Photo-op missed

I've been lax with my picture taking recently.  Yesterday I spent all day sewing and didn't get one photo...Too much intense bonding time with the sewing machine! 

Once a month or so on Fridays, my patchwork group gathers at Mrs. Furui's.  Yesterday I arrived at Mrs. Furui's around 9:30.  That's pretty early!  Mrs. Furui and I have been planning a Christmas quilt which somehow evolved into two identical Christmas quilts (one for the hospital, one for the kindergarten) and we STARTED yesterday morning.  Point zero.  Pull out the fabrics...  Decide where to use each fabric.  Start cutting.  Sew.

No one else made an appearance in the morning and Mrs. Furui and I worked until 1:30 when we finally stopped for lunch.

"Where is everyone else today?  Mrs. H called and said she can't make it but everyone else?  I guess everyone just likes chatting with Mrs. H and if she doesn't come..."

I did use the lunch break as an opportunity to photograph Mrs. Furui's progress on her Double Wedding Ring.  She has one more row of motifs to hand quilt and then all she needs to do is sew on the binding.  Of course the wedding was LAST weekend and so Mrs. Furui didn't make her deadline... but anyway, she hopes to finish the quilt and give it to her niece at the end of the month so I have a feeling I'm not going to get another chance to photograph this.

Isn't the hand quilting beautiful!  I love the little whirl there in the small space between the rings.  Sigh...  Seeing this makes me want to make a Double Wedding Ring quilt now...

Back to sewing and in the afternoon a couple friends finally showed up bringing their applique blocks to work on.  (Ah-hem.  I have finished MY block!)  Mrs. Furui and I continued cutting and sewing.  By 5:30 we had two Christmas flimsies minus their borders finished!  But as it was 5:30 it was getting too dark to photograph and that's my excuse for not having any pictures.  NEXT patchwork meeting we'll get the borders on (they are made... just not attached) and hopefully get to a basting stage.  THEN I'll have photos!

In the evening Tetsu came home with five fancy cakes.  Five!  5 is the good luck number in Japan, or rather it is considered aesthetically pleasing whereas 4 is considered bad luck, so things are sold in sets of 5.  That is besides the point...  Why Tetsu bought 5 cakes is the question.  The cakes were in celebration for our first daughter's birthday who would have been 32 yesterday.  I don't know how we got into the habit of celebrating each year.  She lived only two months but both Tetsu and I remember her birthday and Tetsu always brings home cakes.  Plural.  I enjoyed the matcha and chestnut mousse there in the front but that's probably all I'm going to partake of... Maybe that was Tetsu's plan all along.  He knows I don't eat many sweets so he will have the other four for himself!