September scenery

We've come to the end of the month and most of the photos I seem to have are of scenery...  And most of those are on my phone.  Sigh.  There used to be a time when I carried my camera with me religiously (actually I STILL carry it with me in my handbag) but it is just so much easier to whip out my phone and take adequate photos...  And when I go on my morning walks I usually don't want to be burdened with the real camera...  I sort of wish I still had the habit of only taking pictures with the camera...  That's what convenience over quality does to us...

So here are scenery photos.  You can tell which ones are by camera because of the watermark in the bottom right hand corner.

This photo was taken early in September when I was coming home from the supermarket and driving through the rice fields.

Every morning I come out my front door and walk a minute to the main street and am greeted (on nice days) by the sun coming over the trees.

I walk past the elementary school where I'll be again in a couple of hours and 10 minutes later I'm at the top of a ridge where there is a little shrine and if I'm quick I can watch as the sun rises further.

This must have been taken on another day as the sun is in a different position over the countryside.

Tetsu doesn't come with me every morning but occasionally he and John make the trek, so he took this picture of me.

At the shrine on a foggy morning.

 My guys.

John sniffed up a feather.  He wore it awhile until he sneezed it off.  He does NOT like us fussing around his face so there was no helping him.

On the way home we pass through farmers' roads.  Mt. Nantai in the background and the spider lilies adding color to the scenery.

The school kids have put up scarecrows in their rice field.  I think this scary figure is from the anime Spirited Away.

I don't know who this is supposed to be but he is holding a sign that says "Don't give in to the Corona Virus!"  By the way, Japan now has 83,000 cases of Corona with our prefecture of Tochigi having 427 cases.  Sigh.  I can remember when I was concerned about the 4 cases Tochigi had...  But for all that, life in our town goes on fairly normally with not too much concern about the pandemic.

And this was taken (by camera you note!) on a beautiful foggy morning.

As the sun which was behind me came over the forest, it was reflected in the windows of a far off farmhouse.

And thus we head into October!

Playing with left-overs

Time just seems to roll on by and when I look back I can see that things have gotten done and there are changes but in the midst it all rather seems the same.

Japan had Silver Week last week which is a counterpart to Golden Week in May when there are a number of consecutive holidays.  I think Silver Week included the Autumn equinox, the Respect for Elders Day and the weekend making four days off for school and businesses.  An unheard of extra day was given to the school children of Nikko (and the neighboring city) when a bomb threat was sent to the city hall claiming that a bomb would go off on Wednesday at an unidentified school unless money was exchanged...  The city chose to ignore the demand for money and instead cancelled school for the day.  In our quiet, countryside city of Nikko we have a bomb scare!  Don't we have enough problems with the pandemic and the typhoons?!  So last week only saw me at the crosswalk on Thursday and Friday.

The long weekend gave me time to spend sewing and I put the finishing touches on another quilt and have gotten started on a new one.

This pattern is called Candlelight from the Pacific Rim Quilt Company website.  My friend Mrs. N ordered the pattern and she has been making the same quilt but before she found the fabrics that she had decided to use I had ordered some fabric thinking she wouldn't find any Christmas fabric at the local store.  She did however, so that left me with the left-over fabric I'd ordered.  The summer was so hot that I really needed a hand project I could work on in the air conditioned living room and so I basted this up and went to work on it in the last days of August.  It is now appliqued and quilted and ready for this year's Christmas.

The label I made with an added cross-stitch piece that had been in a Christmas card insert years ago and that I couldn't bear to throw away.

I spent a couple of days last week working on another McKenna block for the farm quilt.  I am getting rather nervous about how this quilt is going to work out...  Most of my design wall is now covered with the 6 blocks I've made and I think there are four more plus border!  How am I ever going to get this quilted when it is all put together?  Should I start quilting what I have now, work on the second half and quilt that later and then try to put the halves together?  Is a huge collage quilt, rather on the stiff side with all that fabric, even going to be maneuverable when it is all together?  I've gotten this far but have sort of sense of dread approaching...

Okay...  Quilting is suppose to be fun.  On to other things.

The weather is cooling off and autumn is in the air...  When looking for something else in the back of my closet I came across a box that I'd marked "Orphan blocks".  Ah...  This is the box where I've thrown trial blocks, things that didn't work out with other blocks, abandoned projects... 

And I pulled out four leaf blocks.  Good glory!  When did I ever make these?  I vaguely recall thinking that a quilt with a lot of these leaf blocks would be pretty and I hand cut and hand pieced these four blocks (I THINK there are only four...  I pawed through the box to see if I could find more but only turned up these...)  But I remember that these were a real hassle to make with all the reverse pieces and points...  I must have given up at four.

In another orphan box (dedicated to triangles) I found loads and loads of triangle blocks probably cut off ends of some project using squares. 

I cannot even recall when I used these colors or for what quilt.  So...  what can I make from a bunch of left overs?  A table runner?  A long wall hanging?  I don't know how this is going to get used but with all the pre-made blocks (and leftover strips were just waiting for me from ANOTHER project!) this flimsy went together in a day.  I will spend next week figuring out how to quilt it.

A final look-through of the orphan block box came up with some leaf borders that I had made for something but that didn't seem to get used in the end.  They seem rather lonely as is and so I think I'll start appliqueing some colorful flowers and get them into a more usable state. 

There is lots more in my orphan block box but I've given it a bit more space for later additions.

An outing with John

We had a family (Tetsu, me and John) adventure yesterday when we took John on a car day trip!  We had tried this once a few months after John joined our family but it was only semi successful.  Back then we'd put John in a wired kennel which he DID NOT LIKE and that resulted in him growling and snapping and lunging at us every time we looked at him.  He also got car sick on that trip and we were in stunned shock that this dog wasn't going to behave like Choco and Shoko before him had behaved.

John has been with us about two years now.  He may have changed a bit but more likely Tetsu and I now know what he is willing to do and not willing to do.  We can read his facial expressions and judge if he is in a bad mood or not and we are more forgiving of his temper.  In two years I've learned that John will ride in the car (happily) if he isn't in a kennel and he is much more accepting of me handling him than of Tetsu.

 At any rate, we decided to try and take John with us to a far off park entailing an hour or so drive.  It is getting cool enough that John could be left in the car for a bit if we wanted to eat lunch out (we didn't) or make a stop at a store (we did).  Our trip also wasn't so vital that if John started to get car sick we could still just turn around and come home...  So we loaded John in the car (he growled when Tetsu got in the driver's seat) and off we went.

John DOESN'T have free run of the backseat...  I hooked him up to the headrest so that he wouldn't be able to lean too far out of the window.  He could barely get his chin on the rolled down window (he was standing up as high as he could get) but he enjoyed looking out every time we stopped at a signal.  While the car was moving I think it got too windy for him.

I'd thrown his blanket in the back and John was content to sleep or get treats from me who would feed him from over my shoulder.

Another photo of John enjoying the sights.

The park that we went to was in a pottery town and besides having wide spaces for families to play there is a museum and also an area of the forest called the Forest of Magician's Clay which has many objects of pottery art in among the trees and hills.  

We didn't go too far in but we stopped at a couple permanent exhibits.  

I love all the pottery birds in this wild setting.

This was called "the Forest's Guard-dog" (see the sign at the right) and there was a clever addition to the sign saying that the guard-dog had escaped and people entering the forest should be careful.

John's a good guard-dog!  Doesn't fit the collar though.

John loved the sights and the smells, he was friendly with all the other dogs strolling around the park and though we kept close to the edges of the paths John wasn't even aggressive towards all the people there.  Perfectly well behaved!

Except when we got back in the car and he started growling at Tetsu again...  As I say, we are rather more forgiving than when we first got John and after a scolding and a short pout he was wagging his tail and asking for treats again.  What goes through John's little brain?

We consider our outing to be a success and hope we can try it again soon!

Raise the Roof Quilt finished!

I put the finishing touches on the Raise the Roof quilt aka Log Cabin Challenge this weekend!

The Log Cabin Challenge began when Julie, Carin, Cynthia and I got together at the Tokyo International Quilt Festival in January.  Each year for the past four or five year we have given ourselves a challenge (often inspired by what we see at the quilt show) and we have worked on Circles and Mola and Cathedral Windows etc.  This January we decided on the Log Cabin pattern as it seemed to give a lot of room for interpretation.  I had thought I would try to construct different shapes and motifs from the simple log cabin technique but that never got pulled together.  Instead, I came across the Raise the Roof pattern in one of my books and since I am so much better at following a pattern than I am at thinking up something original I just dove in to the rather large quilt....  

Another good way to use up scraps and stash was also at the back of my mind.

I started the Raise the Roof in March and worked on it through to the beginning of July when I had a flimsy made.  I fretted a lot about the quilting and put a lot more thought into the quilting process than I usually do.  This quilt had whitish areas (log cabin white side), darkish areas (log cabin dark side), stars and border.  That meant I wanted four different quilting motifs with variations where the parts met.

I think I started out with Sulky variegated brown thread for most of the freemotion quilting.  I made a few marks for starting and stopping points but for most of the quilting center I didn't mark further.  Somewhere partway through I ran out of the brown thread and switched to Sulky variegated blue thread but no one is going to notice the slight difference... 

I did have one major mishap when I found I was quilting feathers all in the wrong direction (three sides going one way, one side looping the other way) and and spent two days removing all those stitches. 

I also realized part way through that my spray basting wasn't holding and a large quarter of the backing had gotten wrinkled and a large part had been quilted in pleats...  Sigh...  I spent another day ripping out that section and only made a partial recovery from that mishap...  Sadly, there is still a portion of the backing that remains wrinkled...  I guess this quilt will have to go to someone who loves me and will forgive the mistakes... 

For the border I put my thinking cap on as I didn't just want to stitch in the ditch through all those piano keys.  I did get out the marking tool again and measure and mark off triangles in the border and then double the line, do the remaining stitch in the ditch and add some petals within the triangle. 

The label I've had in my drawer for years and years and don't remember where it came from...  I just added my name and date and the name of the quilt on the side as there wasn't any room anywhere else...  The backing is made of multicolored scraps of the same fabric series which I think I used for Leiya's wedding quilt last year.

I hung the quilt in the living room just so I could take a full photo of it... Tetsu didn't even notice that I'd taken down the small boat quilt that had been up there and replaced it with this very large, very colorful quilt that rather overpowers the small space!  

As for the revealing of our Log Cabin challenges, I know that Carin is almost finished with the construction of her project and Cynthia has made two or three log cabin quilts, the most recent a baby quilt for her new granddaughter.   Julie I'm not sure where she is in her work though she has been working hard on a Coronaville quilt plus numerous other large quilts.  The Tokyo Quilt Festival has been canceled however so there isn't going to be a great reveal for our Log Cabin Challenge next year... at least not in person.  (I was wondering how I was going to lug this large quilt to Tokyo and back and carry it around the quilt show but that problem is now of naught.)  We will have to figure out some other way to show or projects to each other and to our blog friends.  

It feels good to have this quilt under my belt and the scrap bin a bit less full!

Neighborhood woes

I've got a complaint, or maybe it is a problem...  It has been boiling around inside me for quite a while and since it takes up a lot of my thinking I thought I'd vent a bit here.

A year and a half ago Tetsu became the head of our neighborhood homeowners' association.  Please note that I was vehemently against his taking the position knowing him, knowing how the association works, just being aware that the more one gets involved the clearer the faults become visible.  I really put up a fight against Tetsu becoming involved but he had his reasons for taking on the task.  He's retired and has time, he hasn't done much for the neighborhood before, he wants to get the duty over with now while he's healthy etc. etc.

I perceived the appointment as pressure from the association with everyone putting in a lot of flattery and a lot of promises of help but once the position was assumed the other members would turn away.  I'm sorry to say that that is exactly what has happened and part of it is because of Tetsu's perfectionism that few want to deal with.

So in the past year, Tetsu and I have argued quite a lot about how he heads the association... with a LOT of planning and leg work and getting through red tape etc.  He definitely is good at all that.  But he also gets very upset with the people he works with/for.  I don't know how many arguments he has had with neighbors and then the lines of communication get cut further.  

Actually, I got into the brawl yesterday, when a neighbor called to report a fallen tree branch halfway to the school...  which is not in the neighborhood!  And the neighbor had earlier this year dropped out of the association saying she didn't want to have to take on any responsibility and didn't need announcements and bulletins.  I did not turn the conversation over to Tetsu as I did not want him to have another blowup with a neighbor...  I said I'd talk to him but whether he acted or not (as it wasn't part of the neighborhood) I couldn't say.  Together, Tetsu and I agreed, it wasn't really a home owner's association problem nor was the neighbor at liberty to bring it to Tetsu.

But a few minutes later the neighbor was at the door and I answered.  She had been waiting for us to come and attend to the problem.  I explained that we'd been eating dinner, it wasn't a neighborhood issue, and if she was concerned she should call the city hall or even the police.  She retorted that since I was the crosswalk guard, that she thought I'd want the children safe.  And I again suggested she call the police about it.  She was stunned that I wasn't going to help.

Honestly speaking, I feel rather stubborn about my refusal, but why is it that so many association members practically go looking for problems to bring to Tetsu's attention and they don't try to solve the problem themselves?  Every week someone has noticed something wrong with the neighborhood or the system and they lay it at Tetsu's feet and back away saying THEY don't want to get more involved...  and then don't even like the way he's attempted to relieve the problem!  

And now both Tetsu and I are fuming.

This morning Tetsu took ladder and a handsaw over to the school when I went for crosswalk duty and he removed the tree though someone had already cut away the dangerous parts...  Maybe the neighbor finally solved the problem herself.  Now I have to live with this wall that I've put up between us.  Add it to the other walls Tetsu's built himself!

I will be so glad when the association duties are finished next March...  If we last that long!!! 

Bullet Journal

A recent "hobby" of mine has been bullet journaling.  I stumbled upon a Kindle library book about The Bullet Journal Method and I became interested as I have been hoping to move away from all the time I spend on the iPhone.  I also had wanted to have a paper record of the quilting projects I do and so I dove in.

It has been three months now and I find it an interesting exercise for creativity (in my case it is more like adopting other inspiring ideas), for keeping track of things that fall through the cracks and for having a record of Bible devotion times.  Because of the last reason I wasn't sure if my Bullet Journal would be a point of interest but I do find myself playing around with it daily so I thought I'd show you what I've been doing.

Each month Bullet Journals start with the month page and it is fun to try to be a bit artistic.  I also decided to keep a theme each month and for September I'm sticking to oak leaves and acorns...  The corner there on the September page is my attempt at tracking daily things...  Did I write in my Traffic Safety log, did I do my Duolingo?  Take my cholesterol medicine etc.  

The calendar page is just a simple calendar where hopefully I'm keeping track of things on a schedule...  And I got clever this month and decided to keep track of my sewing projects (I have three WIP this month) and if I work on one of them on any given day I color in part of the day's block.

This is my simple weekly page.  Days of the week slots to put chores and activities down.  A little corner in each for water intake.  My tiny acorns hopefully get a smiley face if the day has been good.  A to-do list that also doubles as a shopping list.  And the bottom half of it has evolved into a Fly Lady list of things to do this week (though I have some Fly Lady pages on previous pages but I got tired of turning to them all the time.)  

Occasionally, not often, I want to dabble with being artistic and this week my friend Kaoru-san reminded me of the hymn we used to teach the children when we taught Sunday School together and I decided to write it all out so I won't forget about it again.  "In the bulb there is a flower..." ♪♬

These two pages are daily pages...  A small block at the top of each page to jot down what I did that day or where I went or who I met (in case I ever really do come down with Covid 19 so I can tell someone whom I might have come in contact with).  The second block is the day's Bible verse that I write out.  And under that in my messy cursive are my thoughts about it.  I also choose a word for the day to hopefully keep the message in my mind at a glance.  Because of the Bullet Journal artistic possibilities I've bought a brush pen (the cheapest) and am trying to improve my handwriting and even learn new fonts.

Sometimes I'll have extra space at the bottom of the page (didn't do a lot of heavy thinking that day) and so I'll try my hand at a haphazard calligraphy, sometimes a quote from somewhere, sometimes a Bible verse, and I try to play around with my colored pencils.  Tetsu sees me with my colored pencils and says I look like a child playing with a coloring book.  After that comment I tend to do my bullet journal things away from his amused eyes...

 Let's see...  At the end of the month I try to get a month review page done and collect all those daily words into a collage.  Sometimes I add photos too...  

I keep a running Books Read page.  A monthly Gratitude page and I've got Quilting pages here and there as I start new things and finish a project.

So that is how I've been doing Bullet Journaling.  It is a hit and miss endeavor but it is pretty forgiving.  If something doesn't work out I just don't do it again (my menu planning page lasted a week!)