Miscellaneous photos from November

How about some miscellaneous photos from November that didn't really apply to anything else...  Most of these are from my iPhone.  I'll walk by something and snap a picture with what I have at hand.

I helped out at a city event last weekend as a crosswalk guard.  This was a truck selling donuts or noodles or something near where I was standing.  I never got to the event itself but was "asked" to attend the lecture on "Avoiding Scams" which was offered to elderly citizens. 

As it is getting colder, we have been letting Choco stay in the house and run free in the room when we are home.  She is 14 now and has had some health issues so we are giving her extra love and pampering.  She is the one on the sofa and Tetsu is down on the floor!

The cats as usual have the run of the place.  Not too neat a corner I'm in (knitting on one side, papers on the other) but the cats like to come sit with me.  Sort of like gateway guardsmen on the arms of the chair.  Cleo is down on the carpet trying to figure out if he can find a place to sit too.

I went to get my hair cut at a little obaachan shop not too far from me and the hairdresser and her friend were busy making these little birds out of Japanese chirimen fabric.  Around March, they will have a whole flock of these to celebrate Girls Day.  While my hair got cut the friend completed making another bird.

We were at the glasses shop the other day buying Tetsu new glasses and I found this cute chameleon trinket that I wanted.  Guess what he does?

 He sticks his tongue out...

 And cleans glasses!  Pull his tail and he goes back to just being a cute trinket...
 

Two finishes

I finally have a couple of finishes to report....

Tetsu's Christmas vest is finished!  Yeah!  A whole month ahead of time!  (Now I've got to be sure not to loose it in the closet before Christmas...)

I had a few iffy moments with this vest (as usual).  I started off with a completely different pattern and got the back half made when I decided it was going to be too small (even though I made a gauge piece!) and that the pattern was too complicated for the end results.  I changed needle sizes, used a different pattern with more stitches and went for a completely different pattern, knitting off the first attempt.  I am very glad I did as this pattern shows up better, the vest seems roomier and I think Tetsu will fit in it fine.  We will have to wait until Christmas to see...

The other finish is this month's fabric postcard for my mother.  There was no reason to make this crocodile except that I've kept this year's cards in an animal theme and this was an animal featured in the book I'm using.

I had another setback when my printer stopped working and I ended up hand tracing the pattern for both the fabric card and the kiri-e card.  Today I will send off the fabric card to my mother and then go out and buy a new printer!

If I didn't have to go printer shopping I'd spend the day upstairs quilting and if I get off this computer I may still be able to get a couple hours in.

The last hours of Thursday

We ended our Thursday outing by checking out a fairly unknown waterfall behind the shrines in Nikko.  It was rather lonely, no one anywhere around for miles, and we took Choco with us though she probably would have preferred to sleep in the car.  Bear protection!

Waterfalls are very hard to photograph...  They look like a trickle from a distance and as this one wasn't particularly spectacular we walked to it, took a picture and then went back to the car. 

The most interesting part of the walk was the forest around us with the trees all covered in netting.  I think the netting is to protect the tree trunks from deer or maybe bear (!) but in the darkening late afternoon and near the deserted shrine in the depths of the forest, the tree trunks seemed eerily ghostly...  I helped the ghost effect with one of my camera settings..

And as the sun dipped towards the mountains Tetsu decided he wanted to try and photograph the sunset so we drove up to the top of the mountain hoping to catch the last of the sunlight. 

 Tetsu loves photographing sky and clouds.

 That is the town of Nikko, the resort area, in the distance.

And to the left of that the area where we live.  And beyond that, the larger city of Utsunomiya, the portal of this area from Tokyo on the Shinkansen.

It was so cold up on this mountaintop and we stayed until the colors turned deep and then disappeared into darkness.

On the trip home we stopped for another hot spa bath...  Outside in the cold!
 

Tatami mat edgings

After our short break eating sweets on Thursday, we stopped at a "garage" along the narrow road and checked out a table of goods that were available to tourists. 

Obviously they "shop" owner was aiming to sell to foreign tourists as there was a sign in English explaining (briefly) what the items were.  It was a tatami "shop" and the small table was selling things made from the tatami edgings.

 "Take home Japanese tradition.  Handmade tatami mat"

Tatami mats are not flimsy straw mats that one shakes out and then lays on the floor.  Tatami mats are very thick, heavy, strong mats made of straw sewn tightly together to a standard size.  A final layer of highest quality woven straw is stretched across the heavy mat and then the edges of the mats are finished with heavy-duty brocade.  The brocade too is of standard size (because tatami mat thicknesses are the same) and there are hundreds of designs that can be used.  There is whole genre of tatami mat edgings and when having one's tatami mats redone for a Japanese room, one can choose the edging for a subtle accent to a usually simple and uncluttered Japanese room.  Tatami mats may last for four or five years before they need to have the top layer of straw refitted.

When looking at Japanese homes or apartments the dimensions are always explained with reference to how many tatami mats large the room might be (even if the room has flooring...  a kitchen which wouldn't have tatami mats might be 4 1/2 tatami mat size etc.)  Even when buying a heater or air conditioner or overhead light, the store will recommend an appliance according to how many tatami mats a room might be.

Well, anyway...  Tetsu offered to buy me something from the tatami mat edging table and I picked out two glasses cases and a coin purse for a very reasonable price I thought ($5 for the coin purse $3 each for the glasses cases).

There was a small button on the desk to push and call someone from the back and while waiting I took a quick picture of the garage interior.  There are the tatami mats stacked against the wall there, and probably a fresh roll of new straw layering that will be replace the old layer.

My three very pretty little tatami edging purchases.

We no longer have any tatami mats in our home as tatami mats do not take to cats well...  One pee spot from a cat and the odor just can not be taken out!!!  Very early on living in this house we removed all the tatami mats from our Japanese room though I still call it the Japanese room.

By the way, when walking in a Japanese tatami mat room it is good manners to avoid stepping on the edgings though younger Japanese are even unaware of this etiquette.  Often the edgings will have the family crest woven into them and thus stepping on the edgings would be the same as throwing mud in some one's face.  Remember!  Step lightly over the tatami edging!

Rainy day turns nice!

Yesterday started out dreary and we had little expectations as it was raining heavily.

"Rats...  And it's a holiday.  (Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day)  I wanted to go out and do something."

We took off to Denny's where Tetsu read his newspaper and I read my Kindle.  Not very exciting.

We gave up and came back home and I spent a few hours quilting upstairs while Tetsu wrote post cards (Japanese custom to send an announcement of mourning when someone in the family has passed away during the year.)

But around 1:00 Tetsu came bounding upstairs.

"It's clearing!  Let's go out!  Let's even take Choco!"

And off we went.  I'm not great at spontaneous though that is what Tetsu does best.

 We ended up in the temple and shrine area of Nikko... about 30 minutes from our house, and checked out a walking area with loads of little ojizou statues.  (By the way... virtually walking the Pacific Crest Trail, at one check-in point there was a jizo statue!  That's what the hiker/website owner called it!  He said it was the patron saint of hikers...  A different story than what I've heard, but a nice thought.)

I love this ojizou that someone supplied with glasses!  (And look!  They don't even fall off his nose!  Sewn on!)

Over a bridge to a little park.  You can see Mt. Nantai on the left there....  Covered in snow from the morning's rain where we were.

 The river was beautiful.  Most of the fall leaves have fallen!

 More ojizous and Choco.

Choco finds our outings very exciting but rather tiring.  She pulls much more, excited to smell new things and go hither and yon.  She slept well on the way home.

No one else was around... I guess once the fall colors are gone the tourists aren't so interested in Nikko.

We put Choco back into the car and went back to a Japanese sweet shop located at the head of the trail.  The stone wheel there must have at one time been a buckwheat grinding stone.  The shop offered buckwheat noodles.

 We both had sweet beans and ice cream.

And then shared the buckwheat dumplings...  Sort of bland and gooey but toasted til the outside was crispy, and served with sweet miso paste and wasabi of all things.  They were pretty good and maybe an experience.  One skewer was enough for me.

While eating our dumplings and sweet beans a family came and stood with one of the ojizous, the children in kimono.  This week is "Seven-Five-Three Day" celebrating children of those ages.  Children are dressed in kimonos and taken to the shrine to be prayed over and then make the rounds to visit relatives.

Good thing we went out, wasn't it!

A long round about Japanese language lesson

Yesterday in Japan (or maybe today still in the States) it was November 22.  Also written 11/22.

The Japanese language can have a lot of play on words depending on the sounds of the Chinese characters used to write and this play/pun extends to numbers also.  Businesses will choose certain telephone numbers which will make their telephone number easy to recall etc.

Let's see if I can explain this...

The number 1 can have the sound "ichi" or "i" or "hito"...  there are actually many ways to say 1 in Japanese.

The number 2 can have the sound "ni" or "fu"...

3 might be "san" or "mi".

4 can be "yon" or "yo" or even "shi".

5 can be read "go" or "itsu".

6 can sometimes be pronounced "roku" or "ro" or "mu" or "mutsu".

7 is read sometimes as "shichi" and sometimes as "nana" or "na" or "nano".

8 can be "hachi" or "you".

And 9 might be "kyu" or "ku" or "kokono".

As you might expect, this is all very confusing for the student of Japanese language and the above are just 9 numbers!  All the thousands of Chinese characters used to write Japanese can be read in different ways!!!  Aarrgghhh!

But I'm WAY off the subject of yesterday's date.  11/22

Using the above sounds...  11 or two 1s can be pronounced "i-i"  "Ii" means "good".  And 22 or the two 2s can be pronounced as "fu-fu" or in this case "fuu-fu"...  "Fuufu" means "couple".  And together those can be pronounced as...  "ii fuufu" (いい夫婦) or.....  "Good Couple".

Yesterday, 11/22 was "Good Couples Day!

Tetsu brought home flowers for me in honor of Good Couples Day.

Tony's quilt

My new habit of walking to the elementary school in the morning means that I have to walk BACK afterwards and that is messing up my morning schedule a bit.  I've got to run in a few minutes!

Leiya sent me a couple of photos from her iPhone yesterday.  I had been ASKING for them and she finally remembered.

Leiya's boyfriend, Tony graduated from medical school this spring and when Leiya was visiting this summer I suggested that she might take back a quilt for Tony as a graduation present from me.  I gave her a choice of three quilts that I have made hoping to give to my kids someday.  (I don't ever want to get stuck with an upcoming wedding and no time to make a wedding quilt...  I have a feeling I'll have a couple more in stock before either of my kids decides to get married!)

Leiya chose the very colorful, machine quilted quilt I'd made in 2015...  I can't even remember what I named it.  I quickly made up a label for Tony and sewed it on and then Leiya flew back to Ohio and gave the quilt to Tony when next she was in Michigan (or he was in Ohio...)  He quickly sent me a thank you message and said he'd be showing his mother the quilt and would have Leiya take a picture of him with it when next she visited.  Well, it is taken them awhile but I got my photo!

Tony is such a great person and so good to and for Leiya.  Well, there are two more quilts waiting for him...

First steps

I took the plunge and started machine quilting the Smokey River quilt that finally got basted.  The quilting decisions always weigh heavily on me and even after I get started I make a lot of changes of plan.

One of the plans was this.  I had a large piece of clear plastic and I roughly traced my block design onto it in whiteboard pen and then proceeded to doodle.  Actually there were two or three earlier plans and I was doodling and erasing and doodling again.  When I finally made some decisions I started to sew.

You should hear me talk to myself while I'm upstairs in my sewing room.

"Is this going to work?"

"Agghh!  This thread isn't fine enough!"

"Okay...  I got this far...  where do I go from here?"

"Rats.  I was planning to quilt that section and forgot."

"Should I cut the thread or try traveling to a new section?"

This is NOT going to be in this quilt.  I am planning to take it all out as I didn't like the thread I was using nor the quilting motif.  I know, it is a lot of work to rip out all that stitching but better that than an odd block and one that will stick in my craw.
This is also NOT going to be in this quilt though it is getting closer.  I was getting way too complicated with that center quilting motif and I was confusing myself...  Also it just seemed jumbled for all the work that was being put in so I'm planning to rip the stitching out of that motif too...  You can see I am good friends with the seam ripper.

So I've changed to Sulky Thread and I am pleased with the shine and texture...  The simpler motif in the center of the star may be the best way to go. 

And...  GULP...  I have decided to add some filler stitching around the star blocks.  This is going to be a first for me...  Though I've practiced filler stitching I've never used it in a large quilt.  I hope my Sulky Thread holds out for the volume of thread needed!

I have yet to make any decisions on the sashings between the star blocks, the nine patches on point at either end of the quilt and the borders...  This seems like a dangerous thing to do, starting sewing with no total plan.  But I was feeling that I could look at this quilt forever and that I needed to take some first steps and hope inspiration hits me as I go along.