I SPY Quilt finish!

Friday, four of us got together to put the finishing touches on our latest quilt for the Children's Hospital waiting room. 

Ta-da!  A Liberty I SPY quilt!

Now what is all that under the quilt?

We started out with donated Liberty fabrics that we had already used for another hospital quilt.  When making THAT quilt we had noticed all the fun designs... the animals and characters etc... so we wanted to make up a whimsical quilt...  Which actually is somewhat difficult with the muted subdued fabrics of Liberty.  It is not like we can use wild, florescent colors when using Liberty fabrics.  We got as far as making the circles with circle borders but my, what a sedate quilt this was becoming and besides, with the delicate tiny fabric designs, no one was going to be able to go hunting for things in the finished quilt...  They'd have to crawl all over it to even see each circle.  (Another reason why Liberty doesn't lend itself to I SPY quilt making.)

Then we got the idea to make matching pages of each "block" so that children or parents could actually look at the blocks up close and find things...  Add some I SPY questions on each page and maybe this could still be a "fun" quilt with a book of pages hanging next to it for mothers and children to read.

(Where is the Hello Kitty-chan with the pink ribbon?)

A blog friend suggested adding just a bit of a "handle" to make the page circles magnifying glasses and that was a stroke of genius!  The two none quilters in our group who happen to teach children, were assigned the jobs of making up I SPY questions and making paper pages.  The elves got onto the pages as the rest of the hospital waiting room has these same elves painted on the walls.  We have used the elves' silhouettes in other of our quilts also to tie the quilt into the hospital decor.

Of course there are always glitches and problems to any project.  Quilts on the wall away from fingers are fine for the hospital waiting room (not in the wards though... No fabric donations such as pillow cases etc may be used).  Of course they must be washed before putting them up on the wall and cat hair removed...  (It was one time questioned as to whether I was going to be able to take part in hospital donations as all the cat hair I donate to the cause...  A wash suffices...)  BUT, the pages turned out to be a roadblock as hospital personnel pointedly asked WHO was going to wash the pages everyday even if they were laminated to keep them sterile after germ laden fingers had turned them...

(How many houses are there in the forest?)

Okay...  Let's put our heads together... Book form is out as no one is there to wipe the pages down everyday...  Thumb tack them to the walls?  No.  Of course the hospital isn't going to let us put tack holes in their walls and a stray tack would be a real hazard...  We considered taping laminated pages to the windows but that would shut out the light.  Did the hospital NOT want us to do this labor of love?  Finally we came up with the idea of hanging the pages below the quilt on rings.  And THAT is what all those hanging pages are.  They can be removed of course for quilt washing and I suppose they can even be wiped clean though now that they are up on the wall there will be no call for anyone to touch them...

(There's one dog that is sitting.  Can you find him?)

Mrs. Furui, our contact with the hospital, sighs and says that the hospital staff is so concerned with sterility and convenience and safety that no one SEES the quilts we make.  Nary a comment is made on the many different quilts that go up on the wall throughout the year...  BY THE STAFF!  When Mrs. Furui is at the hospital changing quilts she will often receive compliments by mothers with their children or she will see the children pointing out elves that we have put on other quilts.  The patients and family appreciate us it seems.  And the cleaning people.  Mrs. Furui says there is one cleaning man who, when he sees Mrs. Furui with a quilt will give her a thumbs up sign and express delight that a new quilt is coming in.  If it weren't for reactions like these we might have gone our separate ways as the roadblocks to quilts and lack of enthusiasm are rather frustrating...

Anyway!  We have a new completed quilt which will go up on the hospital wall this week and hopefully Mrs. Furui will get a picture of it hung.  One more page needs to be made with the quilt's name and the "game" involved...  Answering the questions, finding the same motif in the actual quilt on the wall.
 

Rush-rush

Just under the wire I got my September fabric postcard made for my mother yesterday.  I had already picked out the pattern for this month's postcard but the sitting down to do it took some time.  And before making the fabric card I always make the paper card so that was a job (enjoyable!) in itself.

 I love the way the paper card came out.  I really used a rainbow of colors in my dragonfly didn't I?  Because of all the dragonflies and their iridescent wings, I was inspired!

By the time I got to the fabric card the day was winding down and it was less enjoyable to go piecing all those different wings of color so I cheated a bit and used fabric that had mottling.  It worked I guess...

I didn't do a great job sewing up this card...  That is the part of the job I dislike the most... sewing the quilted card directly to a paper card either with a decorative stitch or zig-zag or fully binding the thing and then gluing it to the paper card.  Yesterday's result was rather rush-rush.

I am rush-rush again today so I've got to get off this computer!

What will be will be

I did get up to the sewing room this week... to start something new and to finish a recent project.  I also had a setback that I'm not sure what I'm going to do about...

So...  My new project is getting into the packages of batik strips that I bought in California this summer.  I had bought the strips and then bought a pattern rather than buy a kit... but maybe the kit might have been a bit more color/design coordinated.  For some reason I had bought pink fabric and blue fabric for the borders and backing and there is no pink nor blue in these packages...  What was I thinking?!  And I find the stars seem to clash together rather than get separated with what I thought was going to be pale lighter strips.  Still I am persevering and what will be will be...

The finish is the Christmas Tree quilt I was making for Tetsu, or what I thought was going to be for his convalescent home.  He took one look at it and said it is too nice and he wants to keep it.  Well, I should be flattered but I wasn't planning to have this in my quilt storage...  Still, I made it for Tetsu and if he wants to keep it he can.  We will at least "loan" it out this Christmas to the convalescent home.

The gold buttons on this are from a stash of hundreds and hundreds of gold buttons (all like these, no two alike) that someone gave me years ago.  Supposedly they are set so that small ornaments can be hung on the Christmas tree.  Another someday project.

My setback was the demonstration quilt that I had decided to put together and give to a friend who is moving to Sweden next month.  There had already been a few questions in my mind about this.  One, there was no real reason to give her such a Christmasy looking quilt but that was how this had turned out.  And two, I had already made a mistake in the window placements of the houses and had to find someway to disguise those errors...  Cat doors was what came to mind (and blog friends suggested) but my friend who is moving is NOT a cat lover.  But I was still planning to put cats in the low doors...

THEN I come downstairs one morning to find that some cat has CHEWED THROUGH THE BORDER on this quilt!!!!!  AAGGGGHHHH!!!!!  I panicked but after some thought decided I can cut off some border and make it narrow thus eliminating the shredding. 

BUT there is still one hole in that border!  Then I thought maybe I'd just replace that one side of the border...  but the problem is that I can't find the fabric I used!  Did I use it all up?  I don't think so.  I thought there was a strip left (though it might not be much of a strip) but I just cannot find it!  I've been cleaning out my stash drawers, taking up valuable time from sewing, but I have yet to find the border fabric.  So this is a doomed quilt.  My friend is leaving in a month's time.  Either I find that fabric soon or I give up and try to make her something else...  Well, she didn't like cats anyway, she wasn't particularly interested in Christmas...  This too may just be meant for someone (me?) else.

Blog glitches

I had some craziness with my blog again...  I hate it when things start moving around and disappearing by themselves!  I have absolutely no idea what I did (and it could only be me, right?) but photos wouldn't download and the "Thoughts 2017" page disappeared...  It is so frustrating!  Well I found the Thoughts page... still hidden in the depths of the blog layout and editing possibilities and I think it is back now.  I still don't know what went wrong with the photos...

So to try posting photos today... Let's see what I have...

 The higanbana (spider lilies) have been beautiful but they are about gone now...

My farmer neighbor grows Goya which is otherwise known as a bitter gourd...  It really is bitter and takes a bit of cooking to get it edible.  I have a feeling it originally is a delicacy from the southern islands of Okinawa and has moved up to mainland Japan...  It is only recently that we can buy goya in the supermarkets.  Tetsu isn't much of a fan but I like the bitter taste.  Aren't they pretty hanging from a trellis?

The same farmer is mainly a leek farmer and he has 20 or 30 leek hot houses.  I think harvesting of leeks must be about over and this hot house is ready to go to seed...  The flowers and the seeds will be harvested for next year's crops.

 Choco and I took a detour through a forest.

"Choco, SIT and I will take your picture."

She didn't sit, but just came back to me.  (Thus the out of focus picture).

"Okay... WALK for me." 

And I backed away and tried to photograph her walking the trail.  She continued to walk faster and faster and I was yelling "Choco!  STOP!  SIT!  COME!"  I don't think she was disobeying me so much as she is getting hard of hearing and she didn't even realize I was falling behind her, running and tripping to catch up with her again.  There isn't really anywhere that she could have gone to.  At the end of the forest the trail just opens out onto a dead-end rice field and Choco who must be around 13 or 14 doesn't really race around too much across the fields anymore.  Still... anyone nearby must have wondered at the voice reverberating through the forest as I yelled at Choco.

Not a great photo, but as I had my zoom lens on I took a picture of a dragonfly taking a rest on a stick.  The veins in the wings are so pretty!

Hopefully my miscellaneous photos will upload today...

Hot springs again

I have been writing this blog post for the past three days but keep getting called away from the computer...  I'll try again.

Tetsu and I went off again to a hot spa...  Somewhere that he had found on the Internet and wanted to try.  A bit far...  maybe over an hour away, and up in the mountains so that we were driving through fog for a time... Wherever are we going?

There are all sorts of hot spas in Japan and the word "hot spa" doesn't ring right with me.  The word "spa" has modern connotations to me and conjures up Hollywood stars wrapped in towels.  The Japanese word "onsen" which translates as "hot spring" seems more fitting and as Japan is a mountainous country made from volcanic eruptions, the core beneath us is molten and the abundant hot water is somewhat easily accessed.

So there are man-made onsen and natural onsen, modern ones, public ones etc, etc and Tetsu and I have made the rounds of many throughout Japan as onsen visiting is the one hobby of Tetsu's that I can think of.

There are onsens just down the street from us where the hot water is trucked in from somewhere and then reheated on the premises.  I have a feeling that some of these places even are concentrated onsens where the mineral and Ph levels are somehow reconstituted with regular water and then reheated.  I really have no idea but why there is an onsen in the middle of a booming business area I don't know.  And by the way, public baths of old weren't always onsens though the best ones were... Just like in homes, public baths just heated their water.

Some of the "health" spas that Tetsu also likes boast eight or ten different baths each with something gimmicky like herbal scented or electrically charged and maybe one or two onsen etc. etc.  Tetsu will be happy even with one of these onsens though I'm not a great fan.  Too many people, too much walking around in the nude between baths.

Then there are the entrepreneurs who decide that they want a "natural" hot spring in their backyard or wherever they plan to start a resort and thousands and thousands of dollars will be spent in drilling and boring until finally a hot spring is struck.  One hears of stories of men who spent their fortunes drilling and then gave up deciding that there was no vein of hot water beneath the land they'd purchased and someone else bought the land for a piddling and drilled a few more feet as a sort of hobby and finally hit the hot water source.  Many of the onsens we visit have been constructed in places that have been planned and funded and gorgeous hotels built over them.  It must be a great business because Japanese flock to onsens year around!

And then there are "natural" onsens...   There must be categories even within this category but Tetsu and I both rated yesterday's onsen as one of the best, maybe the best we've ever been in.  Yesterday's onsen was hidden away at the top of a mountain against a river and the river was actually a natural flowing hot spring.

The building was old but oh so beautifully decorated with dark corners, wild flowers and low lighting.

At the reception desk it was explained to us that the men's side of the bathing area had three outdoor baths that were actually co-ed, but the women's side had two outdoor bathing areas which were strictly for women.  We were each given a small towel and Tetsu was instructed that men were to "wear" (hang) their towel around the waist when entering the outdoor (co-ed) bathing area.  As I chose NOT to use the co-ed facilities I just took my little towel with me but if I had wanted to use the co-ed facilities then I would have been given a larger towel to wrap around myself.  Actually I have heard that co-ed bathing facilities usually don't provide the towels for wrapping around yourself.

"You wanted co-ed, buckled up and face it!"  (literally)

Like most onsens, Tetsu and went our separate ways and I changed in the women's dressing room and went on to the indoor bath which had washing facilities.  By the way I found this very nice poster in the dressing room with English instructions oh how to use a Japanese bath...  (Washing up outside the tub, no soap going into the tub etc.)

After washing up I took my little towel and went to the women's outdoor baths which was arrived at by a long cobbled, enclosed walkway to a pool hidden away in a fork of two mountains surrounded by bamboo and low hanging trees.  A paradise!  The floor of the very hot pool was made of loose stones, there was hot river water overflowing the stony sides of the pool.  I soaked and listened to birds and watched a few who flew to my canopy of trees.  It began to rain a bit and I huddled down in the hot water and let the cool droplets splash on my face and shoulders.  Really, heaven!

Later another lady came to join me but we didn't talk at all...  I wished I had gone back through the walkway and retrieved my phone before she had come so that I could photograph this wonderland but alas I had missed my chance...

I went back through the walkway to another small outdoor bath and happened to stand on tiptoes and look out the "window" (opening) and down below... where, low and behold...  there were a few men sitting on the rocks and in the water with their towels around their waists.  Even if they had looked up they wouldn't have been able to see me and as I am considered "tall" in Japan (a whole 5'3") not many women would be able to look down on the men's side of the onsen...

At the other little outdoor bath I enjoyed my solitude again and when looking at a stone wall next to me found a little bamboo leaf boat that someone had made and tucked away in the wall.  This is a common "craft" made from a single bamboo leaf which is folded and torn in simple ways and made to look like a raft.  Grandparents will make them for their grandchildren when playing by a river or pond...  I let the little boat float in the hot water for awhile and then brought it back with me when I was leaving...  (again, no camera with me in the bath).

Here is my little boat made of a bamboo leaf. 

After bathing and getting dressed again I sat in the little entryway waiting for Tetsu, reading and enjoying the quiet.  A wonderful few hours!  I would love to go back and maybe even stay overnight though it is a bit pricey...  Maybe someday when and if we ever have foreign guests who would be willing to strip down for some public bathing?  Who knows.  I might even be willing to try the co-ed bathing area!

Running around

I went back and forth to the next city yesterday. 

In the morning I took Choco in to the vets because she seems to have a bladder infection. I managed to get a urine sample from her in the morning and then quickly bustled her into the car for the 30 minute trip.  The vet did his urine test, gave Choco a couple of shots and I received a bag of pills and instructions to make her "soup" so that she would get more liquids.  All that plus special cat food for my cats (while I'm there I might as well get all my supplies) and a three month's supply of heart worm medicine and let me tell you... my wallet is running dry!  The luxury items in my life comes down to 5 cats and a dog!

I didn't feel like I could leave Choco in for any length of time in the car (with a bladder infection!) and so we drove back home and I put her in the yard and then drove back to the city for an hour of swimming etc. 

I came back home and then had to get dressed and go immediately into the city again to attend a very sad funeral and then came back home with hardly energy to make dinner.  A rather exhausting day physically and mentally.

But this morning, despite the blues, I noticed a far off field when making my rounds at the crosswalk.  What is that crop?  After I'd closed the school gate I went back to the field with my camera.  This seems to be a buckwheat field but usually buckwheat flowers are white.  I showed a buckwheat field a couple of posts back and it was all white.... I've never noticed a red tinge to the stalks. 

While I was taking photos a neighbor came by and together we marveled at the red of the field...

"Is that buckwheat?  Yes, I think it is."

Beauty is found even when one isn't looking for it.
 

Making an obento

A blog friend asked about the meals I make as I don't really talk about what I cook too much do I? 

Last night's meal was pretty skimpy.  A one pot "stew", we call them nabe... which was made of green onions, sliced pork, mushrooms, gyouza (pot stickers), tofu and chingensai... which is Chinese leafy vegetable.  AND...  A package of instant Tantan flavoring which is slightly spicy and has sesame paste as an ingredient.  All this thrown into a pot and cooked together.  I also put out some packaged daikon pickles.

When shopping I find it hard to keep my wits about me for more than one evening's planning. This is because daily shopping must also include the day's dinner AND Tetsu's lunch the next day.  If I plan for two dinners then that really means I also have to plan for two lunches and I'm not that organized.  Thus the shopping every day.

So... this morning's obento (lunch) for Tetsu got underway after taking Choco for a walk and getting breakfast ready.  (Breakfast is fruit and nuts and yogurt and coffee...  If I'm running late even Tetsu can put that together for me.)

I start with different sizes of foil containers made just for obento boxes.  I aim for 5 or 6 containers in one lunch.

I had left over bacon (in this case it was shoulder bacon) and also some leftover broccoli I had boiled up a couple of days ago.  Those ingredients I sauted with salt and pepper and curry powder.  One container filled.  And in the same pan I cooked up one Chinese egg roll.  Second container filled.

Next I worked on an omelette.  Today's was sweet with nothing inside.  I have my nifty omelette pan and swished some egg into the pan and rolled it up to the edge and then added more and more egg until I had a nice little roll that I could cut.

Third container filled.

Running out of time!  I filled a fourth container with leftover daikon pickles from the night before and a fifth container got leftover nabe vegetables and pork.

Okay..  This needs some color.  Add a cut mini-tomato...  What can I do with these eda mame pods...  It is tempting to just throw in the pods because they can take up space in the obento box that I don't know how to fill...  No...  Let's get those edamame on some toothpicks for eye appeal.

Last...  more stuff from the refrigerator...  Some pre-packaged seaweed and sesame...  I do aim for some type of seafood in the lunch boxes but Tetsu isn't a great seafood fan.

And this is what the obento looks like before putting on the lid.

Whew!  20 minutes and I can sit down to fruit and yogurt and coffee!  And tomorrow's another day...
 

Typhoon and chestnuts

Today is a hot and sunny day... because of a typhoon we had last night!  It is interesting that the day after a storm the weather is very clear and quite hot.  I had figured that now being in the middle of September that I should get ready for winter and had put blankets on our beds and thought about changing the clothes in the closet to our winter wardrobe.  A bit too early for that!  We need shorts and T-shirts today!

Though I had readied for the typhoon by taking down hanging plants, putting away lawn chairs and bringing the outdoor cats inside, I still woke up in the middle of the night to rain lashing at the windows on all sides of the house and wind whistling through the cracks (yes... we seem to have cracks!) and through the forest.  I padded around in the dark making sure that the windows were all locked and thought about shaking Tetsu awake to move downstairs and away from the forest windows but instead I fell asleep again.  This is a man who cannot sleep because of the lumber mill across the street but sleeps through a wailing, whistling storm!

Today all is clear though my neighbor reported a semi-tall tree that had been growing in a large planter had toppled over breaking the planter.  The chestnut trees have prematurely had their chestnuts shaken loose and the road in front of my house was littered with chestnuts.  I don't know if early chestnuts are stringent or good to eat but I collected some from in front of the driveway and have now boiled a handful to see if they would be good eating.  They are small enough though that I have a feeling I'm going to get tired of peeling them pretty quickly.... 

Chestnut preparation for eating always is a lot of work...  Boiling, peeling, reboiling to get off the inner paperish covering, and finally simmering them with flavoring.  It is usually when I discover a worm or two that I decide my consumption of chestnuts for the year has ended.  It is a shame because they are a seasonally abundant source of natural nutrition...

Saturday's Sports Day

Yesterday was the local elementary school's Sports Day...  As I am the crosswalk guard for the school I get invited each year and after an hour of crosswalk duty (Saturday morning) I was given a seat of honor with other invited guests under a tented canopy front row and center.

Sports Day proceeded as usual with ball tosses and tug-a-wars and relay races.  I chatted with other guests and walked around the grounds a bit.  I may have stuck out a bit in my uniform and hat because quite a few people came up to talk with me, people I know outside of the school or people I had known back when my children went to this school.

Two "girls" approached me saying they had gone to school with Takumi and they both had their own children who attend this elementary school.  One young mother said she had four children now and her oldest was a 6th grader!  These "kids" are all 32 now!  Thanks to the iPhone I was able to snap both the girl's photos and send them immediately to Takumi who said he recognized them with no problem.

I talked with other neighbors' who have grandchildren at the school now and someone with a great-grand child!!!  And that G-G mother isn't much older than me!!! 

It is so nice to just sit back and watch all the events rather than running around madly with different assigned PTA duties...  I remember when my kids had Sports Days thinking that I really couldn't watch my own kids because I was carrying equipment for an upcoming event or serving tea to guests (people like me yesterday) which means... that instead of enjoying my honored position I really should find someway to relieve a mother or two of their duties... but that isn't the way it works.

Guests were asked to participate in a Rock, Paper, Scissor game and I won a package of kitchen sponges (other prizes were boxes of tissues, detergent and plastic wrap.  I also came home with a lunch box as a thank you gift for my Sports Day support.

The photos are of the two cheer leading teams.  Red team, white team.  They bang drums and wave flags and slowly and deliberately have maneuvers...  Rather different than western style cheer leading.

This week's miscellaneous photos

How about a raid on my photos files?  It might give a hint of what is going on around here...  Hmm.  Maybe not...

At 7:00 this morning we got another J-Alert letting us know of North Korean missiles passing over our heads.  The TV goes red, the cell phones all start clanging.  There isn't anything to do about it especially as we were already inside (the TV was telling everyone to take cover.)

"So...  Are children supposed to go to school or not today?"

I was getting ready for crosswalk duty and continued with getting dressed.  In a few more minutes the TV sent out another alert and the cell phones clanged again letting us know that danger had passed over us...   As you can see my iPhone is getting alerts in Japanese... but I guess even non-Japanese readers would get the general idea...

The children walked to school as usual today.

Someone brought me some cookies the other day.  Wasao cookies!  Wasao-kun is a big furry Akita dog who became famous when he was rescued by a woman who ran a grilled squid shop in an isolated coastal town in northern Japan.  Somebody introduced him to the world via blog or facebook or something and he became famous for being the shop's mascot and eventually a movie has been made about him.  I thought the cookies were a pretty good depiction of Wasao-kun!

Leiya sent me a photo of her wearing a vest I one time made out of Tetsu's mother's kimono jacket, hand tie-dyed silk.  Leiya found it in my closet this summer and wanted it so now she is making good use of it in the States.  I told her to keep it around even after she gets tired of it as it is one of Obaachan's keepsakes.

I did talk with the lumber mill foreman yesterday, along with a neighborhood friend who took up my cause and sort of became my spokesman...  She and her husband actually live closer to the mill and so they have their own complaints because of the noise.  It was all very pleasantly talked through and though no promises can be made, the observation has been noted.  I thought this poster on the stairway rather ironic.  It is promoting stressfree living habits for the mill workers.  The very first advice for a stressfree life is "Getting enough sleep!"  Yes... well, that is what the neighbors would like too...

I haven't blogged about food recently...  I still am not much of a cook.  I am back to making daily lunch boxes for Tetsu though... you will notice we are still eating a mainly riceless diet.  Let's see...  This day's obento had a wrapped omelette with seaweed, deep fried tofu and peppers, potato salad, grilled salmon, pork and asparagus rolls, and sauteed pumpkin and carrots.  I don't remember how much of this was left-over from the night before's dinner...  I think the tofu, the pumpkin and the potato salad were all reruns...