From the photo files

I am sewing down the binding on Leiya and Tony's quilt today.  Hopefully I will be able to show it in the next post.  (Dare to get a label made too?)

So how about a miscellaneous post today?  Let's see what is in my photo files.  Most of these are from my iphone so they are not really very good.

Tetsu and I ate lunch outside in the back where he has been working and Patora and Toi who were in the sun-room sat at the window and sniffed at us (we were eating something with fish and they could smell it!)  Patora is heading onto 15 years old and I think Toi is 12...  Since the sun-room got fixed up and because their outdoor cat-house is on the other side of the glass door, I have been letting them into the room more.  I feel sorry for them because they don't get their fair share of love as the other animals but they are rather bullies and just cannot get along with our other three cats.

Toi is a very big cat and he does not like John either and will strike out quickly.  John has learned to stay clear of Toi!  (And to stay clear of Chip who also is very free with cat punches.)

Patora is Cleo's sister and she will allow John to sniff and prance around her.

And here is John, upside down in his circle.  He seems pretty relaxed doesn't he?  John's moodiness is still apparent but maybe he is getting better?  At least I know what NOT to do with him...  He isn't much for walking anymore and forcing him to walk just makes him angry.  He is like a puppy, so happy when our vet comes weekly to talk about him with me.  Yes, our vet comes weekly!  We have a deal that she comes and gives advice and works with us and I only speak in English to her while she is here.  John's issues get worked out and the vet gets some English practice in.  I also write a daily log of John's life that I give to her once a week and she gets some basic vocabulary and usage information from reading that (what textbook is going to teach about potty-runs?!)

Do you know what this is?  It is a mosquito incense coil and this one happens to be rose scented.  We burned it as we sat outside eating lunch yesterday. 

School has started and yesterday a child came to school carrying a Kuwagata beetle.  Many kids carry bug boxes with them but I guess beetles are content to ride to school in a hand...

And this was the evening scenery the other day from our parking area.  It is actually very nice to be able to see out into the distance now and I find my eyes are drawn to far away things when before I only saw what was right in front of me.  This is another reason why we are using the backyard more (for lunch).  The yard area hasn't changed but I guess we don't feel so closed in now that the forest is  gone... though I would never have claimed I felt in while the trees were there.  We now enjoy a more distant view... whether the fields and mountains far away or just farther portions of the forest. 

And a few minutes later from our bedroom window.  I like that I caught the headlights of an oncoming truck coming down the narrow road.

End of summer sewing

As it has been cooling off a bit I have found time to be up in the sewing room and also to be doing some hand-quilting in front of the TV.

First the quilting...  Before summer vacation started my patchwork friends helped me get the Kitty Tales quilt basted and ready for quilting but it has just been too hot to have a big quilt on my lap.  I finally decided that yes, I could mix hand-quilting with machine quilting and the plan now is to hand quilt the embroidery and applique blocks and later to do the windmill "sashing" by machine.

I am stitch-in-the-ditch quilting around the applique and then doing an overall grid for the background.

One more block that I've finished with six more to go.  Some of these blocks will have yo-yo flowers added when the whole quilt is finished.

Upstairs in the sewing room I finally put together Leiya and Tony's wedding signature quilt.  Here it is sewn together and still up on my design board.  Ignore all those random blocks and words blocks.  They are just things I've made over the years and have no place to use them yet... they aren't part of the signature quilt...

I had originally thought I'd do some over all quilting on this but realized that I didn't want to quilt over the signatures and messages that are on the blocks.  The easiest quilting to do was to just follow the lines of the colored blocks and avoid any writing.

This leaves some pretty clean lines but is rather uninteresting.

I am now in the process of quilting curves into the squares along the strips and hopefully the quilting won't interfere with the signatures yet will add a bit of sparkle...  I can see the end in sight!

Crosswalk Guard day trip

On Wednesday I had a Traffic Safety bus trip with the other crosswalk guards in the city.  I have been making an effort to attend these outings and meetings rather than just do to my morning crosswalk duties.

I met up with other crosswalk guards before 7:00 am and on this day there were a bit more than 20 of us (about half the number of crosswalk guards employed by the city.)  The day was fully planned with first a drive a couple of hours north to a rope-way, lunch in a tourist restaurant, a visit to a temple and all-you-can-eat peach picking.

First the rope-way trip.  This was moderately successful as the day was very overcast and we couldn't even see the top of the mountain from the rope-way terminal.

Up the mountain with glimpses of scenery below but alas, even at the top the clouds below us covered the scenery.

We were only allotted about an hour and a half to walk around the mountain top (though there were extensive hiking courses if one was prepared for a day of hiking) and as there wasn't much to see everyone pretty much settled into killing time. A few of us wandered a minor trail for 10 minutes but here too there wasn't much scenery...

Once back at the rope-way terminal taking us DOWN the mountain, I decided that I at least wanted to take some photos of the flora along the short trail and I went back around the 10 minute trail alone...

Flowers... 

Nothing exciting..

Once back at the terminal everyone had gone back down the mountain but I wasn't concerned as there was still 25 minutes left until we were to meet at the bus.  I headed down the rope-way alone...

Oh-no!  As I was getting off the gondola I noticed that I'd lost my sun hat somewhere on my return to the trail!  It was ten minutes up the mountain again and who knew how long it would take to find my hat and then get back DOWN the mountain...  I was disappointed to have to leave my hat on the mountainside and went to the meet everyone at the bus instead.  Rats!  That hat had been a Mother's Day present from Takumi a couple of years ago!

Lunch was adequate...  Next stop a temple.

The temple had an interesting cave under a waterfall with many statues and altars inside.

I actually have no idea what sort of temple this was but everyone else bought trinkets and good luck charms and stamps.

Our last stop of the day was to a peach orchard to pick peaches.  Peaches are at their peak in northern Japan, but we weren't very good at choosing which peach might be sweet and juicy.  Most of the peaches we all chose were still rather hard and unripe but the orchard's owners had ripe peaches for us to enjoy. 

All-you-can-eat peach eating really means that even they hungriest of us could only consume two or three peaches!

But we were each given a box of perfect, ripe peaches to take home so I'd say it was a worthy trip!

After I got home and reported on my trip to Tetsu including the disappointment of losing my hat, Tetsu offered to drive us BACK to the rope-way this week and see if we could find it.  But first he made a phone call to the rope-way terminal to ask if a hat had been turned in...  AND IT HAD!!!

And the rope-way offered to send it back to us collect-on-delivery!

Yesterday my hat arrived in the mail, nicely folded and ready to wear again!  Great service from the rope-way company!!!

Summer and Obon holidays

Let's see...  Since the visit from our cute grandnieces, what have we been doing?

The Obon holiday has ended and school starts next Monday.  It has been a very nice summer for me, sometimes too hot and humid, and different from the summers that I have usually spent in California.  It actually seemed longer than I expected.  I can hardly imagine three months of summer vacation in the States!

Summer vacation and the Obon holidays are actually different things in Japan.  Summer vacation is for school children and lasts about a month.  Parents still have to work and, at least in my prefecture, there are after school facilities that will accept children whose parents are working during summer days.  Children will have summer homework and often the elementary schools will have pool hours at the school swimming pools with both teachers and parents volunteer life guarding (it is a very small, shallow pool.)

There is also the custom of Radio Exercise that has been around forever in Japan (90 years!) and EVERYONE knows the music and the routine calisthenics for the short radio and TV broadcasts that begin at 6:30 in the morning.  Japan broadcasts Radio Exercises year round but it used to be that throughout the summer neighborhood groups would gather the children and have them start their summer mornings together.  In my neighborhood the Parents group has only arranged for a week of Radio Calisthenics (cancelled when there is rain) and thus the custom is now limited to four or five days.

Because Tetsu is the Homeowner's association chairman, he feels he should show support for the Parents group and as I know all the children from my crosswalk job, we both head towards the center of the neighborhood at 6:30 am for Radio Calisthenics.  After the five minute routine, the children bring their Radio Calisthenics card forward to be stamped and I guess they will turn them in to their teacher at the beginning of fall semester.

It would be nice if ALL the places got stamped on the card but on this first day of calisthenics there was only one stamp...

Summer vacation of course means that children go to visit grandparents and especially during the Obon holidays, families will make the trip to their home towns with the main purpose of visiting the family grave and welcoming spirits home.  For those of us who don't HAVE to go anywhere, we avoid the highways during Obon like the plague because it is not at all uncommon to be stuck in a traffic jam for hours and hours!

John and I take our normal evening walk at the cemetery across the street and it was very cheerful with visiting families who busily washed the stones, put out flowers and burned incense.

The stone slab at the side is for the engraving of the names and dates of family members whose ashes are interred here and generations of ashes will be in one family grave (thus many names on the stone slab).

I don't know what the character at the top of this stone is but the engraved scenery depicts Mt. Nantai which is north of us.

This is a rather fancy and unusual grave with a sphere as a stone and the names engraved on a round side slab.  Someone has offered canned drinks which is another common custom, and behind the stone are wooden poles that will be purchased each year during Obon from the family's temple and I think has prayers (or names?) written on it.

Ah...  I am cheating here because I'm showing pictures that my friend Kaoru-san took when she went traveling north during the summer holidays.  She visited the Akita prefecture which is famous for its summer festival the Kanto festival.  Tiers and tiers of lit lanterns strung on one tall pole will be carried down the streets of Akita City and balanced on the participants' heads, hands and hip.  It takes real skill and is quite thrilling to watch.  (I lived in Akita for one year and did see the festival back in my 20's). 

I guess there was a day exhibition also.

Kaoru-san doesn't really have to go anywhere to see interesting things.  The city in our next town over where she lives, was having an Obon festival where lanterns summoning spirits are lit and sent down the river.  Very pretty!

Summer is ending and cooler weather is in sight!

Cooking and sewing

Okay...  Finishing up on our visit from Tetsu's sister's grandchildren.  The last day we were scheduled to put them back on the train at 3:00 and so that gave us a bit of time still at home.  First on the docket, breakfast.

Do we want to have blueberry pancakes for breakfast?"

"Yes, please!"

Yuzuha and I made a big plate of pancakes.

Are we going to be able to eat all of those?  Yes, we did!

...with frozen strawberries.

With still more time I hesitantly asked if the girls wanted to sew anymore. 

"Yes, please!"

So another of my quick sewing projects got pulled out and I set both girls to work making cat (of course) tissue covers, this time using the sewing machine which was a first for both of them.

The machine sewing was much more to Ageha's liking.

 And some beads had to be chosen and sewn on.

Both girls made covers for themselves and I gave the sample teaching product to Tetsu's sister.  Look!  I've got the girls trained to not show fingers!  I'll have to work on Tetsu's sister next!

 

We played a few board and card games and then it was lunch time.

"Is anyone hungry?  (I can hardly believe it with all the pancakes we ate.)

"Yes!"

"Do you want pot-stickers for lunch?"

"Yes, please!"

Pot stickers, what we call gyoza in Japan, are a specialty of the city...  Almost everyone who visits wants to eat pot stickers.  I sent Tetsu to the gyoza factory to buy two boxes of pot stickers...  30 in a box.  He came home saying he decided to buy 3 boxes...  just in case.

I fried up the pot stickers and everyone dug in happily and in no time at all 60 pot stickers were gone! And they wanted more!!!

This is the last box of 30 pot stickers that I cooked up in one frying pan.  Usually one serving of pot stickers is 6 to a plate!!!  And five of us ate 90!

"I hope you girls don't get sick on the way home!

We took the girls to the train station and I gave them both a lot of hugs and invited them back again any time.  They were great little guests!