A new kettle

Our kettle gave out on us this week.  We are of the old school, (no electric kettles for us) and boil our water with a kettle.  During the winter we also keep the kettle on the kerosene stove simmering constantly which keeps the humidity of the room up a bit and adds a bit of warmth.  Thus the kettle gets a daily work out and succumbs quickly.

Yesterday I bought a new kettle and it is so new and shiny that I had to photograph it!  I doubt that I will be able to keep my kettle this shiny for long...  The reflection of the room was interesting and untidiness doesn't hit you in the face.

There I am sitting on the edge of the chair with Chip on my knee.  (That cat lives 80% of her life on someone's knee.)  On the far left, sitting on the corner of the sofa is Choco. 

"Choco!  I just bought that sofa cover!  What are you doing up there all ready!?"  I bought the orange sofa cover and chair cover when I bought the kettle.  It was only about an hour old...

The TV is on...  The Tessellating Cats quilt is on the wall.  There behind me is a book shelf with an old quilt that hides clutter.  Cleo is scratching away at his scratching board and two cat dishes are in front of him.  That's not a litter box, it's a rack for old newspapers....  I don't know where Mi was when I was taking this photo...  My crosswalk guard hat and a feather duster are hanging on a rack.

The water is ready.  Anybody want a cup of coffee?

Weaving again!

I had an absolutely fantastic day yesterday, thanks to Yuma-kun again!!!  We spent the day at his great-aunt's... weaving!

Two years ago I went with Yuma-kun to his great-aunt's house and discovered that she is a well known weaving teacher and artist.  Please visit this post I wrote about her in 2015 which shows some of her artwork and the house that she lives in.  Such an amazing woman!  Her name is Emiko Watanabe.

Yesterday's visit was to play around on the great-aunt's looms again, this time doing Sakiori which is weaving with kimono fabric rather than with threads...  Yesterday two other of Watanabe-san's students were at her workshop though all of us were doing different projects.  One woman was making clothing out of the woven fabric, one woman was learning basic weaving without a loom and Yuma-kun and I were set up on two looms... Yuma-kun doing whatever he liked and me with balls and balls fabric.

The word "Sakiori" comes from the words "saki" meaning to rip, and "ori" meaning to weave.  The warp threads in the loom are threads but the woof textile is continuously ripped strips of fabric, usually old Japanese kimonos made of silk or dyed cotton.

Probably just getting the Japanese kimonos into balls that are usable is a job in itself (though Watanabe-san said it was quite stress-relieving to just sit and rip things up all day!) and though I got a quick lesson on how to rip a piece of fabric in a continuous strand, I was given access to bags and bags and boxes and boxes of already ripped fabric.  Go at it!

It takes some skill not to pull too tightly and coordinate hands and feet but I was lost in another world within minutes.  I barely heard any of the other actions going around me though I did remember to bring out my camera and asked Yuma-kun to take a few photos.

I was on the larger loom and Watanabe-san had set it up with a wide warp for me.

Yuma-kun had a narrower warp set-up and though he was given instructions on weaving with threads, he soon was grabbing sparkly threads off the walls an mixing fabric and threads at the same time, going completely beyond whatever he was supposed to be learning...  which was quite alright with his great-aunt who firmly believes in individuality and originality.  None of this making something just like someone else has made.

Yuma-kun's sparkly blue threads mixed with his read and white fabric.

I barely moved from my perch on the loom seat all day, just enough to pick up another ball of fabric and use as much as I wished before changing to another fabric.  On one of my ventures off the seat to paw through the boxes, Watanabe-san showed me one of her latest pieces of clothing made from Sakiori to give me an idea of what can be made.

Wouldn't that be fun to wear?  But how could you bear to cut into the fabric that you'd spent hours making...

We went out to eat lunch at a Thai restaurant within walking distance of Watanabe-san's house.  A restaurant I know well.  Lunch is always so elaborate with these hand carved fruit and vegetable decorations.

Yuma-kun wasn't much impressed by the decorations.  He was more interested in playing his smart phone games...  That is his great-aunt beside him.  Such a small, unimposing woman whom Yuma-kun bugs and bothers, and which she accepts with such love and smiles.

On our way home we got involved with looking for four-leaf clovers...

Watanabe-san's house.  An authentic thatched roof house.  There are not many left in Tochigi and certainly not many that are lived in full time.

I stayed mostly on the loom from 9:30am until 5:00pm. 

And this is what I got made!

Watanabe-san and her students suggested I make a couple of bags from this piece.  That means cutting it up...

It looks very nice right now on my dining room table so until I work up my courage to do something with this piece it will live in the dining room for awhile...

I am again in danger of giving up patchwork and quilting, and starting weaving as a new hobby...
 

Goodbyes

March is the end of the school year (and fiscal year) and everybody is winding up projects and schools and lessons. 

I have finished at the crosswalk but there will be a ceremony to say goodbye to teachers on the 31st so I have one more late morning work hour.

Yesterday I said goodbye to pre-school children who will be entering elementary school from April and they presented me with a song and hand drawn thank you card.

Two sisters who have been coming to my house for the last two years will be busy with other things as the older girl will be attending an advanced jr. high school in Tokyo from April.  I wanted to make something for these two special students and so I spent Sunday afternoon making personalized pillow cases for them.

They were both very pleased and the older sister said she will take her pillowcase with her to Tokyo when she goes live with her grandmother.

Quilt projects

I made up another fabric postcard for my mother and will send it out this week. 

I think I already showed the paper cutting version, but I couldn't glue the figure onto the paper postcard as I couldn't find the postcards I'd bought at the post office.  After two weeks of looking I finally gave up and bought another 5 cards at the post office on Friday.   ...  And found the previously purchased 10 postcards Friday night...  Sigh...  Isn't that the way it always works?!

So both postcards have been made, the fabric one with a bit of freehand writing.  The paper one will just stay around my house until I can figure out what to do with it.

And the two ladies who come for patchwork were here on Friday finishing up their applique projects and starting new things.  I bought these kits for them from Pacific Rim Quilt Company last November.

R-san has finished up hers and it is ready to hang on the wall. 

Mrs. N was putting on binding at my house on Friday and has only a bit more to do.

Choosing the quilt kit for Mrs. N was easy as she is my cat mentor an has more cat things than I do.  I had to put a bit of thought into what to get for R-san, but she seemed very happy with the design.

As you can see, I made the same quilt as Mrs. N though in my case I reversed the light-and-dark colors.  I used the pattern I'd bought for Mrs. N and then purchased my own fabrics.

 Mrs. N's batik fabric were part of the kit and they were just purrrfect for this project.  Take a look at a close up of the white batik.  Cats and mice!!!

Off to the post office!

Two photographers

From yesterday we have had Yuma-kun staying at our house for the weekend.  It is spring vacation and he wanted to come and stay and accompany me to church this morning...  Tetsu has to work today though, so the three of us had only yesterday to hang out together.  Which is probably a good thing...  There is only so much of Yuma-kun that Tetsu can take and I walk around on pins on needles watching the two of them interact.  Yuma-kun does not "read the air" well as it is called in Japanese and having this young man who takes up space and is a bit of a know-it-all is admittedly trying when our normal quiet life is just the two of us...  Sigh...  He does try to be helpful though...

Yuma-kun arrived at 9:00 and went with Tetsu to clean street gutters.  From there he began planting flowers for me...

Yuma-kun enjoys plants and farming and he dug up bulbs and other things he found in the forest to add to the store bought flowers. 

After a long swim at the pool for all three of us and a BIG lunch to celebrate Yuma-kun's acceptance to high school, we came home and Yuma-kun and I went out with Choco for a walk and to take photos giving Tetsu a chance to relax in quiet.

Yuma-kun and I traded off with the camera and went looking for suitable photography subjects.

The plum flowers are an obvious choice.  So beautiful!

 A farmer was out plowing his field.

Yuma-kun took over the camera for this photo (obviously).

The rape flowers were blooming by a creek and Yuma-kun wanted to pick some and take them home to feed Tetsu.  He suggested an experiment of feeding Tetsu purple stalk flowers, which are bitter, and green stalked flowers which are mild.  I convinced him that Tetsu would not like to be on the wrong end of an experiment.

We came across a very small plot with crocus blooming and I suggested Yuma-kun try some of the photography modes on my camera.  I'm photographing him with my iPhone.

This is one of Yuma-kun's photos but I cropped it a bit "teaching" him about photography composition (though I don't know much myself...)  Same with that photo of me and Choco.  We consulted each other on how to crop it best once it was in the computer.

This photo was a surprise to both of us.  This is one of the "artistic" modes on my camera and seems to pick up light and turn it into sparkles (which can't be seen on the camera screen which is also interesting.  We only noticed the sparkles when I brought up the photo in the computer.)

"Yuma-kun!  You created a fairy land!"

Here I was trying to demonstrate that things normally not thought of as being beautiful can also turn into interesting photos.  We were at an abandoned construction sight.

 Another construction sight photo.  I love that Choco looks like she's smiling!

And we got home just as the sun was setting over a factory in the distance.

Yuma-kun and I had a good time on our walk photographing and then choosing downloaded photos on the computer.

Tetsu and I were still full from lunch but Yuma-kun ate a plate of pot stickers and rice for dinner.  After a slight scolding from Tetsu about something minor ("Being scolded doesn't bother me.  I'm used to it.") we all settled down in front of the TV for the rest of the evening.

A finish! ... Of sorts

I have been quietly plugging along on hand quilting my Happy Scrappy Irish Chain quilt all these months.  One half done and another basted.

When did I start this?  Probably in August of last year I got the flimsy made but didn't get around to sandwiching the quilt until this January.  The original plan had been to make one big quilt but I thought the whole thing would be too unwieldy and took out a middle seam to make for easier quilting.

Then it was a toss up as to whether I was going to machine quilt the quilt or hand quilt it.  Thinking about that alone took a month or two...  But finally in January I started hand quilting.  And now HALF of this quilt is done!  The motifs are hand quilted, the double lines are hand quilted (I had considered doing the straight lines by machine).  It would be so nice to check off this quilt but no...  I have a complete other half to hand quilt still before I join the center seam and turn this into one large quilt...

A half actually doesn't look very large when I spread it out like this does it?

Yesterday I put in some time basting the second half of this quilt.  Even table basting was a bit of a strain on my newly healed back, but I could never have crawled around the floor basting this alone. 

I need to stretch a bit too and get the kinks out of my shoulders before I begin again.  I wonder if I'll get as much hand quilting in during the spring as I did over the cold winter months...
 

Passing the buck

This is not an especially pleasant post today.

I've written about how much I enjoy my job as a crosswalk guard.  But there is a situation that has occurred only twice in the 6 years I've worked that I dread, and that is coming upon an animal that has been hit by a car.   I can and do freak out at this scenerio and it is enough to make me think about quitting right then and there and never going out on the streets again.  Anywhere!  I have a feeling this is a mis-wiring in my head as normal people wouldn't allow this "unpleasant" situation to affect their behavior and emotions to such extremes...

NOT near my crosswalk but on the way to school from our neighborhood to the school there was a dead badger (actually a raccoon dog).  I noticed it before the three day holiday we had and vowed that I wasn't walking Choco anywhere along that road.  I HOPED someone, the city, a farmer, anyone! would dispose of it without me having to think about it again.  (Already I can tell you that if this were a cat or dog I would probably be in a state of depression.  I know...  Unreasonable thinking because the badger has as much of a right to life as a cat or dog.)

Nope.  When I went by on Tuesday morning it was still there, half-way on the sidewalk, half-way in the street.  Oh dear.  This must be terribly unpleasant for the children walking to and from school...  But sorry.  I am NOT going to be the person to go burying roadkill.  I just cannot do it.

So I told the principal who was out at the crosswalk with me.  I asked if he thought I should go to the police box and let the officer there know...  Maybe HE would do something about it.  The principal didn't think that that was really the police's job...  He asked for the location and said he'd handle it.  Whew!  Thank goodness.  Out of my hands!  I've passed the buck to someone else!

About 30 minutes later I got a phone call from the school...  Vice principal.  They had verified that there was a dead badger out near the sidewalk but so sorry...  it was not the school's responsibility to dispose of it.  Maybe I should call the city hall.  And the Vice principal had looked up the number and gave the information to me.

Okay...  I can do this.  Even though I don't really like phone conversations, "I'm sorry to bother you and by the way, I'm not Japanese so I may have trouble getting my message across..." (which is my way of telling the person on the other end of the phone that though we'll probably understand each other, my side of the conversation will not have the formalities and polite verb tenses that are necessary when two unacquainted people are speaking) I called the city hall.

They wanted to know the location and then apologized because depending on the road, it was not the city's responsibility but the prefecture's.  They did kindly connect me to another department though and I explained and apologized all over again.

Hmmm.  It is possible that if the dead badger is on the SIDEWALK that it is not the responsibility of the prefecture's road maintenance department either...  But whomever I was talking to agreed to have someone check out the situation.

Yesterday morning I related this whole rigamarole to Tetsu.  The principal had checked it out...  There are school volunteers that walk with the children daily so other people have seen the badger...  Dog walkers, joggers, other drivers probably have noticed, but no one, including me, does anything about it.  Tetsu was of the opinion that I was blowing the whole thing way out of proportion and that no one but me thought a dead badger on the sidewalk was very disturbing.  Probably none of the children care much and never had said a word to their parents and if they did, the parents don't think it is THEIR responsibility either!

In conclusion....  If I am upset about a dead badger then I should be the one to dispose of it and not pass the buck along to other people.  Except Tetsu...  He admitted that he recognized my quirkiness about animals and if I had told him he would have gone and buried it for me... and for the sake of the poor badger (he included this comment). 

When I went to the crosswalk a few minutes later, and when Tetsu went by with a shovel in the trunk of his car, the badger was gone so I guess the prefecture road maintenance decided they could do the unpleasant chore.

I will continue my job as a crosswalk guard...
 

Rainy Day

It's a rainy day today in Japan so there is not much walking being done.  Poor Choco is stuck inside again today...

This doesn't look like much but it is a very small plum tree that Takumi once sent us.  It lives in a tea cup (that fell off a shelf and broke into pieces last November) and we were wondering if it was going to survive the winter.  It did!  ONE blossom... and three or four buds that are planning to turn into leaves...

Tetsu planted flowers yesterday and so I suppose the flowers are pretty happy about the damp weather!  My pretty blue umbrella is one I bought for three dollars a couple of months back.  The city train station had a tent set up one rainy day with hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas for sale....  LOST umbrellas!  I guess every so often unclaimed umbrellas in the Lost and Found Department are sold for a piddling amount, the money going to...? 

I don't know, but I feel I got a very nice umbrella and a very good deal!