Rain

To fill your life with blessings, 

make sure your bucket is turned towards heaven.

Berries and Music

Two projects finished today.

Number one is the fabric post card for my mother.  Yes, I know... I'm barely under the deadline.  This was inspired by the blueberries that are starting to change colors on our blueberry bush.  Also, since I'd made a McKenna wallhanging with blueberries this past month, the pattern came in handy to just put a few berries on a piece of fabric.  I'm sorry to say that not a lot of thought went into this and I know the message is corny but maybe it will tickle my mother when she gets it.  Whew!  Another card out of the way!

My second project finished is the NHK Partnership Quilt block for the Tokyo International Quilt Festival next year.  I tell you... when I get an idea I just have to go for it and it is hit or miss whether a block will develop or just a lot of fabric will get thrown in the trash...

The theme for the 2016 Partnership Quilt is MUSIC.  At 12:30 this afternoon I was bemoaning this year's theme to my non-sewing friends.  They may not sew but most of them are pretty musical.  A piano teacher, a chorus accompanist and a cellist.  After I said good-bye to them I thought again about a musical block.  A piano?  A cello?  In the end, the cello seemed easier to depict on fabric, and a very obvious shape that I could play with and not get too far off.   Okay...  What does a cello look like?  (I wasn't even sure of that!)

I checked the Internet for some images and then sketched out something on scrap paper.

Next I raw edge appliqued my cello shape and added some depth with what I hoped were going to be shadows.  I could have left things well enough alone with this... but it seemed too common.  So what did I do?  I cut my block into strips!  That was when I wondered if maybe this was just going to go into the waste paper basket!

I sewed alternating strips in a different fabric hoping to make the whole block a bit more abstract.  I guess...

And then I outlined the cello free hand with black thread, going over the alternating strips (as maybe the block turned out TOO abstract and one could hardly recognize the cello any more.)  And of course I needed to get some strings in there too.

Finally I went around again free-hand and filled in a bit more detail.  There!  Does that look like a cello?  Well, even if it looks like a violin I guess I don't care and I don't know what the difference is anyway except for the size and the tone.

Okay... I'm satisfied.  For someone who knows so little about music this turned out pretty well!

A boy and my cat

I'm doing housewifely things this morning and decided to take a break from cleaning. 

Hmm.  What is in my photo file that I haven't shown?

Yuma-kun still comes weekly to my house and we swap off from studying English one week and sewing the next.  I think he made another drawstring bag that I didn't get a photo of.  I also tutored him in making a word block, the word being his own name... but this was harder than he found enjoyable and I doubt we'll be making any more words.  Maybe he can use this one block on a someday quilt, or incorporate it in another bag...

The first thing Yuma-kun does when he arrives at my house is to go looking for Mi.  The other cats don't particularly like Yuma-kun and he doesn't seem to care much for them either but Mi is another story.  Throughout most of our English lessons Yuma-kun has Mi on his lap and occasionally Mi will even try to sit there while Yuma-kun is at the sewing machine.  I think Yuma-kun has cats at his grandmother's house or at least there was a time when he did.  I don't ask as it sounds as if his farming family can get rid of animals without a second thought.  He doesn't seem to have any particular fondness for the barn cats though he does regularly walk one of his dogs.  I don't ask about the dog situation much either.  Nevertheless, Yuma-kun lavishes love on Mi and Mi returns the affection.  And I love seeing them together.

Manner mode

Yesterday I went to a classical guitar concert.  My friend has played the guitar for many years and her guitar teacher and group were performing together at one of the main concert halls in the city.  The music was soft and sensitive and lovely and I spent much of the time drinking in the delicate sounds and hoping to come up with a good idea for the NHK Partnership quilt theme... music.

However, during the second part of the concert, when the guitar teacher was performing solo, someone's cell phone rang.

"Ring... ring..."

It was a ring, not a buzz or a vibe, and from my seat higher in the hall, I noticed an older lady bend over to fumble around in her purse... bringing the cell phone out of its depths and making the ringing louder.  Well!

There had been an auditorium announcement at the beginning of the concert...

"Please do not distract the performers with photographing.  Please turn your cell phones to manner mode."

I had put away my camera (thus no photos of the concert) and checked my cell phone even though it is always set to manner mode.  That's why I miss almost all of the calls and e-mail that come into it.

ANYWAY...  The teacher continued with his performance of some very soft and soothing music when...

"Ring...  ring..."

The lady's cell phone rang again!  Hadn't she turned the dang thing to manner mode yet?  The people around her fidgeted in their seats as if to say, "its not my cell phone.  Don't look at me!"  People in the row ahead of the lady turned in their seats.  People behind the lady leaned forward to whisper something to her.

The teacher persevered.  Another few minutes passed...

"Ring...  ring..."

The lady fumbled around again in her seat.  Someone in front of her leaned over the back of their seat and put out their hand as if to take the cell phone from her.  The whole audience shifted in their seats at the uncomfortableness of the situation.

"Ring... ring..."

The last time the lady's cell phone rang, an audible groan went over the whole hall...  the guitar's subtle vibrato lost in the audience's disgust.

The teacher played on to the end of his piece but then stood and pointedly said.

"On the program I have one more piece to play.  As the telephone is very noisy it seems you are getting bored.  I ask that you all bear with me as this concert will be over in just a few more minutes."

He made it sound like a joke but I can imagine how upset he was to publicly chastise the cell phone owner.  The lady just sat through the rest of the concert (no more phone calls) and didn't seem abashed at all...  I would have left early... escaped at the first ring, never to show my face in a concert hall again.

The cell phone owner should have retired to the lobby at the first disturbance... if only to turn her phone to manner mode (or get someone to do it for her if she didn't know how.)  At the very least, the concert hall ushers or whoever is overseeing the place should have escorted her out or offered to hold her phone for her... I don't know... someone besides the performer should have dealt with the situation...

It is unfortunate that in my mind the guitarist's expertise and love of music didn't make as much of an impression as the discourteous cell phone.

(By the way, this is MY cell phone... and very well mannered.)

Different projects

Let's see... What's been going on this week? 

I'm still tatting.  I think I've made about half the amount of lace I need.  It is a relaxing past time but not one I do well when talking with people.  (I get confused and spend more time un-tatting than tatting.)

Yesterday I was helping my two friends with their quilts.  They are hoping to get to a point where they can work on their own during the summer...  Rats.  There was so much going on that I didn't get a photo of R-san's quilt in progress...  She is working on a zig-zag baby quilt for her new grand-daughter.  She had her quilt spread out in one corner of the living room and we walked around it (and the cats walked on it) while she cut and sewed on a border.  By the end of the day she was able to sew backing and batting to fit the top and she will sandwich the quilt and machine quilt it herself over the next two weeks.... I'll try not to forget to photograph her quilt when she next brings it.

Mrs. N was spread out in another corner of the living room and we were jumping over that (I need a larger living room) while we tried to get her blocks and sashing sewn together and add triangles to put the quilt on point.  A bit of ripping and resewing but Mrs. N was able to take the quilt home in one piece.  I think she wants to add a border to this so she is not at flimsy stage yet...  Mrs. N. spends a lot of time on the train and she made all these blocks by hand while she road back and forth on the railways.  She said she used up almost ALL the fabric in her stash box making this quilt!  I guess she'll just have to go buy some more!

Mrs. N also brought a Happy Village that she machine quilted on her own the past couple weeks.  Notice the kitty in the lower center of the quilt.  Mrs. N is already planning on making another Happy Village, maybe in grays...

And on my own sewing front, I finished making all the blocks for the Leaders/Enders Split Nine Patch (I'm going to have to find a name for this quilt).  I don't know if I'll work on this anymore before I leave for the States...  Maybe these blocks will go in a box for the summer.  I just hope I don't forget where I store the box.

Works in Progress before summer vacation

I have a sewing day today so I'm bound and determined to get off this computer and go work on some projects upstairs! 

On the WIP table are the leader/enders quilt blocks to be finished, a fabric post card for my mother (maybe next year I'll do photo postcards for her...  I'm running out of ideas!) and the NHK Partnership quilt block to think about for the Tokyo International Quilt Festival next year.  The theme is "Music".  Get the details for joining at Queenie's Needlework blog.  I'm one of the most unmusical people in the world so I don't know if I'm going to come up with anything in the next two weeks (the deadline is in August but I'm off to the States in two weeks.)  Music... Music...  I'm so bad at ideas....  But I really loved being a part of the Partnership Quilt last year and would love to participate this year if my thinking cap will just start working....

In the meantime...

I put the dark border on the Antique Squares quilt.  Now for some simple quilting in the grid lines and this will be finished.  NOT SO!  I'm making things difficult for myself again...

"What if I relieved that heavy border with a fringe of lace?  Wait...  I don't have any lace on hand...  What if I put an edge of tatting around the squares?  I've got ANTIQUE tatting/crochet thread of my grandmother's.  That box in itself is an antique and the thread isn't getting used anywhere else...  It might go nicely with the antique blocks...  Is tatting a LONG～～ edge all around this wall hanging even possible?"

So I've spent three days tatting and haven't enough edging for even one side.  But I guess it is possible.  The tatting is not very fast going, though maybe worth the effort.  The trouble with tatting is that when I make a mistake it is very difficult to go back and correct.  Unlike crochet, everything has to be cut out and reknotted.  Making a mistake puts me back at least 30 minutes... 

 Unless I get hopeless tied up in tatting thread I will continue making edging in the evenings... 

What's this?

I'm in a rush.  This was going to be a Wordless Wednesday post...  What photo should I use?

Have I shown this?  I don't think so.  Without scrolling down, can you guess what this is?

It was certainly beautiful.  I found it at the pool reception counter...  That's not a particularly great hint.

It was made by one person and then MADE by another person.

It isn't particularly lasting.  It was gone a day later.

It isn't particularly beautiful in itself but the second person carved it into a work of art.

In America I can find it larger and oblong.

It was a smallish watermelon!  It sure was pretty with the pink just peaking through!  One of the pool members grew it in his garden and someone else at the pool who had taken vegetable carving lessons carved it into a thing of beauty.

A bit of a mushy post...

One of the surprises in Tetsu's and my lives is how caring and loving our son has become.  Leiya has always been conscientious and good at expressing her gratitude or her fondness for her family, but somewhere during the jr. high/high school years, Takumi put on the mask of coolness and disdain, for his parents in particular.  Okay...  Well, what teenage boy clings to his family over his friends?  I can live with this.

In fact, I can remember distinctly telling Takumi that I no longer expected the kisses and "I love you, Mommy." and that a short "Thanks" said exactly the same thing to me...  I wonder if Takumi remembers that conversation...

And then we had the years when all of us were ready for Takumi to leave the nest.  This kid is driving me crazy!  He doesn't want to live with us and we don't particularly want to live with him!  He was so ready to go his own way and never look back!  At least that's what I thought.

Takumi, past his teens, past his TWENTIES even, has changed so much in our eyes though probably he would say that he is the same ol' Takumi.  Goals, dedication perseverance.  And such a caring attitude towards Tetsu and me.  I can't tell you how LOVED we feel these days.

As you can see from my changed blog photo, I TREASURE the hat that Takumi sent me for Mother's Day.  Tetsu teases me that I might as well sleep in the thing. 

The day before Father's Day a package arrived for Tetsu from Takumi.  Tetsu held it with shining eyes.  Of course it is not the present so much as the being remembered...

Takumi sent Tetsu some jinbei, a type of Japanese relaxing wear for men.  I guess this will be the evening style for Tetsu for the next few months!

Antique squares

I finished hand appliqueing my 2 inch squares to the grid wall hanging I've been making.  Though I had wondered if I was going to have enough squares to fill all 162 places, it ended up that with a bit of searching through the bag, I did.

Those are all antique fabrics there from at least 50 years ago (except for the flowers which I pulled fabric for from my scrap bin.)

Though I had thought that I wouldn't have enough different fabrics for every single space, I was surprised when I went back to the bag to find that I'd overlooked some of the squares.  At first I had just pulled interesting fabrics... then I went back and pulled "boring" fabrics (checks and solids), and then I went back and pulled a square and laid it side by side with others to see if I'd already used it or not.  I was surprised to find very slight differences in what I'd assumed were the same fabric.

For example...

.... this maroon dot fabric...

...and this one.  They look the same (even in this photo... but the latter square has more dots to the square.

I could have sworn I'd used this clover-like indigo fabric somewhere else...

...but when I went back and looked I found only this indigo fabric with the same shaped flowers but spread out more on the square.

I was absolutely sure that this fabric was already sewn on and lo and behold...

...here it is in a different color!

And then there was this one which was already cut on the bias and so I used it as is...

Checks too were so similar that I had to keep comparing the squares side by side.  This simple blue check...

...and this simple blue check.  And then there were gray checks that were nearly the same and purple ones.  So you can see how I was able to add the last squares without including any contemporary fabrics.

Now to figure out a border...  Right now I have two that I'm auditioning.

On the wall I like the dark border...  It seems more vintage and in tune with the antique fabrics (the borders are NOT going to be authentic.)

But in the photos the moss green seems more subdued and doesn't overpower the squares ...  It isn't anything close to vintage though...  a lot of colorful dots...

I guess I'll keep going in and out of the sewing room until I get a strong impression one way or the other.

A different way to spend the evening

Friday evening an older friend of ours, someone that Tetsu has contacts through work and whom I know from the swimming pool, invited us out for dinner and to join him in his favorite pastime, karaoke.  I'm not sure how I got involved but the man seemed to think that our lives were lacking unless we partook of some authentic sushi rather than the cheap revolving sushi that we usually patronize.  The karaoke visit was partly for us to see a new way of enjoyment and partly so that the friend could boast his expertise.  A really interesting evening and surely different from what I normally do on my Friday nights!

The sushi place was exceptional with our friend ordering way too much food for us all.  He was right, real sushi, the tender sashimi lazily lounging on its mound of rice, shouldn't be compared to the revolving fast food stuff with a defrosted piece of raw fish still rigid on a robot formed rice ball...  Still... the price...  Maybe we'll do it again on our 50th wedding anniversary...

As we were leaving the restaurant announced that they were having a tuna carving... butchering...  I don't know what you'd call it, and that restaurant patrons should gather in the entry to watch the "show".  It takes a special license to be able to dismember a large fish with one very large, very sharp carving knife.  Okay...  Let's see what that is about.  Here we have a tuna. (Stuffed with ice.  Already no innards... thank goodness.)

And here was the chef skillfully wielding his knife while two or three other apprentice chefs looked on (as well as 10 or 15 restaurant customers).

It took about 15 minutes to get the fish into parts that were then transferred to the counter-top refrigerators.

The waitress happily posed with the tuna head as the chef continued his dissection...  That head will get oven grilled whole and served as-is for a party.  It is considered a real delicacy in Japan.  Hmm.  I'll pass.

The rest of our evening was dedicated to karaoke.  Karaoke is that singing entertainment with boxed accompaniment.  Literally karaoke means "empty orchestra".  Get it?  Singing to a non-orchestra.

Tetsu and I are both non-singers.  We are non-drinkers too and thus neither of us have been to a karaoke bar before.  But our friend has taken karaoke lessons and became the karaoke champion of the prefecture and he is very proud of his position and wanted to demonstrate his prowess.  We were happy to LISTEN but please don't expect either Tetsu nor me to stand up there with a microphone in front of a bunch of strangers and SING!

Karaoke patrons seem to know each other very well (they get together nightly) and they are very good at complimenting each other and boosting each others' ego.  And honestly, all these middle-age and older, freely drinking people were VERY GOOD!  It goes without saying that our friend was exceptional but if I closed my eyes and just listened, I would have thought that any of them were professionals belting it out in front of a large audience (instead of just the 8 of us).

Of course the microphone kept getting handed to us but Tetsu was having no part of it.  I pointed out that if someone put on some contemporary gospel/praise music I could sing like the rest of them but alas most karaoke songs are the traditional Japanese love-story, down on your luck, drinking songs...  (Neither Tetsu nor I recognized even one song the whole evening...  We are pretty out of it and the older people enjoy the older songs.)  Just to be a good sport I finally found a song in the computer (the system is all computerized... with scores and grading even!) that I knew somewhat and I did my best to sing that, though I refused to use the microphone.  I was embarrassed enough stumbling through the Japanese that I could barely read, off tune and with no rhythm, without having some computer tell me that I hadn't made the grade and better luck next time!

I can't say that Tetsu and I will make it a habit to visit karaoke bars but we learned that it is another way for people to come together, make friends and enjoy themselves.  Each to his own!