bay.

And last but not least, the cats like the new heater!

Lake Chuzenji and Senjogahara

2011-11-04T08:23:00.005+09:00

Some scenery pictures today. Tetsu and I went up to Lake Chuzenji which is a famous resort area in Japan. It wasn't cold but I wore my down jacket anyway.

Lake Chuzenji is only 30 minutes from our house but getting to it entails going up a winding mountain road, also famous in Japan. I posted about that before here, and you can see some some fantastic professional photographs of the curvy road up the mountain on that past post.

Because the autumn season is so popular it is hard to beat the traffic up the mountain so Tetsu and I left a bit before 6:00 am. We drove up to a point overlooking the lake and then spent two hours walking around the moors of the area.

At 7:00 there were only the hard-nosed hikers and photographers out, but by 9:00 there were busloads and busloads of people!

Farther up the mountain past other lakes and waterfalls, there was a "Phantom Lake" which appeared in the Senjo Moor about a month ago. Normally this area is a moor, not a lake, but what with all the rain and typhoons in September a lake appears every few years. (Not every year.)

This is what everyone was out to see and photograph!

Most hikers were carrying huge telescopic lens cameras and were climbing up the side of the hill to get a good shot. The lone white birch there is a particularly loved landmark called the Noblewoman who stands alone on the misty moor.

This was the best I could do with my little Sony Cyber-shot. Still, not bad!

Cat house door

2011-11-01T08:29:00.006+09:00

Tetsu spent most of his day off making a cat door. He grumbles about how much time and money and effort he puts in for these cats but he doesn't really have any other wonky project in line and the cats don't complain about a little crookedness. I guess I don't either.

Hammer, hammer, saw, saw, sand paper, sand paper. (Notice, no measuring.)

By afternoon Tetsu had made a very nice fit-in-the-sliding-door-cat-door. The goal (for Tetsu) was to allow the cats to come in and out of the house... into a warm room, through the cat door and move directly into the cat cage... Keeping Toi and Patora separate from the other frightened kitties.

Of course I pointed out that if the cats can go freely through the cat door, that meant that the cold air (and right now mosquitoes) could come through the door too. So the cat cage wasn't going to be all that warm for the kitties and the room was going to be freezing for the humans. That did not dissuade Tetsu. He still thought this the best arrangement. He is the carpenter, not me!

When I came back from the pre-school, there was the cat door. The entrance is tight... Toi better not get any fatter than he already is.

"Great job, Tetsu!"

After a few minutes of relaxation we noticed cats running in all directions as Patora stalked into the room. It didn't take her long to figure out how to get up and over the cage door entrance. Tetsu pounded another board in place and sat back down.

"Hiss, spit, growl!"

Patora AND Toi are in the house! Toi isn't the smartest of kitties but if he can figure out how to get past the cat cage then I guess the cat door has not been a success.

I caught both cats, pushed them in the cage and dropped a blanket over all for the night. I also closed the paper window screens hoping to keep the room a couple of degrees warmer.

This morning Toi and Patora got let back into their cat house (by hand... not using the cat door). They managed to shred the paper screen while we were sleeping.

Tetsu's wonky carpenter project was NOT successful this time... He has promised to work on it again on his next day off...

Not my stuff

2011-10-31T08:39:00.003+09:00

Do you remember going to a friend's house when you were a youngster and helping her wash the dishes? I do. I remember helping her do her chores and coming home and telling my mother how much fun I had at Candy's house washing dishes. And my mother would respond,

"Why is it you can have fun doing dishes at someone else's house but you complain and mope and do a sloppy job when I ask you to wash the dishes at home?"

"I don't know, but it is fun to clean someone else's house, not my own."

Today Tetsu has the day off. This morning he started in cleaning my kitchen. Cupboards, drawers... Now, I know that I will be happy when I come home and find a new to me kitchen. But I really would like to point out the piles of his books by the futon, the Japanese room closet that holds plastic bags of the stuff he emptied from his car, his clothes stuffed in a cubby that seem to be multiplying.

I can hear Tetsu whistling as he cleans my kitchen. He is having fun. Do you suppose I should just change my attitude and clean up his stuff and pretend this is not my house?

Kindergarten bazaar

2011-10-30T08:04:00.014+09:00

Well, the kindergarten bazaar went off with a bang! It was a beautiful fall day and everyone had a good time. Many, many former students and their parents and it took some doing on my part to pull names out of the back of my head. (Well, I've been at this kindergarten for 20 years!) When I absolutely couldn't, it was a good chance to ask,

"What's your name? How old are you now?" and put the kids on the spot!

Our Tree Quilt was the grand prize in the raffle again this year but I must admit that the kindergarten mother's group had a beautiful quilt to raffle too. There were years when our patchwork group (for the bazaar quilt we label our quilts "Crazy Lady Quilters") completely controlled the raffle. When that became too much work for us, we offered to make the quilt if the kindergarten mothers would run the raffle. And then a mothers' group started doing patchwork too and making scads and scads of things to raffle off as well as a wall hanging size quilt. I hope I'm not being too snooty in claiming that those first couple years we could condecendingly comment that the mothers had made a great try... But the last couple of years I've wondered if our quilt would get demoted to second prize. The mothers' patchwork group's quilt quality is soaring!

I loved all the colors the mothers' group used this year! Mrs. Furui and I made the observation that we need to use more color in next year's quilt!

Lots of food being sold at the bazaar. Sticky rice, pounded rice balls, Chinese steamed buns, curry rice, fried noodles, oden (simmered vegetables and fish cakes) pop corn, cotton candy etc.

A free market of sorts where I bought ANOTHER kimono that no one was interested in. They are SOO beautiful and it seems such a shame to throw the old kimonos out. I bought fresh vegetables, hand made baskets, and raffle tickets.

When I finished browsing stalls I ended up in the make-it-yourself section of the bazaar where children were making things with shrinking plastic and felt.

Knowing that I am handy with a needle I was given the job of sewing felt balls that the children were making onto cords or elastic for necklaces and hair ties. I had a great time in this corner having a chance to chat with mothers while I sewed felt balls.

The bazaar is over and now the kindergarten will concentrate on Christmas. Mrs. Furui and I are putting our heads together to decide next year's quilt pattern. I didn't win the bazaar quilt this year again but it went to a very happy little girl in the oldest kindergarten class.

(Yesterday's pictures from Mrs. Ochiai.)

Best seat in the house

2011-10-29T09:10:00.005+09:00

It is getting cold around here. I've bought fluffy slippers and wear tights under my jeans. In the morning the air is frosty when Tetsu and Choco and I go for a walk.

Someone commented that cats learn by consistency and that they just pretend that they don't understand the house rules. But as it gets colder my will in weakening. Right now I have Toi and Patora outside in the cat house. They have been out there since July when Tetsu decided that that is where they should live. Patora has never been happy about this new rule. She "Meows" constantly. You would think by now that she would give up and accept that she is a cat-house cat.

During the summer I really worried that our next door neighbor would complain. They have complained about Choco's barking, and the cat house is even closer to their house! In the summer with everyone's windows open all night I certainly could hear Patora making a racket! As the seasons turned to fall and everyone closed their windows at night, I relaxed a bit about Patora disturbing the neighbors...

But now it is getting cold. Can I really leave those cats in the cat house all winter? They have a Styrofoam box that supposedly keeps in body heat and they can cuddle together. I can make them a heating pad during the day or night if they need it, but Patora really wants to be with the humans (or maybe she just wants house warmth... She is not a friendly kitty). Toi could care less about where he is as long as he gets fed.

Anyway, even after 4 months, Patora is not giving in on the complaining department. I am ready to give in... Her constant noise and banging at the window is driving me loony. I often just turn off lights and close the door to that part of the house and go do things upstairs just so I don't have to listen to her. Should I feel sorry for her or angry with her for her stubbornness?

Although none of the other cats but Toi like Patora, they probably would agree that it is getting cold and everyone needs to seek out warmth. Yesterday I found Mi in the bathroom.

And pretty soon Chip joined her. Mi looks like she is saying,

"Hey, this is MY spot!"

Someone left the toilet seat cover up and Mi discovered that the toilet seat is heated.

Now if I could just train the cats to use the toilet since they are already sitting there...

Thursday's activities

2011-10-28T08:20:00.005+09:00

Yesterday I was at patchwork again but didn't have such a successful day. I had promised to make some Pineapple blocks for Mrs. Harada but the first one I made was too small. I made the second and third one by hand. And then someone suggested I do the blocks paper piecing so I spent quite a lot of time measuring (not my forte) and making a paper piecing pattern. I perforated the paper with the sewing machine unthreaded and yesterday at Mrs. Furui's house I tried sewing. The sewing is so much easier! The block looks beautiful! BUT IT WAS TOO BIG!!!! I give up! I handed all the blocks, small and large, to Mrs. Harada and told her she could use what she liked and thow away the rest. I AM NOT MAKING ANY MORE PINEAPPLE BLOCKS! (I see that I was so disgusted that I didn't even take any pictures.)

On the other hand, Mrs. Harada made me four more star blocks (and hers were all the right size!) and now I need to decide what to do with all my blocks. Mrs. Furui did some measuring and I sat on the floor trying to arrange paper squares into a pleasing pattern. I can see how having the Electric quilt might be helpful. I will be playing with my squares for the next few days.

As a group, all my friends and I sat around trying to decide on a quilt pattern for NEXT YEAR'S bazaar. This year's bazaar will be held tomorrow and our tree quilt be raffled off. I'll try to take pictures of that event tomorrow. The quilt raffle is always the highlight of the bazaar and hopefully people will be surprised and pleased at this year's contribution. But next year's quilt? We poured over Mrs. Furui's books and made suggestions. A Christmas quilt? A house quilt? How about a simple Nine-patch? Grandmother's Fan quilt? We never did make any decisions which is surprising and a shame. Usually we have a line up of quilts we want to make but this year we seem to be running out of ideas. I'll spend some time on the computer looking for patterns too.

And in the evening I had my group of boys come for Halloween crafts. ARGGHH! These boys don't get along well even normally (Y-kun causes a lot of annoyance and bickering) but last night they were at their peak arguing about who was copying whose idea, who should go first, who had taken whose scissors etc. By the end of the hour I was wide eyed and panting! But I guess they all went home happy with their Halloween cats so maybe that is all that matters. A night like that though makes me want to stop being an English teacher!!!!

Kindergarten activites

2011-10-27T08:15:00.008+09:00

I was at the kindergarten yesterday. Lots of activities going on there.

The oldest group of children "make" a bunch of grapes every year. I must have a grape cluster or two in one of my cupboards from when my children made them at this same kindergarten. Why grapes? It is a Christian kindergarten,

"I am the Vine, you are the branches."

The grapes are made of purple pieces of origami paper that the children crumple and then wrap in squares of mom's old stockings and secure with rubber bands! Yeah! A little sewing and they have grape clusters.

Some of the children were outside practicing stilt walking. The kindergarten has numerous bamboo stilts and the kids get quite good at walking around a chalk drawn path using stilts (albeit not too high stilts). Here the kindergarten teacher was helping a little girl get the hang of it. The teacher is barefoot, the child is wearing zori.

And finally I passed out cookies dressed as a witch. "Trick-or-Treat!" "Here you are." "Thank you." Everyone posed for a picture with the witch.

Halloween black cats

2011-10-26T08:10:00.002+09:00

Yesterday I did my first round of making Halloween decorations with two of my English students.

Every year I try to think up some craft project for Halloween and for Christmas. I'm doing a repeat of the Halloween decoration. I must have done this with children at least 5 or 6 years ago. I'm hoping none of my current students have done this with me.

Take black felt and draw an odd shape "body". I made a cardboard pattern for the kids to trace.

Trace around a dish or plate twice, one circle for the head, one circle for the tail.

With felt scraps make two ears. I gave the children orange felt scraps too to make an inner ear.

Provide two oval shaped sequins for eyes. (I've cut ovals out of reflector paper and that works as well).

Use a pompom or a scrap of felt for a nose.

Draw a face and legs with a White Out pen.

Cut one circle in a spiral for a tail.

With a gather stitch make a ribbon from a square of fabric.

Add yarn to hang.

With hot bond, put all the pieces together. Voila! Black cats!

Miscellaneous post

2011-10-25T08:54:00.009+09:00

Oh dear.... Not much going on today. Another miscellaneous post. Sorry about that.

Leiya finally got SOME money this weekend. The money I sent directly from Japan arrived in her bank account. The money I've been trying to transfer from my California bank to her Ohio bank has yet to be successful. Think I should change banks? (I would if I could from this distance. I've been trying to send money to Leiya since April!)

My knitting is going slowly. Is this even called knitting? It is an afgan stitch and though it does look nice, it is much slower going than my usual knitting goes. I sure hope I finish this by Christmas. I had plans to knit something for the kids this year too but I probably won't find the time now. Sorry Takumi and Leiya. Tetsu comes first!

The other day when at the kindergarten, the principal very proudly showed me a piano cover that was at her son's house. The mother-in-law had made it for their piano but the principal was so taken by the handwork that she "borrowed" it for a few weeks just so that she could show people like me. Isn't this beautiful embroidery/crochet? There were 6 of these embroidered maidens along the front of the cover and all the edges were hand button hole stitched. So many talented people in the world!

A couple people asked me about the Tessellating Cats quilt and where I found the pattern. I've mentioned before that it was once published in the McCalls Quilting magazine October 2009, but the pattern can no longer be bought. The designer has put out a book though with other SIMILAR cat patterns called "Copy Cat Quilts" by Dawn E. Navarro, but this quilt can't be found in the book (is what I hear... I didn't buy the book.)

I was also asked about the Bargello quilt which so many of you have complimented me on, but personally I'm not that thrilled with it. I started out trying to follow a picture of a Bargello quilt and roughly guessed at the measurements needed. Then I just added Bargello strips and dividing strips in the same colors. No real plan. I really should have kept the dividing strips a bit narrower. And to my eye, this Bargello "goes" nowhere. I have used Marge Edie's book "Bargello Quilts" before and I may go back and try another of her designs. The big question now is HOW DO I QUILT THIS? Until I decide, the quilt is pinned to the wall.

Tetsu carved two more pumpkins for me. Our yard is festive!

Two cultures

2011-10-24T08:26:00.006+09:00

When your young child is naughty, what do you do? In my house I would take Takumi or Leiya aside, scold, and then send them to their room.

But in Japan, when a child is naughty, the parent will scold (maybe... Japanese parents are rather lenient with their youngest children) and put the child outside the house. And lock the door!

When I first observed a screaming child in the neighborhood pounding on the front door begging to be let in, I had visions of child abuse and neglect. When I realized that this punishment was the norm, my next thought was "How can a mother let her child scream like that OUTSIDE for all the neighbors to hear and wonder about?"

In Japan, the ultimate punishment at ANY age, is to be set apart from the social group. Junior high and high school students will be ostracized as a passive type of bullying which scars the child for decades. Even businessmen will be routed to a far corner of an office and ignored by the rest of the office workers all because of expressing an unpopular opinion. Women fear not being accepted by their neighbors or PTA groups. There is a saying in Japanese, Mura hachi-bu which is an example of this way of thinking.

Mura means village and hachi-bu means eight parts. In the long ago eras of Japan the way to punish someone in the village was to exclude them from eight of the village's social events, weddings, Coming of Age Day etc... To this day, the possibility of being excluded is the ultimate punishment for not trying to fit in, not living cooperatively in the very close social structure of Japanese society.

To be honest, Tetsu and I had the real concern that our children would not be accepted by their school mates or that I would not be able to fit into our rural neighborhood all because of being a slightly different (greatly different!) mixed-culture family. Happily, we never seemed to have too many problems fitting in though my children may have hid their school battles from me.

Naughty children in Western cultures will be sent to their rooms to ponder why they were scolded, to think about what rule they may have broken. Their FREEDOM is taken away from them for a short period and Westerners really value their freedom and independence! Maybe being set apart isn't as strong a punishment for the Western child but being confined makes him think twice!

Living in two cultures can be puzzling and frustrating at times. I would rather think that my family that having two cultures has enhanced our lives and made them more interesting.

Memories

2011-10-23T08:08:00.004+09:00

Yesterday I felt like I'd been paid the highest compliment when 6 of my former students gathered in my home for a few hours. 6 beautiful young ladies, all grown up and starting families of their own!

15 years ago I held an English class for 7 junior high school girls. None of them were particularly good in English and they were more interested in laughing and being silly. I had to scold sometimes, took away their pocket bells (before cell phones!!), I sent one girl home even. We made cookies together at times and played games. One girl didn't like cats and I remember comforting her while she sobbed after a cat jumped on her lap. Towards the end I was quite glad when the girls stopped coming for English. They were developing attitude problems and I decided around that time that I would no longer teach junior high students.

For 15 years I barely had contact with any of the girls except for the one who lives across the street from me. I heard that so-and-so had gotten married, so-and-so had a baby, but I didn't think much about them and they never thought about me.

Not too long ago, out of the blue, one girl called me asking if she could visit. One thing led to another and yesterday 6 of the girls showed up, two leading youngsters! We called the last girl who is married and lives in another prefecture and included her in the festivities too. The girls brought cakes and crackers. I served peanut butter cookies and was tickled to hear them exclaiming about how good the cookies were, how they remember filling my tiny kitchen to make cookies. The cookies went away quickly!

It was fun for everyone. The 6 girls have never gotten together like yesterday and they exchanged a lot of stories. 6 girls are married (the one single girl got a lot of advice on choosing a husband!). Actually one girl has been married and divorced twice! 5 of the girls have babies and little children! Two girls are very annoyed at their husbands right now who do so little child care... Oh dear... I hope the complaints are not serious... One girl has only been married 6 months and can hardly bear to be away from her hubby.

I was asked for advice on how to keep a loving husband and wife relationship after SOOOO many years (Tetsu and I must look ancient!) A couple girls wistfully talked about how they could be better students if they studied English now. A couple of girls focused on the patchwork (which was on my walls even 15 years ago. "Teacher, why do you have blankets on your walls?") and wondered if they'd have the patience to make something like it for their children someday.

After three hours everyone trooped out the front door not unlike 15 years ago (I noticed that they've all learned to leave their shoes neatly in the entry... now boots and high heels! When they were junior high students every week their shoes were thrown about every which way!)

Promises to get together again... maybe for the single girl's wedding hopefully someday soon?

How pleased I am to know that the girls have fond memories of English time and haven't forgotten me after all!

October handwork

2011-10-22T10:42:00.013+09:00

Miscellaneous news today. Not even news... Daily life.

I think I have finished making the Bargello flimsy. Actually my friends asked if I could make a quilt to fit a certain size wall but as usual I can't remember the sizes they gave me. 140 centimeter? 250 centimeters? I think this is done and I don't want to make it bigger (if they wanted a larger size) by adding more borders. If it is not the right size I guess I'll just make another someday. Now to quilt this. (I should have sewn directly onto batting eliminating quilting altogether. I forgot that little step...)

I volunteered to make up two or more Pineapple blocks for Mrs. Harada's quilt. But I volunteered because I'd seen Mrs. Okutomi's contributions that were machine pieced (the rest of us did the blocks by hand). Making a Pineapple block by hand was driving me crazy but if machine piecing was acceptable then I was willing to do another. And I made a block.

AND IT WAS DING-DANG-IT TOO SMALL! So I took out a few pieces and added larger corners hoping that I could cheat and make the same size block. Nope. Still too small!!! What a waste of time! I went back to hand piecing the dang thing. One more blue block done. One red block in the making. A loose block (too small) to add to the orphan box that I've got somewhere... Sigh.

And Mrs. Furui asked me to sew up two yellow stars for a quilt she is making for the hospital. I'm not really sure what these are going to be added to.

Which reminds me... I never showed Mrs. Furui's HAND QUILTED bed cover that she made for the local Ronald McDonald House.

I only have to look at the BACK of Mrs. Furui's quilts to know she has made another heirloom.

Today is a rainy day and I'm making peanut butter cookies (delicious!) and bean soup (pretty good) and roasted pumpkin seeds (those didn't turn out so well... Bleh.)

Halloween class

2011-10-21T08:40:00.005+09:00

We are getting ready for Halloween around here. Tessellating Cats quilt up on the wall (black cats up), decorations on the porch. I have mixed feelings about Halloween... I remember my father face painting me when I was a child and dressing up as a fairy and such. In my days the churches weren't promoting Harvest Festival in exchange for Halloween so I was surprised when some Christian friends refused to participate in Halloween activities a few years ago.

Since then I have mentioned to the Christian kindergarten that maybe this isn't a "Christian" activity but the principal considers it all American play and so every year I get dressed up as a witch and hand out cookies. But already I've got little children (granted only one in each class) that are crying about upcoming Halloween activities... We are practicing Halloween vocabulary.

"Look! There's a bat! Look! There's a wizard!"

Most of the kids love it but there are always a couple...

The children who come to my house look forward to Halloween too. Y-kun has been talking about Halloween since the beginning of September and this year he provided me with pumpkins to make Jack-O'Lanterns. He lugged in the first pumpkin in September and the other two came earlier this month.

"Let's make a Jack-O'Lantern!"

"Not this week. It won't last until Halloween if we make it so early."

I have been telling him this since the first pumpkin.

I discussed the situation with Tetsu. Y-kun REALLY wants to make a Jack-O'Lantern. And he carved one himself a couple of months ago (and gave it to me) so I know he can do it. But the idea of knives and Y-kun makes me very nervous and other boys fighting to get involved too? I don't think so.

Tetsu discouraged handing Y-kun a knife (though Y-kun does help me cook, right?). But the pumpkins ARE Y-kun's... Tetsu came home early last night and watched the boys wildly interacting and then took Y-kun aside and together (sort of) carved a pumpkin. Joy! for Y-kun. A lovely huge pumpkin! (By Japanese standards) And everybody got to view the lantern lighting and sit in the dark room for awhile. Yeah! Five happy boys and my front yard is now ready for Halloween.

(I still have two more pumpkins. Do you think Tetsu will carve them for me if I jump up and down with joy?)

Teaching hand quilting

2011-10-20T08:20:00.005+09:00

The other day I was trying to teach hand quilting. Actually two of my friends had made their quilt flimsies and I'd sent them home with instructions to do the quilting. Obviously that wasn't enough instruction. I'm pretty sure I demonstrated before giving the homework but one student had a lot of trouble (for various reasons... the backing puckered. We re-basted).

I have never had problems hand quilting. My first few quilts might not have been great but I have a feeling I developed my stitch fairly easily after buying a thimble. (Before that I was only getting back-stabbed right hand fingers! OUCH!) I felt like I was a real quilter with a thimble on my finger!

Then someone handed me a quilting hoop and I had to learn the technique all over, but by the next quilt I was doing pretty well again.

A few months later someone demonstrated using a thimble on the left hand index finger as well as on the right hand and I was impressed with their small stitches. I spent another quilt learning the double thimble technique but I got pretty good at that too!

And this last year, Erika recommended an Aunt Becky, and Liz sent me one! I've now developed my hand quilting technique using the Aunt Becky and I am very happy with it. I really enjoy the relaxation of hand quilting.

So, maybe hand quilting comes easily to me. I realize that some people really don't like using the hoops and thimbles but I always say,

"Keep trying. It really does make the quilting look nice and remember, you are aiming for small stitches (aiming!)"

Even so, many people give up using that bottom thimble. Oh, well, there are many ways to do it!

I had sent my two students home with homework. But one student came back with a "punctured" quilt stitch. Not a running quilt stitch. Poke the needle down. Pull thread to the back. Poke the needle back up blindly, hoping for a spot near the down-poke. Pull the thread up. This did not make for a line of stitches and on the back side the stitches were basically back stitches.

"Oh dear. This is going to take you forever and probably won't look so good! You really must master a running stitch!"

Poor woman! We took out many of her stitches and I tried teaching a running stitch (with hoop, with thimbles). AARGH!!! It certainly didn't come easily for her! My student was dropping thimbles, bending needles to breaking point, pulling up gobs of fabric and only getting one stitch done at a time (well, that's twice as fast as the punctured stitch technique). And on top of all that, she is left handed so my demonstrating was very difficult for her to follow!

My feeble teaching admonition was

"Strive for two stitches at a time. Don't expect to be able to put 6 stitches on a needle at first. Consider it a success if you can do two stitches. The more you do the better you'll get." (I sure hope!!!)

The other student was having fun with two rather long stitches on her needle.

"Now try to get three stitches on the needle. Try to make the stitches smaller."

But what it boils down to is I know HOW to quilt but I don't know how to TEACH quilting. Any advice besides,

"Keep practicing!"

So far my students are NOT finding hand quilting "Relaxing".

Church outing

2011-10-18T08:43:00.008+09:00

Another quicky post. I've STILL got bank problems!!! I hate the banks!!!! (Or rather I hate on-line banking!!!!!) I'm off to the bank today.

On Sunday our church went off to a neighboring campground and had our service outside with a lunch of vegetable soup afterward. I made the soup though in this picture it looks like Tetsu made it. I don't know how I ended up with the job. You would think I am the least capable person to make Japanese vegetable soup. Remember, I hate cooking.

Well, not too difficult. Throw in pork, squishy potatoes, carrots, burdock root, icicle radish, konyaku (a glutinous potato), deep fried tofu skins, tofu, Chinese cabbage, two types of mushrooms, green onions and miso. Simmer for an hour. Serve with rice balls (each family brought their own.)

It was a lovely day. On the way home we found a family of monkeys crossing the road!

Sorry, the pictures are not too great. The monkeys would not cooperate by standing still. And monkeys have been known to enter a car and steal food if you roll down your windows so these pictures were shot through the windshield!

More beautiful scenery... and not so beautiful...

2011-10-17T08:17:00.006+09:00

Last weekend Tetsu and I went on a drive to Fukushima. Supposedly the north of Japan isn't getting many tourists and so the tollways have been opened for free access hoping to get visitors. It seemed like a good time to go sightseeing so off we went.

The scenery was beautiful. Lots of lakes and the leaves were just beginning to change colors.

We ended up at the top of a mountain/volcano. Well! They don't have to worry about a lack of tourists! Just to get up the mountain to the parking lot we had to wait in line for an hour and a half!

And then there was a line to use the bathrooms and then there was a line to climb up the mountain!

I successfully made it up the line to the top of the volcano crater! Hard on the knees but they both work!

Windy at the top!

And then another long traffic jam on the expressway to get home...

Aside... When Tetsu and I drive we often spot things other than beautiful scenery. When I first came to Japan I was appalled that drivers would just get out of their cars and pee at the side of the road! They are not flashers... I guess they just have weak bladders. It has become an inside joke about how many "pee-ers" Tetsu and I see in one drive. Maybe less than years before but they are still there!

Usually I can't whip out my camera and take a picture of some man doing his business. What kind of a woman would do that?! But I have taken some great pictures in my mind. One time I saw a bus load of men lined up by the roadside... I guess the tourist bus driver just stopped and said "Go right ahead!"

And another time I was coming out of the City Hall in down town Nikko and a very distinguished businessman in a suit just turned to the bushes right by the steps and finished his business too! My goodness! The City Hall has bathrooms!

And I often see farmers step out of their houses and give their field a mini-watering! In front of your own house? I don't get it!

In the hour and a half wait to get up the Fukushima mountain, a man got out of his car a few cars ahead of us. Tetsu laughed and said, "You've got your picture... Take it!" So I did.

Men have the right to use the roadside. We women have to suffer...

A loaf of bread

2011-10-16T07:58:00.003+09:00

Yesterday Tetsu went to a wedding and brought home gifts. In Japan, the guests bring money and the bride and groom give gifts to the guests. Recently the most popular gift is a catalog so that the guest can pick out what they want themselves and send in an order card. It used to be that the typical gift was a sauce pan or a set of dishes or vase or something so actually the catalog system is nice. Going for efficiency rather than personal I guess. I think I'll choose a towel rack...

Tetsu also brought home sticky red rice. One can't have a wedding in Japan without sticky red rice. And he brought home a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread? That's an unusual gift...

This morning we had toast for breakfast.

What a surprise! Hearts inside the bread!

Wishing the best for the new couple. The bread was delicious!

My mistake

2011-10-14T16:51:00.005+09:00

Yesterday I was a ranting mad woman, coming undone at the edges! Oh my! What confusion! What blood rushing panic! I may have endangered my mother-daughter relationship with Leiya for life! After all the hub-bub she sent me an e-mail asking me to proof read something so at least I know she's still talking to me.

It started out with me being upset with Leiya.

"That girl! She hasn't contacted us in weeks! I specifically asked her to get in touch with me because I need to verify some bank stuff. She doesn't answer e-mails. She doesn't come on MSN. WHERE IS SHE?"

When Tetsu realized I hadn't talked to Leiya in awhile he became upset with me.

"For heaven's sake, call her! How can you just sit there and wonder if she's alright. And you sent her money and she doesn't respond? That's strange. You need to keep better track of her."

And when I explained that I didn't have her cell phone number anymore (she lost her old cell phone) Tetsu about blew his top. What kind of a mother was I that I couldn't get in contact with my children?! So of course I was upset with Leiya again because I was getting chewed out by her father!

I sent another e-mail. I sent an e-mail to Takumi asking him to get in touch with his sister immediately. I finally went on Facebook (I do not understand Facebook) and somehow found pictures of Leiya showing me that as of October 10 she was alive and kicking. So I sent her a sarcastic message on Facebook (I think I sent it to her... I might have sent it to her friend.)

At 10:00am, just as I was putting coffee in the coffee maker to serve to one of my adult students who was arriving in minutes, I hear a "BING" letting me know that someone was on MSN. Usually I only converse with Leiya by MSN so I rushed to the computer.

"Where have you been?! I'm upset with you! I asked you to let me know when you got the $3000 I sent you. I've been waiting and waiting. I need to get back to the bank and set up an automatic transfer. Why didn't you answer back?! This is not acceptable!!!"

And Leiya's answer was,

"I never got the money."

"WHAT!!!!!!!! My online banking says they sent you the money!!!!! That's a lot of money!!!! What do you mean you didn't get it?!"

"I sent you an MSN message once saying I didn't get it."

"But you sent that message the day after I transferred money. I wrote back that it would probably go through in a day or two and you never answered back! Go back and check you account! It MUST be there!"

But it wasn't. Panic! As my voice rose, my doorbell rang. My student had arrived.

"Leiya, you've got to figure this out yourself. Call your bank! Call my bank! I sent it to your new account number. It's number ********** right?"

"No, Mom. You've got the number wrong. It's one digit off."

I felt like I'd gotten hit in the head. I'd done it again. I'd mis-typed numbers sending $3000 to somewhere unknown in cyberspace. And I had a student standing in my entryway. And when I directed her to the dining room she pointed out that my floor was flooded with coffee... I'd turned on the coffee maker without putting the the pot under it... Coffee everywhere. Flustered is a mild word.

I could hear Leiya on the computer talking with her bank.

"Yes, my mom in Japan sent money to the wrong bank account. Can you help us find it?"

I threw towels and rags at my student and asked her to clean up the coffee. I ran back to the computer.

"Leiya, call MY bank! Find out WHERE they sent the money."

But my bank was already closed in California.

"Leiya, call YOUR bank again and give them the mistaken account number!"

My student watched me race from dining room to computer as I yelled out an explanation for not being ready for her.

"Oh dear. You have a very big problem. That is a lot of money."

Leiya handled the problem very well. She politely and confidently confirmed that her bank had returned the money to my bank when they found her name wasn't on the account. She thanked the bank for their help and calmly got back to me.

"Mom. You need to go online to your bank again. The money is probably there now."

And it was.

So I was fretting and fuming about not knowing if Leiya had received her money when I could have gone back and checked my own account again. I never thought to do that.

Stupid me cannot write numbers correctly. EVER. Stupid me was too busy blowing up at Leiya to think straight about my own bank.

I'm very sorry Leiya for getting angry at you. I could hear you calmly and maturely discussing this major problem with the banks. I am amazed at your poise and very proud of you. Please forgive me.

You still need to keep in better touch with your parents.

Tessellating Cats finished (sort of)

2011-10-14T09:04:00.006+09:00

Well, finally! Something quilty! I finished quilting the Tessellating Cats quilt! Oh dear... I don't want to know when I started this... At least a year and a half ago!

I had found a picture of this quilt on the Internet and tracked the source down to a magazine but discovered that I could no longer purchase the magazine. Mona who visited my blog sent me her magazine sheets last summer and from there I started plugging away with whatever bright fabric I could find in my stash. I wasn't too pleased with the background fabric but that was all I could find that was whimsical in the Japanese fabric store. (There are minuscule mice and cheese in the yellow. You need a magnifying glass to see them.) Although machine pieced, there were some TINY triangles in those cats so I was very happy when I got to the flimsy stage on this.

This summer I found some wonderful backing! (I wish I'd been able to use this on top!) Rainbow colored paw prints! So now I can enjoy the back of my quilt as much as the front... (And I have a little leftover backing that I can use for some other front someday.)

I agonized awhile about hand or machine quilting this but Marie pointed out that cats are fluffy so I went with hand quilting. I am SOOOO glad I did! The grid is nothing to cheer about but it didn't get too crooked.

I put the binding on last night but actually this is still not finished. Those cats are all supposed to have collars on them!!! So next I'll be going through my ribbon drawer and sewing collars on all 23 cats. (I put one collar on one black cat last night just to see if I could.) Maybe this season the Tessellating Cats will go up on the wall as is...

Should I start with colorful cats right side up?

Or black cats?