Flimsies

I suppose I have a couple more flimsies to check off my list. 

I made fast work of the Hodge Podge Quilt which got some tweaking in the end because I was having trouble putting in the lattice... 

For future reference... Adding lattice to an on point setting when the lattice does NOT extend into the triangles means that there has to be equal rows vertically and horizontally... making a square.  If I'm making a rectangle then the last triangle in one of the rows would have to be sewn set in...  That wasn't going to be a major discouragement, just another step, but when I checked to see what would happen without one row...  Hey...  I think I like the square setting better than a rectangle setting!

This is probably NOT going onto anyone's bed anyway and I didn't want to work on it more to make it into a bedsized quilt and it probably isn't going on a wall either...  Just a utilitarian lap quilt?  So I am finishing it off this size.  Probably no borders either.  I still have the extra row that I made so I will try to incorporate it into the backing...

I also put the borders onto the Joy Quilt and this too is ready for some quilting work.

Actually, I have three flimsies including the Log Cabin and Stars quilt that got made a couple of months ago) but I have yet to figure out how to baste any of these...  The Joy quilt I will probably get basted this weekend and the Hodge Podge quilt can be laid out on the sewing room floor but that Log Cabin and Stars quilt is just too big to lay out for basting anywhere... 

I have also started a Hugs and Kisses quilt...  This will be hand pieced and right now I'm trying to figure out how to keep a Quilting page in a Bullet Journal and update projects.  Does anyone Bullet Journal?  Do you have any tips?  How does one add a quilting section to a journal?  My eyes are drawn to quilt bloggers' journals but I am really not very organized (that's why I need a journal!) nor very artistic, nor very good with numbers and graphing...  HELP!

John. And some sewing

Japan is easing down on the Covid restrictions and I will go to the crosswalk two times this week and then school will be held as normal from June 1st.  Summer vacation will be shortened this year, the spring term ending in late July and the fall term beginning in August.  Japanese summers are miserable so this will be a drain on everyone's energy but education requirements must be filled!

I went into the city today for the first time since my trip to the Immigration Center a few weeks ago.  Everything seems about normal except that most of the cashier booths (at the supermarket) now have plastic sheets and tubing hanging keeping a token divider between customer and cashier...  Last week a supermarket in the city became a Corona cluster after one of the workers working the shelves passed along the virus to three fellow workers who then passed it along to their family members.  Although all the clerks were wearing masks, in the employees' rest area the four ladies enjoyed lunch and tea and chatting WITHOUT their masks and supposedly that is how the virus spread.  WEAR THOSE MASKS!!!  I never thought I'd ever say that!

So...  news around here...  John spent three nights at the vet last week because he had to have his teeth cleaned.  The original plan was that I would take him in the morning of the scheduled surgery but since general anesthetic has to be used he was not supposed to get breakfast.  Oh dear...  That will put him in a bad mood!  Will he even get in the car with me if I don't give him breakfast like he expects?  The vet could see my point and suggested I bring John in the evening before.  Whew!  That helps a lot! 

The next change of plans came during/right after surgery when the vet texted me to say that one of John's canine teeth was rotten and would have to be extracted.  That wasn't a surprise because John had terrible breath and that was why he was getting his teeth cleaned to begin with.  With that extra bit of surgery the vet wanted John to spend the night for observation.

And then the next day I got another text saying that John was fine and eating well but he was in a terrible mood maybe because of the pain in his mouth.  She thought we might have trouble with his behavior once he got home and so John spent another night at the vets.  When he finally came home he was bouncy and happy and missing a tooth doesn't seem to bother him though he does occasionally get his upper lip sucked in where the tooth used to be and he looks a bit lopsided. You can't really tell.  John is now missing the top canine on the left side of his face.

I am continuing to sew upstairs and now am determined to get the Hodge-Podge quilt done and out of my mind.  Oh well.  The purpose of this quilt was to use up strings in the string bin and it does seem as if the bin isn't quite so compacted.  I've decided to put lattice between the blocks but am not brave enough to add any more bright fabric, not even to the corners.  I just feel that this is a little too mixed up anyway and so I am using neutral fabrics in the lattice.  I was not about to go thinking about buying any fabric for this and so I am using what I have.  Right now this is all just laid out on the floor (but I have sewn the lattice strips).  I will put gray triangles, the same as the lattice crossing corner, along the sides of this quilt because I've made it on point...

And I also spent a couple days working on the McKenna farm BOM.  I could really stop right here as I'm very happy with what I've got made already but I still have 7 more months of the kit to go.  Last month I had made the left side of the quilt and this week I made the right side with the cat silhouette.  Can you see where the two sides of the quilt will have to be spliced?  And that cat is supposed to be sitting on a swing so the ropes of the swing will be added later.  Anyway, the May BOM is done and I will go work on other things in the sewing room.

Working on two quilts (plus another start)

Another rainy day!  I have always loved rainy days because of the coolness and the sound of the rain and the glitter on the leaves but it does mean that it is very hard to go out walking!  And I have my set quota of steps to walk everyday so I either resign myself to missing my goal or I pace the bedroom in the evening before bed (and 10000 steps of just pacing takes a very long time!!!)   I'm not ready to purchase a treadmill though so I will keep my eyes on the sky and hope for a block of clear weather today.

But a rainy day IS very good for some some sewing time!

I've got a lot of half-log cabin blocks now... I think 68 in all...  and I'm getting tired of making them.  The more strings I use, the more narrower strings I end up making (cutting down from too wide strings) and there is all that stash of fabric I could still get into but...  Do I want to keep making these blocks?  68 blocks makes a rather narrow sized quilt even if I did put a border on it...  And do I really like all the hodge-podge?  I could put sashing of some sort between all the blocks...  I could make the blocks bigger by adding 2 inch strips of various colors...  That would make this a bigger quilt.  Do I even want a bigger quilt?  That's the trouble with these spontaneous projects I start.  I don't even know what I am making!  A bigger quilt will mean more difficulty quilting it and I'm not sure I can persevere to a bed-size quilt anyway.  And who wants such a hodge-podge quilt on their bed?

Here is another layout of these blocks.  (Whoops... One block didn't get turned.  Can you find it?)  I think I like this layout better...

Downstairs I am working on the border to my Joy quilt.  This looks pretty good close-up...  Reverse applique flowers with a hint of embroidery around them.  Appliqued leaves. 

However the border does seem to get washed out a bit when put together with the center block...  I didn't want to take away from the center and so chose muter colors for the border but I may have gone too far in the pastel direction.  I'm still adding a few flowers to the bottom (the final leaves there haven't been sewn on yet, but basically I'm going to leave the corners blank.

And on the docket today I am going to work on another BOM block from the McKenna series.  Upstairs I go!

(By the way... Blogger is acting up again I think.  I never know if I've done something wrong or if Blogger is to blame.   My pictures aren't uploading the usual way and I've had to do a roundabout search for them.  But I think I've got them posted so maybe it is Blogger.)

Flowers and weeds and a mountain

It is a rainy day around here so I haven't been able to go out for a walk yet today.  And John spent the night at the vet because he is getting his teeth cleaned this afternoon.  So it has been a quiet morning.

But I took my camera out with us one morning this week and captured some spring photos.

 I guess these aren't flowers, they are all weeds! 

 Even clover is a type of weed...

And dandelions.

And I don't know what this flower/weed is.

We got to the turn around point in our walk just when a lovely sight began to appear near the mountains.  Can you make out what I was trying to photograph?

Here it is a little closer...  A partial rainbow or at least the colors of a rainbow forming against a backdrop of green which is Mt. Nantai.

And this photo was taken by Tetsu the night before on his iPhone.  Mt. Nantai again backlit by the setting sun.

A few resumed firsts

Today I went to crosswalk duty for the first time in a month.  One day this week, and two days next week and hopefully in June school will be able to resume as usual.  Today was the first time for the first graders to walk to school with their neighborhood groups.

Another "first" was that yesterday Tetsu and I went out to lunch.  GASP!  Our favorite little country pot-sticker restaurant had been featured in the local newspaper and the owner had reported that the little shop was open but was hurting because of the sheltering down.  The majority of his customers had been tourists coming into the area (and pot-stickers are a specialty of our prefecture) and sight-seeing and tourism has been discouraged during this pandemic for obvious reasons.

Oh no!  We love that little restaurant and I have known the owner for over 15 years!  Even before they had a restaurant (they make pot-stickers to sell in stores).  They can't go under!

Tetsu and I cautiously drove over and as there were only two cars in the parking lot we decided to take the plunge.  (Our second choice for lunch if the restaurant looked too crowded was to get an obento at a convenience store and bring it home to eat in Tetsu's garden.)  The restaurant is taking precautions, having hand disinfectants at the entrance and also a shoe disinfecting tray, distancing tables (in the very small shop) etc.

Pot-sticker lunch was SO good!  It has been over two months since we've been there and it will be remembered as our first meal out of sheltering down.  We each had rice, a plate of pot-stickers, a bit of cold tofu, some sweet simmered pumpkin and a small bowl of ramen.  And we ordered one more serving of pot-stickers just because we love them so much.

Doesn't Tetsu look happy!

Another first this week for me was getting my first online order of Heat n Bond!  Well, not really Heat n Bond but the Japanese counterpart.  I often order a roll through Mrs. Furui but I haven't been able to get together with her and I figured I'd better establish my own route of quilting supplies for the future.  I bought 10 rolls of the stuff!!!  Got to get back to my McKenna collaging!  Ten rolls should last me awhile!

Cats... at least three of them

A couple more errands getting done.

I took Chip and Toi and Mi to the vet on Thursday to get their annual vaccinations (the other two cats probably will get theirs next month...  I don't know how we got on this schedule but it is just as well.  Trying to take 5 cats at one time is a horrendous experience!)  The two cats on the examination table are Toi and Chip.  Mi was still in her carrier. 

Each cat in a carrier.  And all cats complaining the whole 30 minute trip to the vets (and back).  The vet has recently changed to an appointment system which meant that there weren't any other patients in the waiting room when we arrived which was nice.  Whisked in and whisked out!  Toi was very upset about the experience (and also got carsick on the 30 minute drive) Chip silently bore the experience in stoic silence.  Mi tried to climb on the vet's shoulder.

Let's see.  Chip is already 12 years old.  She is Tetsu's darling and whenever he sits down she is on his lap.

I see that Toi is also about 12.  He is still the bully in our cat family but I've had to take him for other issues (maybe teeth... he was on antibiotics last month).

And Mi is 11 years old.  She is loved by everyone and she loves everyone too.  She is just altogether cute.  (And she also has Feline Aids which has always made me concerned about her health but she's lived with us for nearly 10 years and seems pretty healthy actually.

Cleo and Patora are brother and sister and they will be the ones who get their vaccinations next month...  My goodness!  They are both 16 years old already.  Sort of getting creaky but they are still holding their own!

Toi and Patora have been moved downstairs to the cat house this month.  They will spend the summer there instead of in a hot room upstairs.  John likes to visit with them but Toi is very free with Cat punches and he draws blood!

 Here are Mi and Chip in a bit more relaxed mode...  Mi sleeping on our bed.

Chip in my sewing room.

All my cats are getting up there in age.  Me too, I guess...

Is anyone else finding it difficult to come up with something to blog about?  There's not too much that changes from day to day.

So let's see...  It has been two weeks since my annoying trip to the immigration office and as I feel fine I'm assuming I no longer have to be quite so vigilant about not going out and not meeting people.  Tetsu and I both had business at the Nikko City Hall and so, wearing our masks we ended up there for about an hour.   I was pleasantly surprised to find that there weren't many people at the City Hall and that in the halls and waiting room there were disinfectant misting machines.  Unlike the immigration office, I felt that the City Hall was trying to keep the public spaces as germ free as possible.  My business was done quickly so instead of just sitting and waiting for Tetsu I went out for a walk in the neighborhood.

There was a very pretty little park with a stream that meandered through the neighborhood.

I liked the bicycle railings that had little birds on them as decorations.

Here is the Nikko City Hall which was just built last year.  It really is lovely with a lot of wooden accents inside and out.

On the way home we stopped at the homegoods store for Tetsu to buy a few vegetable plants for his garden and some flowers to fill our flower pots.  Tetsu believes in thrift so when he found 20 pots of flowers past their prime in one flat for $5, he picked up two flats.  He admits that some of the plants probably won't last long but some are still quite nice and will add color to the yard. 

Can you see why I've taken a picture of the back of our house?  This is the view of our house coming on the back road from the fields.  Everyone who uses the back road sees our house's backside very plainly.  (It used to have a wooden fence there but it was falling apart and Tetsu took it down.

The dining room windows are on the far left.  The window over the kitchen sink in the middle, a door with a fogged window that opens to where the old boiler room used to be, but now holds junk, the gas meter and the downstairs bathroom window.  It is the fogged window to the junk room that I dislike.  Even though the window is fogged, whenever I walked down this road I could see shadows of junk in this room...  I really need to put decals on that window or cover it some way... (or clean out the room!  No, that is going to be Tetsu's job...  It's his garden junk.)  Wait!  Maybe I can rig a quilt there!

So that's what I did!  This is a paper pieced quilt I made over 10 years ago and it hasn't been up on my walls for a good number of years...  I put a tension rod in the top and even got the rod to fit on the indoor window frame!

This probably isn't really a great place for this quilt to be because it will get afternoon sun for a couple of hours, but maybe since it hasn't been out of its box for years, at least it may get admired by passersby.  Who knows.  I might decide to whip up a quicky quilt that I don't really love just for this door...  or if I find decals I like that would be okay too.  Maybe this is a temporary solution.

Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day in Japan, but it is still May 9th in the States.  And May 9th was supposed to have Takumi and Julieta's wedding day but...  not with California on lock-down.  Sigh...

Nevertheless, we did have a good chat with both Leiya and Tony and then Takumi and Julieta, all of whom called for Mother's Day (remembering that they've got to think a day ahead).

Takumi and Julieta also called to thank us for a fruit basket that I'd had sent to cheer them up on this day which was supposed to have been so important to them.  After the first disappointment of having to postpone their May wedding, they had hoped for a December wedding this year but now it looks like March will be a safer choice.  All the things we have to think about now just to get a group of family together!

Takumi doesn't seem much bothered by working at home and not getting out of the house much but I think Julieta-san is a more social person and she misses her friends and getting out and around town.  We asked if they were planning anything fun but as there are no restaurants or stores open, the day was ending up a regular stay-at-home day for them... sort of the same way Tetsu and I are carrying on here.

Leiya and Tony have been in the process of buying a house in Indiana where Tony will be starting work at a new hospital.  It seems quite a job to buy a house basically on-line though they did drive the seven hours to their new town to see a few of they houses they had been considering, in person.  It sounds all very exciting and Tony always pipes up that he wants us to come and visit as soon as possible.  Another fun thing to look forward to in the someday future...  I already love looking at the realtor website trying to imagine them in the house they have put an offer on...  I sure hope it all works out.  They are aiming for a mid-June move.

So Mother's Day started with chatting with my kids and is ending with Tetsu cooking Japanese curry for dinner (he cooks for us maybe twice a year).  That is HIS Mother's Day (he calls it Wife's Day) gift to me.

In the afternoon I was upstairs sewing.  Can you believe I've started another quilt.  Why does my mind jump around so much?  On Joe's Tulip's blog I saw that she had started a scrap buster quilt and I thought...  "Hey, I have all those strings, I could do that!"

So now I've got out my string bin which really was overflowing and am sewing the strips together in a variation of the Log Cabin block.  This is fun but actually it isn't using up that many strings...  I've hardly made a dent in the bin.  And hey, wasn't I sewing something else before I started this project?  And didn't I have a list of someday-to-do quilts made that I wanted to start on?  How did this Log Cabin variation get pushed to top position?  And what on earth am I planning to do with it once it gets done?

No pictures of my kids so here is a picture from a couple of evenings ago, stepping out from our yard.  The rice has been planted!

Today I will choose... which border?

I am undecided about what to do with my Choose Joy block. 

I think I've put in all the flowers in the center that I can fit and now I want to work on the border.

Oh, someone wanted to know what the black lettering was on this block.  That is just an embroidery stem stitch going back and forth along the script line adding more stitches where I wanted a calligraphy look.

First I thought about just putting a thin inner border and a colorful outer border...  but I'm not going to be able to go to a fabric store so it was "use what is at hand". 

I sort of thought that this was a good set of colors...  But I didn't really like the "oriental" feel of the flower border...

Then I thought I'd brighten this up with an orange inner border and the blue on the outside.  That was good but it seemed to be missing some whimsy.

Okay...  How about doing some reverse applique with the colorful fabric underneath?  I actually was going to do the blue with white underneath but that didn't show up at all... The colorful flowers came through a bit more but... 

What do you think?  Should I put random flowers all around the border?  Should I get some leaves in there (light green maybe.  I don't want to overpower the pastel flowers...)  Or just flowers at the right corner next to their pink counterparts and leave the other two sides blue?  Too much blue is going to mean I'm going to have to do some serious quilting on this...