Y-kun's quilt up on the wall

Y-kun has come to a major crossroad in his quilt making.  ALL THE BLOCKS ARE MADE AND EVEN THE ROWS ARE UP ON MY WALL!  (The quilt has overflowed the design flannel on the wall.)

Here is Y-kun putting in the last stitches on his last row.  (I really should supply him with a cleaner sewing area to work on.  That is all my stuff there cluttering the table.)

And up on the wall they go!  I gave Y-kun the camera and told him to photograph his progress so far.

 "This light pull is in the way.  I can't take a good picture."

I held the light pull out of the way for him and this is his picture.

My picture of the photographer/quilter is from my cell phone.

Next week we will be sewing the rows together.  Y-kun is not looking forward to that step. 

"I'm going to have to use pins!  I don't like using pins  By the way, those green strips are too close together!"

Spoken like a true quilt designer.  We switched a few strips around after the photography session.

I have ordered some border fabric from a swatch catalog for Y-kun.  He has chosen bright blue cartoony Mt. Fuji fabric!  I tried to sway him to some other choice... but no, he DEFINITELY wanted the blue Mt. Fuji fabric.  It's his quilt.  I'm not going to have to look at it.

Dinner

More quiet days.  (Every time I try to type in 'quiet' or 'quite', my fingers automatically type in 'quilt'.  Only a quilter's problem...)  Mrs. Furui gave me more Liberty zig-zag piecing to do so that is on the docket for today.

Last night's dinner.  It wasn't exciting but thanks to Carin's suggestion I put together a simple pot dish with my new Tajin nabe.

Slice up an onion thinly.  Slice up half of a Japanese pumpkin.  Layer with slices of pork that have been marinated in one part each soy sauce, sake and mirin.  Add a little water (so that it doesn't burn like I did the first time) and cook over low heat.  Delicious.  The onions and pumpkin soak up each other flavors!

And Carin said she made this dish in the microwave so I guess you don't need to have a Tajin nabe... but I need to get some use out of mine.

And what about this?  We had fish for dinner last night.  Let's see, I think this is salted, slightly dried mackerel.  The cats went crazy as I grilled it in our small fish grill and they bothered us throughout dinner.  This is a normal way of preparing fish in Japan though I don't think I've ever seen a fish like this in the States.  The fish is split down the back and opened flat.  Oh great.  We get to see the insides of a fish head (eyes on either side there...)  Aren't you glad I didn't turn the fish over to photograph it?  I could scare some people away!  I didn't check out the other side either... Just enjoyed the fish meat leaving the bones and skin and head.

The cats enjoyed my left-over bones and skin and head.  They don't mind what the other side of a split fish looks like.

February's fabric card

I found myself with an extra hour yesterday and remembered that I had wanted to make fabric post cards once a month this year.  Not many days left to this month and I hadn't thought about it since last month's cat in the basket card but I went upstairs and pulled out my stuffed scrap basket.

This is pretty simple.  A nice polka dotted background, some slivers of white batik fabric and a cat silhouette!

The scrap of dotted fabric has a nice grading of colors so that meant I didn't have to try to layer fabrics in the background.  I'm trying to make it look like snow falling at night...

I had planned to get more detailed with cutting out tree shapes on the whitish fabric but that became too intricate and when cleaning up the slivers of white, found they made good branches.  Out with the original plan!

The cat came from white on white cat fabric and I just cut out one of the cats!   That was simple!

I didn't use any batting on this...  Just sewed down to some fusible interfacing.   I learned from last month's effort and applied fused paper to the tree slivers and cat.  That made everything stay down nicely.  (Definitely the way to go!)  The stitching was done in invisible thread and then I sewed the fabric onto a regular postcard (forget the zig-zag stitch... that was too much of a mess).

I'm planning to slip this into an envelope and send it to my mother again.  I never did hear how the last card arrived.  (Of course I never called to ask either so I'm the one who is to blame.)

Well, that was easy!
 

Quiz

Thank you for all your kind words yesterday.  After my big finish, I don't have a lot to show or say today... 

We had a slight problem the night before last.  An important household appliance broke and left us in the lurch.  I bought a new one yesterday.

So this is a quiz. 

What is this?

 This is one end.  A switch.

 This is the other end.  A bulb with a hole.

 And then there is this...

...which ends in this.

Hint.  It is very important for us during this season.  We use it once a day in December, January and February.  It runs by batteries.  If I had my druthers I'd get rid of it completely but no can do. 

No, it is not a bovine enema device.  But it is a pump.

 

The mystery item is a pump for transferring kerosene from the tank to the room stove!  This is a messy job that I have to do daily.  To keep the downstairs warm we have to fill the tank once a day...  The kerosene tank sits in the corner of the room and it gets pushed over to the stove and the battery powered kerosene pump pumps with a push of a button.  It used to be that I'd have to press a soft bulb quite a few times until the kerosene began flowing...  And then watch closely to prevent overflow.  But this handy device goes on with a flip of the switch and there is an AUTOMATIC SENSOR that stops the overflow. 

Tetsu and I had our supply of kerosene for heating the other night, but without the pump all we could do was sit in a cold living room and hug the heated carpet.

Though I don't like the daily hassle of using the kerosene pump, without it life is cold!

Scrappy Mountain Majesties Quit Finished!

I finished the Scrappy Majestic Mountains quilt, putting on the binding this weekend. 

I went out to find a tree to hang it on.

Hey, there are a lot of places that I lay out my quilt!  As long as I chose a place where the snow wasn't slushy the quilt stayed clean.  (But I washed it anyway yesterday.)

I remember some other blogger showing off her quilts on the snow and I thought the snow such a beautiful background.

 An example of the corner quilting.

I did find a tree and there is even a majestic mountain in the background (which doesn't show up in the photo.  Mt. Nantai, the pride of Nikko, is back there somewhere.)

 And maybe you can see the quilting on the bands here.  Both the swirls and the straight stitch-in-the-ditch.

Here is the back of the quilt.  I had bought the backing at M and L's in California last summer and had planned to use it for my Pine Burr quilt.  But the Pine Burr quilt is nowhere near being finished so the backing got used for this quilt.  The colors sort of match...

But I still like the quilt laid out on the snow the best.  

Tessellating Kitties from Julie

Hm~hm~♪♪♪~  Look what came in the mail for me yesterday.  A surprise package from Julie at My Quilt Diary.  

I had made a SMALL quilt for Julie to give to her when I met her for the first time.  It was done quickly...  on the sewing machine.  A memento.  A remembrance.  And here Julie sends me this masterpiece of handwork!  She has captured my six cats in a table center!!!  Now when someone asks me how many cats I have, I have only to point to Julie's table center! 

By the way.  Did you know that table centers are the BEST way to show off quilts?  Most of the people who visit me never notice the quilts on my walls but the notice right away the table center that their coffee is sitting next to.  And I have only one other table center, also made by Julie, so I'm always having to tell people that no, the table center is not my work but I wish I was.

Julie's tessellating kitties are appliqued together in one piece each.  Whew!  Think of all those points and angles!  Each kitty is playing with a different ball and all have sweetly embroidered faces.  That's a lot of embroidery! 

There is a colorful butterfly fluttering around the edges of the quilt making the hand quilting lines. 

The newspaper background is full of funny cat stories that Julie found at the Tokyo Quilt Festival and shared with me (she said she is going to use the rest to make a pillow for her cat loving dog.)  My English students can get some extra reading in!

Thank you Julie!

Please visit Julie and see some of the other wonderful things that she is making (as well as the best critique of the 2014 Tokyo Quilt Festival on the Internet.)

Mrs. N's finishes

Two of my friends came over for a patchwork day yesterday and Mrs. Nakazawa showed some of her finishes.

Mrs. Nakazawa and Rumi-san have been working on their New Testament quilts since the year 2010!  This was all hand pieced and hand quilted and Mrs. N actually made TWO New Testament quilts in the three plus years.  And of course each month they've made other quilts and wall-hangings and table runners, some by hand, some by machine.  So though three years plus may seem like a long time Mrs. N's New Testament quilt has been an on-going project amidst many other projects.  The other New Testament quilt went to Mrs. N's friend (good friend!) but this one is going up in her own house.

And here is the quilter, Mrs. N.  (Sorry, I pinned the quilt to one of my quilts on the wall.  That's why there is all that jumble back there...)

Mrs. N is a real cat lover (and my cat mentor) and she includes cats in all of her quilts.  Can you see the cat faces in the World Without End block?  And a sleeping cat in the Bible verse block.

Mrs. N is really getting good at her hand quilting.  She has been using an Aunt Becky finger protector on her under hand and she says that it really has made her quilting easier.  Rumi-san will be able to show her New Testament quilt any day now.  Gambare Rumi-san!  (Go at it!)

And Mrs. N has put together two McKenna bird quilts now.  She has machine quilted both of those and I'd say she is getting pretty proficient at that technique too!
 

Swirly feathers

I have been machine quilting and when I took these pictures yesterday, the Scrappy Mountain Majesties quilt was still on the machine.  I finished quilting the borders and spent last night burying the thread ends. The next job for this weekend will be sewing on the binding.  Yeah!  A finish in sight!

As advised by many of you, I went back and freehand stitched-in-the-ditch on all the bars of the colored "mountains".  Although sewing straight free-hand is a bit nerve racking and mistakes are more obvious, the straight stitching gives a lot of dimension and I'm glad I did the extra work.

The lighter bars between the dark mountains (you can only see one half bar here) I filled with swirly feathers and it seemed the obvious choice to continue sewing swirly feathers in the border.  This was the same border quilting choice I made for the quilt I made for Bianca and the border coloring is about the same too.  Not too adventurous of me but I felt comfortable quilting it. 

For my own notes... (Someday I'm going to forget and want to know how I did this!) I went around the border once just sewing the "spine" of the feathers in a random curve pattern... no marking.  Then I went "away" from me sewing in the feathered swirls on the side of the spine close to the quilt.  After going all the way around the border and meeting back at the starting point I quilted the outer part of the feather also working away from me. 

I hope to put on the binding this weekend and go hang the quilt on a tree outside so that I can take a full picture of it.  That is if I can wade through the snow to get to a tree!
 

A gold medal

Tetsu came home grouchy.  He had to go to an awards ceremony yesterday and he was not happy about it.  A couple of months ago someone called him and let him know he had been nominated for a Drivers' Management Award.  I'm sorry, I don't really know what this means and though Tetsu has explained it to me it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.  (That may be another reason why Tetsu was grouchy.)  It is not an award for personal excellent driving.  It is not an award for a perfect driving record of his convalescent home.  Maybe it is an award for holding the position of Drivers' Management for so many years.  There are many many vehicles connected with the convalescent home and the other organizations that the convalescent home is involved with.  (Group Homes, Day Service Centers, Home Helper Organizations, Meals on Wheels Organizations.)  Tetsu declined the nomination saying he doesn't have a lot to do with his Drivers' Management position.  I guess drivers take care of themselves pretty well. 

But earlier this month Tetsu was called again and congratulated for winning an award and invited to a ceremony.  He said that he went grumpily because he didn't really have time to be attending ceremonies and lo and behold, the ceremony was a really big deal!  He wasn't expecting that!  So along with 6 other awardees from the city, Tetsu was given a beautifully calligraphed certificate and a box which he brought home.

Hmm...  A velvet box.  Lined in satin.  And inside...

A gold medal.

Now I'm not sure what was supposed to be his reaction.  Honored to have been chosen?  Happy to have been recognized?

He was not.  Now he may have the wrong attitude but he thought it all a lot of nonsense and a waste of the city's money to be handing out gold medals for some position that is part of his job.  To put it lightly, he is annoyed.

"Doesn't the city have better things to do than spend money on medals and waste time with these ceremonies?"

(And he mumbled under his breath that the medal didn't even make a good paperweight nor could it be eaten...)

And to add to Tetsu's bad mood was a call later in the day from the city congratulating him again and letting him know being an awardee entailed the job of giving a Power Point presentation about Drivers' Management later this year.  If THAT didn't send him on a rant!  I think he feels tricked.

I guess if you're going to be awarded a Gold Medal (and the Olympic athletes are coveting them) then it needs to be after a lot of determination and anticipation.  Which Tetsu did not have.  I hope this grouchy mood doesn't last...

Chip

Chip is my beautiful kitty.  She is attached to me like a bump on a log.  Right now I am sitting in my armchair with the computer on my lap and Chip sleeping on the little space between the computer and my stomach.  She has her head pillowed on my right forearm as I try to type.  I can't see that this position is comfortable for her... it certainly isn't comfortable for me.

Chip has been around for quite a few years.  Here is my blog post about the day she joined our household.  I was devastated when she arrived as I did not need nor want a new cat (and Toi and Mi have joined our household since Chip and I didn't need nor want them either.)  Chip grew up under whatever quilt I was hand quilting or sometimes sleeping on my shoulder.  She is too big to sleep on my shoulder anymore but she still clings to me whenever I am in the house.

Chip does not like the other cats.  Any of them!  She wishes she were an only cat and she growls whenever another animal walks by her.  Unfortunately the growls set whichever other cat off and we often have cat fights with a lot of noise... all coming from Chip.  If she'd just let the rest of the world go by without getting her nose so out of joint, her life would be much more peaceful.

For all her attachment to me (not to Tetsu) Chip is not a particularly loving cat.  She doesn't purr much, she doesn't rub up against a person.  She mostly connives about what she can steal off the table when I'm not looking.  Talk about a sly cat!  Chip doesn't squint her eyes in adoration nor does she smile.  That last sentence sounds dumb but Mi can do all those things. Mi looks at a person (any person!) and the human will melt.  The expression on Mi's face is,

"You are so wonderful.  I love you.  I love having you talk to me. I love your call, your touch.  Let me see how much closer I can get to you."

Chip doesn't do that.  I mainly get the feeling that Chip uses me as a place of refuge rather than because she loves me any.  Chip's mind goes like this.

"As long as I am in Mom's lap no one else can touch me.  This is MY place.  Everyone stay away!  And Mom, don't move so much.  I don't like you when you disturb my sleep."

But as I say, Chip is a very lovely cat.  Perfect Cleopatora eye-lined eyes.  Delicate features.  In comparison, though they have similar coloring, Mi looks a bit like a flattened cat cushion. 

Oh well, I just got to rambling about Chip because she is right HERE.  And now I am ready to go to bed so she will have to get off my lap.  She's not going to be very happy about that.  She will follow me to the bedroom and crawl under the blankets with me for the night.  And growl at any other cat who even thinks about joining us.  (And they ALL want to.)  Good-night from Chip and me.