Quilting begun!

I have been going back and forth between quilting projects recently...  finally getting a start on quilting the Raise the Roof Log Cabin sandwich I'd prepared last week.  If I don't get started, it won't get done!

Deciding on a quilting pattern is probably the hardest job for me when making a quilt.  The piecing usually goes together because I have a specific pattern that gives me step to step instructions but when it comes to quilting the instructions say, "Quilt as desired" which leaves a lot of room!

The Raise the Roof quilt is not a quilt I'm making for anyone specific and it is large enough that hand quilting it would take too much time (don't tell Julie Fukuda because she makes much larger quilts than I do and she does it ALL by hand!  And in record time too!)  So I knew I was going to be machine quilting this quilt which only limited the possibilities a bit.

I'm not at all good at overall quilting patterns and I've never been able to use a quilting foot so my machine quilting was going to have to be done free-motion...  I also have never figured out how to digitally plan quilting patterns (I think you can do it with a stylus pen and a tablet and photo app) so I am stuck debating quilting designs the analog way...  By putting a piece of glass on top of the quilt and drawing with a white board marker...

So here is my quilt laid out on the floor with a glass panel from an old bookshelf laid out on top of a few of the quilt blocks.  I decided to tackle the center of the quilt first.  This actually isn't what I finally decided on but it comes close (in actual quilting I pulled the petals out to the edges of the white).

This is what my planning resulted in.  The quilt is busy enough that I am sticking with very light (yellow) thread that actually doesn't show up very well... 

 Can you even see the shadows of the flowers there?  Anyway, the center is now done.

I started planning for the stars next...  but realized I have a round of the colored log cabin blocks to quilt first as I could already see that my spray basting was shifting a bit I didn't want to leave spaces to come back too...  The star section will have to be done at a later date.

Today, with the same process of crawling on the quilt, glass pane and white board marker I roughly designed a quilting plan for the colored parts of the log cabin blocks and got to work.

For all the intricacy of the design the quilting barely shows up but at least the center four log cabin blocks are done.

Photographing straight on from above, the quilting barely shows up, but maybe in shadows the effort will be worth it... 

On another front, I constructed Block Three of the McKenna farm quilt that I am working on.  Pigs!  Kind of cute!

And speaking of McKenna, a package arrived today from my blogging friend, Maggie who sent me the kits for this quilt.  She's sent me more of her pattern stock from her sewing room!  Two more McKenna quilt patterns and some Hawaiian patterns too!  So much to make and so little time to do it all!!!

Shinzo Ohki | How One Japanese Man and His Community Broke the Barrier o...

I'm adding this link/video today because someone (I don't know who) has made a wonderful documentary of my grandfather, Shinzo Ohki.  Though he passed away when I was eleven, I do have memories of him and as an adult I realize what a remarkable person he was.





Leiya sent me the link to the video and as things tend to get lost in my iPhone, I wanted to leave a footprint of the video on my blog so that it doesn't completely disappear into digital space.  It is a long video... about 20 minutes... so I don't really expect people to have the patience to watch the whole thing, but for my family, it is an honor that he should be remembered this way. 





Though I have always known and been thankful for how my grandfather's small Indiana community adopted him and accepted him into their culture, for our present times of racial issues, this video is a bright flicker of how people reach across differences to find unity.

A little bit of sewing

Let's see...  I must be doing something these days...

I have finished making all the Hugs and Kisses blocks and am ready to put some lattice in.  I'm still not venturing out too far and besides, my local fabric store is tiny and has very little cotton fabric.  I will have to make due with what I have in my stash...  Ah...  How I wish I had access to big gorgeous quilting shops in the States!  But no!  This year I'm committed to using up fabric that I already have.  I pulled out some pretty yellow though it isn't batik fabric as is all the fabric in the blocks.  We still don't know if Leiya and Tony's baby is a boy or a girl so yellow will be cheery and go both ways...

John was helping rearrange the blocks for me...  He is very opinionated and does not appreciate my removing blocks from under him...

I finally gave up waiting for a place that I might use to baste my Log Cabin quilt.  Was I going to ask to use the community center?  Was I going to crawl around on the ground alone for hours basting?  I even considered taking the quilt components out to the driveway and trying to baste it outdoors on the asphalt but what with tree needles all over the driveway it would take too much work...  I "board basted" on the living room floor in sections and I spray basted the whole thing.  I couldn't disrupt the household for more than an hour with a quilt laid out.  John wasn't very happy being put in his circle while I crawled around near him anyway...

The job is done and now I've just got to figure out how I'm going to quilt this!  Definitely machine quilting but no inspiration has hit me yet.  Why does it take so long to marinate a quilt?!

And speaking of John.  He has an interesting pastime of sitting by the bedroom window and looking out on the world.  VEILED!  He doesn't mind at all that life goes by with in a white gauzy blur.  He is so funny!

Hi John!

Growing things

Thank you for all the good wishes to Leiya and Tony.  I will send them this way to receive all your messages.

The days are getting more summery and though Japan has hit its rainy season, there are often a few sunny hours that make the days pleasant.  Tetsu and I sit outside in the garden, sometimes just enjoying ice tea that I bring him after he has been working so hard.

This year it looks like we are going to have a bumper crop of blueberries!  That is if the birds don't get to them first...  Usually we don't have problems with birds eating the berries though this will be our first year without the forest behind us.  Maybe the extra sunlight is what is encouraging the blueberries!

 Look at all those green-berries!

And a blueberry visitor...

 A view of our backyard and me relaxing.

Actually Tetsu set me with my feet up and with my Kindle on this morning because a couple of hours earlier I had stumbled over the street curb on my way home from crosswalk duty and landed splat on my side...  Nothing broken, I protected my head, but I got bruised and scraped and my ego was busted so I settled down for a slow day...  I bounced back the next morning.

And just this afternoon, John and I walked over to the hot houses that are right behind our house (the hot houses that always end up in our pictures of the mountains we can see).  The farmer who owns the hot houses has been coming twice a day to harvest his pretty Rindo flowers. 

 He seems to have two types, this dark purple type...

And light purple too.

Hopefully the weather will hold for a barbecue party in our backyard tomorrow!

News!

Big news around here!  Leiya and Tony are expecting!

Tetsu and I actually got the news a couple of weeks ago but Leiya asked us to keep it under wraps until she was passed the 12 week mark...  So I have been dying to tell people!

Leiya had sent us a package that she said we weren't to open until their wedding anniversary when she and Tony would join us on Facetime.  We finally opened the package after chatting with the two of them, Tetsu did the honors...

"What is this?" he mumbled...  "Blocks of wood.  Pretty wood..."

I could see numbers on the blocks.  A calendar?  And then the word "months"... and then "weeks"...  What would the word "weeks" have to do with a calendar...

"Leiya?!"

I figured it out before Tetsu and we finally got down to the last block which he had to have me read to him and explain.

"'Till we become Grandparents"

Well, you know Tetsu...  He was sobbing within seconds!

"Don't tell anyone yet..."

"But I'm putting the calendar up on our window!  No one is coming to the house anyway during sheltering down!"

So Tetsu and I have been counting off the weeks...  And Leiya has been sending us app updates which is a new to me system...

"Your baby is now the size of a grape."

"Your baby is now the size of a large strawberry."

I finally got the okay to tell people and Leiya is informing other friends and relatives now too.  She seems to have almost no morning sickness and since life is pretty quiet under lock-down in Detroit, she has been able to take it easy...

UNTIL...

Tony and Leiya bought a house in Indiana!  So recently they are driving back and forth to Indiana to sign papers and at the end of the month they will be moving to somewhere near Evansville.

As a first-time grandmother to be, I am concerned about all that driving and then the moving that will be underway soon but Tony's mother and grandparents are stepping in and helping Tony and Leiya do a lot of the things that have to get done.  I will happy though when everyone is settled and life will be more relaxed for them all...

Of course I have started on a baby quilt...   Hugs and Kisses! 

Anyway, many new changes for Tony and Leiya.  Due date in December!  Tetsu can't wait to change the calendar to "....  DAYS till we become Grandparents!"

Bullet Journaling

Recently I've started what looks to be a new hobby.  I didn't really plan it that way but once I'd started thinking about it...

So, at the end of last month I began listening to the book The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll.  Audio books are great but I missed out on seeing the graphs and illustrations to Mr. Carroll's methodology so I checked what he might be talking about on the Internet.  And then I checked Pinterest, and then I checked Reddit...  Just the photos that people were posting looked so intriguing!

I began to notice how quilt bloggers were showing pictures of their quilt journals and I decided I wanted to try to do a quilt journal again.  I've tried before and didn't keep up with it.

I also realized I was keeping track of my household chores in one iPhone app, I had a Goodread bookshelf for books I've read, I keep a record of my Bible reading on a back page of my blog, when I was swimming I had an app for that, same for water intake, same for weight, and I really wanted to be more deliberate in my gratitude attitude.  All the stuff on the iPhone is nice but actually once it is recorded I never go back and look at any of that stuff...  It was just getting stored in cyber-space for a someday time when I might want to open it back up and look at it.

Why not try Bullet Journaling?  Why not?  Because I am more than likely to give up again.  Because I am not arty.  Because I don't want to dwell that much on what I think, what I do, what I'm planning.  Still...

Why DO I want to start Bullet Journaling?  Because I love recording things and I love methods.  I would LIKE to become more arty, and I'd like to have everything in one place... 

I went to a largish bookstore in the next city and found a recommended journal.  I followed Internet advice for setting up monthly, weekly, daily pages plus what I might want to keep track of...  Quilting.  Books.  Gratitude.  Since June I have been Bullet Journaling with old stickers, highlighter pens and colored pencils (I admit, I went to another bookstore and bought the colored pencils.)

 A couple of "Finished" quilts on the quilting pages.

 A page with a quilt plan in progress...

A couple of daily pages...  Whoops!  My weight is even recorded there...

My handwriting is rather depressing and so I started looking at Fonts on Pinterest and even "Improving your handwriting" sites.    One of my doodle pages for Font ideas...  Yes, can you believe I managed to skip letters M and N...  They got pushed to one side.

As an aside...  I asked Leiya if she had ever heard of Bullet Journaling because she was an art major and still does quite a bit of drawing.  She laughed and held up her Bullet Journal saying that she was getting back to it.  When I held up my new Bullet Journal we both had a big laugh!  We are on opposite sides of the world but mother and daughter are thinking alike!

I surely hope that I will not lose interest in Bullet Journaling...  The stickers and washi-tape make it sort of fun to come back to each night.   And hopefully as I learn to live more deliberately my handwriting will also improve...

(As someone has pointed out, Bullet Journaling is supposed to help a person become more productive in their life...  but of course all this time journaling takes away from time when I could be doing something more productive.)

Hodge-Podge Quilt Finished!

Although it definitely wasn't a priority, once I started on the Hodge-Podge Quilt there didn't seem to be space in my sewing room to do anything else.  The purpose was to use up as much of the fabric in my string basket (large basket) and I just kept pulling out strings and adding onto the half-log cabin blocks.

This didn't seem like it was going to turn into anything exciting so I sort of chose the minimum at each step.  Did I want to add a border?  Nah...  It's too crazy already.  Did I want to do some overall quilting?  Nah...  It would take too much brain work.  Did I want to buy any fabric for the triangles, the binding, the backing?  Nah...  I have got to commit to using up the fabric I have.

By the way...  I was reading a book called At Knit's End - Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, and there was the acronym S.A.B.L.E. which I think can be applied to quilters too.

S.A.B.L.E

Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy

My Hodge-Podge Quilt was a token attempt at using unusable fabric that I just couldn't throw out.

I didn't really have any great backing but there was some leftover flannel from the Under and Over quilt I'd made earlier this spring.  There wasn't enough but I just HAPPENED to have an extra strip of the half-log cabins!  I had thought I'd make this a rectangular quilt but ran into some problems and didn't want to spend the time working them out.  EXTRA LONG STRIP that just HAPPENED to give the added width to the backing.  (I know...  I look hot and tired in this picture.  It is getting hot and humid around here and sewing on binding to a flannel backed quilt was not an enjoyable task.  Look how my hair frizzes in the humidity!)

This quilt has nowhere to go as it isn't particularly pretty...  It might make for a good car quilt in the winter...  But Tetsu likes it so all was not a complete waste of time!

Masks

From June, our lives are edging into a normal routine again.  Teaching again, going to stores other than supermarkets, attending church, visiting the pool, having meetings.

One thing that has changed though is the way that masks have infiltrated themselves into our lives.  And remember how I hate masks!  But these days I carry at least one disposable mask in my car, I have four or five of the ones I made hanging by my front door, I have three masks that I change off on every day and Tetsu has three also.

The city hall issued me 10 disposable masks to use at the crosswalk...  After I use up the 10 I'm required to provide further masks myself.  Crosswalk guards were instructed to wear masks at all time at the crosswalk...  as were the children walking to and from school.  This initiative has already undergone a change (and school has only started from June 1!) because now we are being told that masks lead to heat stroke...  And I can avow to that as this week I am already wiped out by the time I get back from the crosswalk wearing my mask in the hot and muggy heat of the morning.  The school has now decided that all children should walk to and from school in single file and NOT wear masks until they enter the classroom... 

The Prime Minister's masks (Abe no masuku) which the government decided to issue to every household in Japan, finally arrived this week.  Two innocuous looking gauze masks for each household... no matter if the household has one person or 5 in it.  The masks took a long time in coming and actually we can buy boxes of disposable masks now so the original sense of urgency has evaporated (and since it took two months to get to us, I guess urgency got lost in red tape.)

I can hardly complain as I had made masks and sent four to Takumi and Julieta in California and four to Leiya and Tony in Michigan back at the end of March and FINALLY I heard from Julieta this morning that their masks had arrived.  No word from Leiya yet...

I went to the pre-school on Monday after not having English time in the month of May.  At the last class in April, the principal had asked me to wear a mask while teaching the children and I felt that was a disaster.  It is just impossible to get little kids to repeat what you are saying, hear the differences in sounds, see the expressions on a face when an English teacher is wearing a mask.  I was constantly pulling the mask down to demonstrate the biting of a lip (for the pronunciation of the number four or five) or the tongue between teeth (for the th pronunciation in "thank you" or "this".)  So when I went to the pre-school on Monday I asked if we could have class outside or in a larger room and I NOT use a mask.  English that day was held in a larger hall with all the windows open but I still put on my mask every time I called a child up to the front when posing questions...  Anyway...  what are we going to do in the winter when the windows can't be left open?

And speaking of windows...  Yesterday I had my ladies English class at home and to put everyone at ease I moved all the chairs to the living room (a slightly larger room than my dining room where we usually have English), I opened up every single room in the house, and we all were planning to keep masks on during English.  One friend however had even gone so far as to bring face shields for all of us!!!  Wow!  I never thought I'd deign to wear a face shield but since she'd so kindly supplied them for all of us, we tried them out. 

What a sight!  Unfortunately they are rather uncomfortable and one friend was getting a headache.  My foreign nose (I guess) is pointier and made contact with the inner side of the face shield, smearing it up and too much laughter and hot coffee made the face shields fog over!  And actually they do retain heat so we were feeling the rise in temperature around all our faces... 

I don't know if I can keep up with the face mask and face shield world...  I may decide staying at home and away from people is just easier!

Nature

Takumi and Julieta called on Wednesday (for us).  We chatted from our backyard and Takumi commented on all the bird noises he could hear in the background.  And then Thursday Julieta sent a couple of pictures of Takumi. 

He celebrated his 35th birthday!  It looks like a neighborhood bakery was open!

Actually Julieta keeps in touch pretty well and she had texted me earlier this week telling me of the protesting that was going on in LA and in the Long Beach area where her mother lives.  She said it was pretty scary and I was very glad when she was back in their apartment after her visit to check on her mother.  It is so sad that now we have to be afraid how peaceful protesting may turn out.  Both of the kids are getting worn down by the lock-down and now curfews that are part of everyday life.  Takumi had said there were no plans for a birthday celebration as restaurants of course weren't open yet, but I was happy that Julieta found a way to have a mini-celebration of the two of them.

Tetsu and I have counted our blessings living in the countryside of Nikko.  Though Japan is sheltering down, the town of Nikko hasn't had any cases of Covid19 yet and life is pretty normal though we make an effort to stay at home still.  Of course I am sewing and Tetsu spends about 8 hours outdoors in his garden or cleaning up the former forest area. 

Though I don't think these are the birds that Takumi could hear over video-chat, recently we are enjoying watching visitors come to our bird-feeder.  Tetsu had put up another feeder but the birds don't come near that one.  The sparrows discovered this smaller old one earlier this week and we have quite a few sparrows that come to dine here now

We also seem to have a pigeon now who camps out at the bird-feeder.  He/she is a very pretty bird and we were thrilled that he had stopped by.  He ended up relaxing at the feeder for nearly an hour and the sparrows ate from one side while he sat at the other side.  Mr. pigeon eats a lot more than sparrows!  Maybe I'll be happy if he keeps his new dining area a secret from his friends!

My farmer neighbors are harvesting their lettuce now and every morning they bring back a tray of lettuce to be packaged and delivered to the local vegetable stand.  So beautiful!

There is also a wheat field nearby that looks like it is ready to be harvested too.

 Clouds in the late afternoon bringing thunderstorms.

On different evenings the sky and the mountains show their different moods.  This evening it was threatening to rain during the night.

On another day the sky was flooded with color.

I seem to never get tired of the view of the mountains and I am always running outside to take pictures!

Birds and mountains and the ever changing sky keep us peaceful and happy.