Juicing

My juicer finally arrived yesterday!

Wow.  What a box!  A lot bigger than what I expected.  Wow.  What a machine!  It's a lot bigger too!

After reading the instruction booklet I set up my juicer on the counter and proceeded to juice.  (I've been keeping the refrigerator stocked with fruits and vegetables since I ordered the thing!  I've gone through two grocery shopping expeditions buying, and eating, produce for my not yet arrived juicer!)  Our first juice was apple, carrot and cucumber juice.  Delicious!

One problem however...

My juicer does not fit on the kitchen counter.  I had foreseen this problem as there wasn't a lot of counter space to begin with.  I had already cleared off a spot under the kitchen shelves and thought my juicer could live there.  WRONG!  It is too tall to fit under the shelves!  Well, we could put it where we keep the rice cooker but as we use the rice cooker probably more than we are going to use the juicer that didn't seem like such a good idea.  In the end Tetsu and I went out and BOUGHT a small table for our juicer.  It now has its very own place of honor in our kitchen.  Talk about a warm welcome!

This morning I made carrot, peach, pear and rucola juice.  I thought it delicious.  Tetsu tasted it and raised his eyebrows at the rucola flavor.  I may have to be a bit more sneaky about introducing vegetables to our juicing diet.

You know... I sure hope this is not going to be one of my harebrained ideas.  When Tetsu and I got married I insisted that as a married couple we needed to have a double futon made (you know... like a double bed.)  Japanese usually do not use double-size futon.  Couples sleep in separate single size futon.  And I found out why!!!  Because that dang double futon is too double dang big and heavy to daily stuff into the futon closet!  (Forget the fact that the futon closet isn't wide enough for a double-sized futon.) After 8 or 10 years of struggling with a double futon or, heaven forbid, just leaving it on the floor all day, we went back to single futons.  That was my first harebrained idea.

The second, right off the top of my head, was insisting that I needed a rocking chair to rock my first born to sleep.  Doesn't every new mother need a rocking chair for those midnight feedings?  Tetsu shook his head but bought me a rocking chair.  And you know what?  You can't rock a rocking chair in a Japanese house!  The chair itself takes up a quarter of the apartment living room (and I am not exaggerating) and every time someone rocks, the wall behind gets banged or the person sitting on the floor gets their fingers smashed and over time the chair's runners make holes in the paper walls. Our rocking chair didn't get much use and I hated to admit that I was glad to see it go when it got trashed.

 Now I have this giant juicing machine in my kitchen.  It makes great juice!

Quilting completed?

I enjoyed a day of machine quilting yesterday.  I really need to get the Turning Leaves Autumn quilt done so that I can back to other things... and start NEW things!

My goal was to quilt in a pattern in the lattice areas.  I changed threads (from variegated gold-ish thread to a multi-colored thread) and quilted curls and swirls.  This isn't a humongous quilt so the quilting went fairly quickly.

For the border area I quilted in 'petals' in the joint triangle space. 

I have more triangles facing the other direction but I think more petals might be too much of a good thing.  What do you think?  That leaves some unquilted space there but seeing as the center of the leaves are as yet unquilted maybe this is as good as it is going to get.

Cleo likes this quilt a lot.

Mrs. Furui is going to kill me when she sees Cleo on her hospital quilt.  She already complains that she uses up a roll of those sticky paper things when a quilt comes back from my house!  (But another friend who has two cats, brings over quilts that need to be processed with sticky paper too before being used.  Mrs. Furui is being outnumbered!)

I guess I will try to get some binding on this today and while doing that consider if this quilt needs any more quilting.

Enriched!

Let's see...  I have been blogging for about seven years.  When a friend first introduced me to the blogging world and suggested I try it, I realized blogging was a good way to keep in touch with my family AND show them daily pictures of my life.  For nearly 30 years I'd written weekly to my mother and as often as possible would send her pictures and this was just another easier way to keep her informed.  Takumi was already in the States, Leiya had just gone and I had more time on my hands.  I was already sending periodic e-mails to three different locations but blogging let me do everything at once.  And of course blogging let me keep a record of my quilting progress much like my often started but seldom continued, quilt journaling.

Over the years I've included stories of my children growing up, I've blogged about people who have influenced me, I've let myself be pretty open to the public blogging world though some people have advised me to be more cautious.  Although I've had blogging headaches too, I've had an UNCOUNTABLE amount of blessings!  The number of blog friends who have sent me fabric and patterns and handmade gifts just blows my mind away.  YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!  There are so many blog friends that I cannot list you all!  And of course just the number of people who daily send me friendship and advice and encouragement is a treasure I hold in my heart!  Thank you so much!!!

Another unexpected blessing has been re-newed friendships.  Just this week I received an e-mail from someone who wrote....

"I hope you remember me...  I am the daughter of..."

Yes!  I remembered her!  It was 30 years ago that Tetsu and I attended this young woman's father's church.  She was still just a child but I have memories of the short time together and she has memories of making peanut butter cookies with me.  What an amazing God-given blessing that our paths should cross again. She found me through Julie Fukuda's blog (Thank you Julie!) and wondered if I was the person who passed in and out of her life so many years ago.  In a few short days we have exchanged e-mails and are getting caught up on family and interests.

Another re-newed friendship came about many years ago when someone I'd known but lost contact with happened to Google her own name (or maybe her daughter Googled the names of people in their family) and this person's name showed up on my blog.  I'd written about the Bible quilts that I have made so many times in the past 25 years and how the original patterns had been given to me by...  And it turns out we both know Julie Fukuda again!  Isn't that funny?!  It has been good to be able to stay in contact with this far away friend again and I keep her name on my prayer list.

And still another friendship spawned through my blog has been with Pat. A few years ago Pat happened to Google my grandfather's name in hopes of finding some information for a historical society presentation she was giving.  And a couple of years before that I had written a post about my Japanese grandfather who had made his way to Indiana and started a business in Pat's small town.  These days I consider Pat part of my family as she has made my grandfather's life her life work and she spends hours and hours researching and gathering photos and interviewing people who knew him or worked with him or even SAW him over 100 years ago for the presentations she gives.  And though I have never met Pat in person, Leiya has visited her and been shown the town where Grandma; my mother, Leiya's grandmother, lived.  I was even able to get my mother on the telephone to talk to Pat this summer.

"Who is this Pat?"

"She knows more about your dad than you do, Grandma."

So I consider blogging one of the most enriching aspects of my daily life.  New friends, old friends, bloggers and lurkers.  Thank you all so much.  Though there is a lot of rambling on my part I'll probably be doing this for a few more years!

Filler quilting

Tetsu has been on a business trip for the past three days.  That means that when I've finished my day of teaching I have an evening free to spend in the sewing room!

After spending a day with Mrs. Furui doing applique, I put another squirrel on the mini-autumn quilt and that evening I did the machine quilting.  I wanted to see if I could do the filler quilting around the leaves and if it made that much difference in the appearance of the quilt.

This is a small quilt so I was able to do the quilting and sew on the binding before going to bed (late bedtime for me that night) and yesterday I sewed down the binding and took the quilt over to Mrs. Furui's again for an evaluation.

Bottom line?  We've decided that the quilting is lovely BUT that I don't need to do the filler quilting on the larger Turning Leaves quilt.  That would be too much work for a donation quilt and except on the few solid fabrics used, the filler can't really be seen all that well.

 

Actually the back of the quilt looks better than the front!

So now I know I can do this filler pattern on a small quilt.  Today I'm going back to doing stitch in the ditch around the lattice in the larger Turning Leaves quilt.  Until I get that all done and deliver the two quilts to the hospital, this little autumn quilt is adorning my wall for about a week.
 

Two friends

I am off to my first class of kindergarten since summer vacation!  Time to get back on a regular schedule!  And that means very little time on Wednesday mornings.  I ought to just declare Wednesdays a blog holiday.

The kitties are happy that the hot weather has pretty much gone.  They snuggle with me or if I'm not available, with each other.  Here are Cleo and Mi.  Cleo's ear is forever marked by a fight he had with Toi.  And not only his ear was marked.  Cleo cannot even face Toi through a window since that long ago damaging encounter.  He and Mi are good friends though and Mi loves to get a face washing from Cleo.

 Off I go for the day!

"Itte kimasu!"

This is a squirrel!

I've been catching up with Mrs. Furui and we have spent a couple of days just chatting.  I realized when I visited her that I don't have one single hand project at my fingertips!  All my projects are machine projects!  That is not good!  A quilter should always have something to do with her hands when watching TV or when chatting with other quilting friends.  (These are friends who don't think it rude of you to have your eyes focused on your work while your ears and mouth are focused on the conversation.  You can't do this with all of your friends or you may lose some friends.)

So before heading over to Mrs. Furui's I prepared some applique for the mini-autumn quilt that will go along with the larger Turning Leaves quilt.  I had had two leftover leaf blocks and a lot of left over fabric so I'd made an extra wall hanging which wasn't very exciting.  The hospital where this will be donated has all those elves on their walls in the children's ward, as well as animals so I opted to applique a squirrel or two.

In an hour or so of chatting I got one squirrel appliqued.

"Hmm.  Does this look like a cat?  I guess the busy tail is its only saving grace."

Maybe I can get the other squirrel on tonight.  I think I'll include an oak leaf or an acorn so that it doesn't look so cat-like.
 

Morning light

This morning Choco and I went for an early morning walk...  Tetsu had to stay at the convalescent home last night. 

The early morning sun was shining against the leaves and I tried capturing the colors reflected in the sun.

Tetsu says I have a strange interest in spider webs.  He finds them gruesome things but I guess I am drawn to the spider's diligence at making something so intricate.  And I admire the way the spider just goes right back to repairing or remaking her web when a thoughtless person brushes it all away.

The morning light reflected the purples and blues in the silky strands.

Cooling

A rainy morning for us and COOL!  Maybe we've seen the end of summer.

Japan has always surprised me by how quickly the seasons change.  I suppose coming from Southern California I have always seen the seasons as one long variation of summer.  In Japan we are dying of the heat (and warnings of heat stroke go out daily on the news) one week and bringing out feathered comforters the next week.  In the spring the weather forecasters announce,

"The rainy season starts today."

And at the beginning of the summer we know the exact day when rainy season ends.  (It must have something to do with humidity levels and temperatures and atmospheric air pressure numbers.)

Last week when I reupholstered the dining room chairs I was head-achy and went to bed exhausted probably from the closed-in, damp heat in the house, but today I am thinking of bringing the futon out of the closet as Tetsu and I were freezing last night!  (Well, we'd left all the windows open and were only sleeping with sheets.)  And today's rain brings even cooler temperatures.  AND I AM SURE HAPPY ABOUT THAT!

I was out with the camera yesterday evening when Choco and I went for a walk.  My eye was caught by the different silhouettes captured against the sun.

Isn't this a fun plant?  I have no idea what it is but the little round knobs look like something from a fantasy book.

And as the knobs mature... poof, like a bunch of little fireworks in the sky!

Everything struck me as graceful yesterday.  A nothing vine against the sky.

Not a great picture but I captured a frog having a stand-off with an ant.  Hmmm.  Dinner?  Or maybe they were just having a conversation.
 

Turning Leaves quilt

I pulled the autumn Turning Leaves quilt out of the sewing room closet.  I remembered I'd put it there but had to look for it under all the other stuff I'd stashed there for the summer. 

"Where's that quilt?  Where's that quilt?  Mrs. Furui is going to kill me if I've lost that quilt!"

There it was under some scrap bins that I'd closeted to discourage the cats from thinking they were litter boxes.

Working off and on throughout the day I actually got quite a lot quilted.  I'm not sure if the order of my quilting results in more problems or less problems.  I sewed around and inside all the leaves and then went up the leaf spines.  That meant that the quilting on the lattice is left for last and the center of each of those four leaf blocks are left unquilted.

Of dear... Do I really want to do filler quilting in all that center space?  Maybe it is too late anyway as I have a feeling my quilt top shifted a bit as I pushed and squeezed the quilt under my domestic machine.  I can imagine lots and lots of wrinkles being quilting in if I try to do any filler work...

This morning I've already tried my hand at quilting along the lattice strips with a walking foot and sure enough at each corner there is some left-over fabric... and some wrinkles.  I have yet to really take a close look at the back but just a flip of a corner reveals a couple wrinkles... sigh.

This quilt is going up on the wall at the hospital so I doubt that the back will be viewed much but still it niggles away at me that there are going to be so many flaws in this...

Vegetable basket

I spent a few hours up in the sewing room yesterday (the heat has broken!) and did the machine quilting on A Basket Case from the In Full Bloom BOM that Liz had sent me.

While I was in California, Bianca and I made the parts and put together the fabric collage.  The next step was the quilting but there are a lot of layers of fabric there in some places!  I even tried quilting this on first my niece's sewing machine and then on Bianca's sewing machine, but my niece's machine just didn't have the power and I think Bianca's machine had too thick of a needle on it at the time.  I took out all my stitches and decided to bring the quilt home. It just seemed it would be easier to work on my home machine where I feel most comfortable; there is an extension table and the chair is at the right height etc.

Once I got started on the quilting yesterday, this really wasn't that difficult to quilt as this is a smallish quilt.  I got confused with those zinnias on the right-hand side!  Too many petals that are nearly the same color.  Finally I just randomly quilted in dips and curves.

The rest of the quilting went without too much thinking.  Liz sent an embellishment kit with the BOM but there didn't seem to be instructions on where to add the embellishments.  I sewed on a few beads on the three cosmos but I don't know what else this needs.  This quilt will probably go in my dining room though the quilt isn't going to match those chairs I just covered... 

By the way... I ordered a juicer yesterday.  I went back and forth debating in my head and thought

"Why not both!"

But I can't afford both now.  The juicer is going to be the symbol of "Tetsu's 60th year of health."  Two years down the line, if we like juicing we'll celebrate MY 60th with a wonderful blender! 

And while I'm at it I'll show another Bible card I made this morning.

 My next step is to become best friends with the roadside vegetable stands.
 

Nasu no miso ni

I guess I'm cooking today. Or let's say I guess I've started cooking again since returning to Japan.  Tetsu is very happy.

So last night's dinner was "Nasu no miso ni" which translates as "Eggplant simmered in miso sauce".  I may have given this recipe before but since the blog hacking incident in June I lost the convenience of searching for previous posts.  So here we go again.

Nasu no miso ni

2 aubergines
100 grams sliced pork of beef
miso, sugar, dashi (optional) and mirin or sake.



These long thin aubergines are what I normally use for eggplant as the bigger, rounder ones called American eggplant are more difficult to find in Japan.  I cut them lengthwise and then slice them up.  I don't bother to soak my eggplant.  

After lightly frying the pork, add the eggplant and a bit of water.  (Yes, there is meat somewhere in there.) Actually I use very little meat in this dish as I usually eat only the eggplant part anyway but Tetsu is still a meat eater.  As I've said before, I consider meat a flavoring.  The dashi, which is powered fish broth is added at this point if you have it.  Then goes in a large spoonful of miso and then sugar and mirin or sake to taste.  Mirin is a sweet sake.  The dish tastes better a little sweet.

When everything is simmered down then it is ready to eat.  Really simmering it down means it doesn't need any starch to thicken it.  Not the most attractive dish but very good with a bowl of rice.

When Tetsu and I were dating he one time brought along a bento box with his mother's homemade Nasu no miso ni.  We sat in Tetsu's car overlooking the city and nibbled at his mother's cooking with disposable chopsticks.  Romance and a new taste treat for me have etched this dish in my memory ever since.

The side dish was To-myou which is a new vegetable to me too. 

Some sort of sprout and I just chopped off the tops, boiled them and some carrot strips for two minutes and then added strips of deep fried tofu (for me) and ham for Tetsu.  The dressing was sesame seed oil and salt and served cold it was pretty good too!  It looks healthy!

Do It Yourself Project

Last year I bought new dining room chairs after the ones we'd used for nearly 20 years gave out.  When I bought my new chairs I took into consideration that I had cats so I purchased white vinyl covered seats that could be wiped off and maybe would discourage the cats from scratching.

WRONG!

The cats have all loved my dining room chairs and they especially thought that they made good scratching mats...

Tetsu has been rather disappointed that our dining room chairs only lasted a year.

So yesterday I went rummaging through my closets and pulled out an old sofa cover that we had used.  It wasn't in too bad shape, it was heavier fabric than quilting cotton, and it wasn't something I was going to get upset about if my project didn't work out.  (I briefly thought about cutting up one of my quilts and making it into seat covers...  no... I'm not willing to make such a sacrifice yet.)

With screwdriver and a staple gun I took apart the four dining room chairs and spent a couple of hours reupholstering them.  Hey!  That wasn't so difficult.  I had a narrow piece of fabric left over so I even tackled the bench that serves as an end chair in my dining room.  It had been in the worse shape of all and I've placed a folded quilt on it for years.

Ta-da!  A completely new dining room set!  (You'll have to take my word for it.  The room is too small to photograph everything at one time.)

Tetsu praised me to high heaven.  He pondered whether I'd missed my calling and should give up patchwork to do upholstery work.  (He is very easy to please.)  We both agreed that the new seat covers aren't very summery but they will work for this fall.  And Tetsu is already thinking I can recover these next year too seeing as the cats are probably going to enjoy scratching the fabric even more than the vinyl.

Got to go and buy more staples for my staple gun!