From a little 5th grader boy. In fact he has given me wild flowers for three days in a row. And he chooses his flowers artistically. Tall light pink flowers and small purple flowers and cheery yellow flowers. He hands them to me shyly as he goes across the crosswalk and is so pleased when I put them in my breast pocket.
For one thing, I have a very large Orange and Cherry Jubilee that has sat on the shelf for over a year. Remember that one? That was the one where I messed up on the block placement and I became disgusted with myself. And there is the problem of quilting such a large quilt. (I couldn't even lay it out flat to take a picture. The room is too small.) There are NO long arm quilters in Japan. This means I have to do it myself. Elaine has been machine quilting large quilts on her domestic machine but she says her machine has a 9 inch throat. I measured mine... Mine has a 7 inch throat. Even with little quilts I will almost always get a pucker in there and so I shudder to think what would happen with a large quilt. But with the Feather still on the quilting hoop, I'm not too anxious to hand quilt the Orange and Cherry Jubilee. (Another two years of quilting?)
On Saturday I went up to the sewing room for fabric therapy. What IS all this stuff coming out of the drawers and baskets? The crumb basket is overflowing and most of that stuff is unusable! But can I really just toss it? No. So I spent HOURS cutting the crumbs into 3 1/2 inch strips and squares, 2 1/2 inch strips and squares and 2 inch strips and squares. This is called mindless procrastination. I made a DENT.
Why do I keep cutting up strips and squares? I fell in love with Bonnie's Scrap User system but I seem to be SAVING, not USING! So yesterday I started chain stitching and making 16 patches. I think I've started a Patch and Pinwheel quilt and it will eventually have to take its place in the quilting line. Any quilting advice?
And this is what greeted me as I wandered into the kitchen.
And this is what the cupboard looked like after he was done. Do you think I'll be inspired to cook now?
Yesterday two of my friends came over to do some patchwork together. Mrs. Nakazawa has finished quilting her kitty quilt and we spent the day putting on the binding. Of course every time we laid the quilt down to admire or work on, cats would appear to claim it as their own. It's a good thing Mrs. Nakazawa likes cats (I guess so... she sewed enough cats into this quilt!)
For homework Mrs. Nakazawa will finish the binding and then do some embroidery on the cat faces. This is not completely complete yet but I still wanted to show it here and have you see Mrs. Nakazawa's happy face. She has her next and her next and her next quilt project lined up in her head.
And on a different note, one of my swimming friends gave me some cookies that she found at a neighborhood bakery. Aren't these the cutest things?!! Actually I have bought these before (for Mrs. Nakazawa!) but they are too cute to eat!
My thimbles get lost regularly. Mi is the culprit. I keep my scissors and thread and thimbles in a cup on a table (cat tree) by my sewing chair. I am smart enough to know that if I leave the thimbles and spools ON the cat tree then the cats will consider them play toys. So I have always kept them in a cup. Easier to reach, easier to put away, I don't have to bother with opening a sewing box etc.
Mi is still a kitten at heart. She can turn ANYTHING into a toy and Tetsu and I have great fun watching her antics. Jump, turn, somersault, bat, spin, twist, lunge etc. etc. But she discovered that she can pull things out of the cup and onto the floor go the spools, the needles (dangerous!) the scissors (deadly!) and the thimbles... And if I don't go thundering into the room at the sound of falling thimbles then Mi and other cats will start a game of "bat the thimble under the furniture." And THAT means I go crawling around on my hands and knees with a flashlight reclaiming my thimbles.
I guess I'll have to go to the next town this weekend and buy three or four thimbles. And I guess I'll get out my sewing box and start using it regularly again... Mi has enough toys. I'm not giving her any more thimbles.
The children coming to the elementary school pull from a wide area, some of it farming. School policy asks that all children walk to and from school and there are no school buses provided. Some of the children walk more than an hour though the closest neighborhood is about 10 minutes away. On rainy days parents occasionally drive their children to school but that is frowned upon and considered spoiling. The main road is fairly busy but most of the children walk along the farmers' roads that wind between the rice fields and through forests.
On Monday mornings the children carry lots of bags filled with toothbrushes, indoor shoes, lunch duty uniforms, library books etc. not to mention the required leather randosel (backpack). The kids in sports lug equipment, the kids in band carry instruments. Everyone looks very tired when they finally arrive at school on Monday mornings. (But they all look very fit. Not an overweight child in the bunch.)
Here is a picture of the school though you can't see the gymnasium behind the main building. In the foreground you can see the final group of students arriving at school with their randosel slung on their backs (one girl was carrying it on her front) and the yellow randosel covers that let drivers know that these are first graders. The yellow hats are a requirement too. Yellow berets for girls and yellow caps for boys.
Right now the litter boxes that the cats and I are both happy with are the pellet litter variety. These lovely little white pellets allow the cats to dig and do and then be easily scooped out. Instead of trying to remove clumps, there is a mat in a drawer that absorbs moisture probably made of the same stuff that disposable diapers are made from. With at least 4 cats using this box I have to change the mat every four days (at about 50 cents a mat!) but it is an easy job and less messy than other systems. The pellets do tend to get out of the box but the paw wiping mat is as unpopular with my cats as it was with my mother's so I've resigned myself to sweeping up. Not as messy as sand at least.
By the way. I took a picture of instructions on how to use a Japanese toilet when I was visiting one the other day. Explicit.
This is a dumb picture of me (taken last year) but you can see that Obaachan has had some trials adjusting to a foreign daughter-in-law!
Japan is famous for its little police boxes that dot the streets and corners in the city. There are also police residences and this is our neighborhood police box/residence. The policeman works at the front desk during the day answering calls, giving directions to lost drivers, acting as a lost and found station. And he also goes out on patrol (sometimes on his bicycle) and sees that the children are getting to and from school safely, collects stolen bicycles that people leave by the wayside, and responds to calls. While he is out his wife carries on life in the house but she is responsible for relaying calls while he is out or taking messages.
Tetsu and I got to the temple but the wisteria wasn't really blooming yet and so we made a detour to the new sports and city office facility built last year. This picture is for Takumi and Leiya so that they can see how things are changing in our area. Tetsu and I ate our convenience store breakfast on the front steps.
And this week has been rice planting week so the farmers and their families are all out with tractors in the flooded fields. We came across a grandma and her grand daughter helping while the menfolk ran their planting combines in the far off field.
Logged 16,751 steps on my pedometer and it is still only 9:00 am. A good way to start the day but we may take a nap before evening...
A couple weeks ago when Lorraine was visiting, she mentioned her surprise at the thread our quilt group was using to baste our quilt. Because I was never a quilter in the States I wasn't really aware that the thread that Japanese quilters use was different, but in the back of my mind I had thought that maybe I'd never seen it in America. I may be wrong.
Japanese basting thread comes in assorted colors but it doesn't come on a spool. It is sold in craft shops and even dollar shops (well, 100 yen shops) as a couple of skeins to a package and it is all looped together and twisted into a very long hoop. The first thing we do when starting a new package of basting thread is to tie two pieces of leftover cloth (selveges work great for this) at opposite ends of the hoop and then cut through all the threads at one point. Voila. Basting thread is now all the same length (and managable!) and by pulling a thread from the BETWEEN the two cloth ties, the basting thread doesn't get tangled.
Again, I'm not so sure what other people use to baste with but Japanese basting thread is a very flimsy cotton which glides through fabics easily and breaks cleanly when sharply tugged. Scissors aren't really needed to cut the thread after a section is basted. Just a long back stitch, a sharp pull and the thread will break. This is also VERY handy when REMOVING basting threads from a quilt as a tug will free the threads of any knots and if the thread should happen to be sewn in, it will break easily without cutting into fingers and hands.
I know there are wonderful modern products like bonding spray and curved safety pins, even fusing paper for applique but more often than not I'll reach for Japanese basting thread especially because it is so cheap. When hand quilting with a hoop, Japanese basting thread is a must!
I finished the little dog quilt I was making for my friend, Mrs. K, and delivered it to her yesterday. (She wasn't home but I hung it on her front door.)
I had a good time planning this and "drawing" with the sewing machine. I really like the freedom of machine quilting and the small size made the whole thing easy to maneuver.
I remember Mix as usually sleeping by or in his doghouse in Mrs. K's backyard. And Mrs. K took Mix for a walk most mornings or afternoons so I hope the paw prints will remind her of the good strolls they had together.
Golden Week is over in Japan. In many parts of the world it is still May 5th so I'd better hurry and post a picture of Japanese flying carp in honor of Boy's Day. Not as many flying as I've seen some years.
And here are a few animal pictures. Toi back from an exhausting exploration of the forest. I am letting him out regularly now and so far always comes back after an hour.
Here is Patora in a box on the veranda. She is in ecstasy about having a BOX that is in a sunny, warm place and she chirps and purrs and turns somersaults in the box.
I forgot to close the left-over batting drawer and Velvet discovered that it makes a nice soft nest.
First stop was Denny's for breakfast. Someone once wanted to know what is served at Denny's so I snapped a picture of the morning breakfast menu. Normal things like pancakes, bacon and eggs, toast (not huge portions but serviceable).
But there were also un-Denny like things on the Japanese breakfast menu such as fermented beans, grilled fish, udon noodles. I opted for some cheese toast and vegetable soup (normal soup but there were some bamboo shoots in it too) and Tetsu went Japanese style with rice, miso soup, fermented beans(see how sticky they are on his chopsticks!) and bacon and eggs. And lots of coffee.
And after that we went to the movie theater and saw Alice in Wonderland... Johnny Depp style. That was sort of fun. We saw it with Japanese voice over because I'd heard that trying to read those subtitles while watching the 3-D screen can be tiring on the eyes (for Tetsu). I can manage listening to the Japanese without getting headaches better than he can read the subtitles.
