Random February

Today, I'm going through some of the random photos I took and ones that Leiya and Julieta sent to me...

I think if you count up all those stars you will find I have 30 black stars...  Oh good!  Oh wait...  When laying out all the blocks I found that I misread the directions for this quilt...  I needed 30 diamond blocks and only 20 star blocks!!!  How do I do this EVERY SINGLE TIME!!?  Why can't I keep even two numbers straight in my head?  

So...  I made up another 10 diamond blocks and then started laying out all my blocks and find that I can make this quilt a bit larger with the extra blocks...  Well, I didn't use ALL my star blocks but I used some of them and now my niece will get a slightly wider quilt.

But then it seemed like this quilt is going to be too hard to quilt so I've opted on quilting only half at a time...  Here I was laying out the bottom half of this quilt...  The other half is already spray basted too and now I have half the quilt draped over my sewing machine.  I'm still thinking about how to quilt this.

Takumi and Julieta have bought a house and they are enjoying the joys of being home owners.  Last week Julieta took us on a virtual tour of their house and we could get an idea of how Takumi works from home now and see what they have done with decorating.  

Takumi even has been out in their very large back yard doing some gardening which I'm not sure he enjoys yet but if he has inherited any of Tetsu's blood he may find it suits his fancy.  They really have a nice place and now Tetsu and I are looking forward to seeing how all our children live in their very own places (we've never seen Leiya and Tony's house either).

Alas, Julieta writes that they've postponed their Mexico wedding for another year...  That was sort of expected.  So no plans to travel to a wedding this year.  Julieta is taking it philosophically.  And my niece has postponed her wedding too...

This is a very small quilt that I made over a weekend this month for a grandma who walks her grandchild to the school everyday.  Over the year this older lady brings me flowers from her garden, apples, and sweets.  She had given me a small box of chocolates for Valentine's Day and so I felt that it was high time I do something for her.  She probably didn't even know I do any quilting.

Here is John (and Tetsu) earlier this month when he was looking furry and straggly.  

And here he is yesterday back from the vets and a shampoo and grooming!  Looking good!

The vet brought John back to me (she comes for English) but she texted me before she left saying she would be late because of "Stupid John".  It seems that John set up a fuss, (tried to bite, had hysterics) when she put him in the car to bring him back home and unlike me, she wouldn't stand for it and dragged him out of the car.  But this sent him into a bigger rage and during the fuss he pooped, stepped in it, she wrestled him to the ground and he got all smeared in it so she had to take him back into the clinic to be shampooed and dried again...  The second time around getting in the car, he was perfectly happy to sit quietly in the back...  This is who John is.  No one ever knows what's going to set him off...  Well, actually I'm beginning to read him pretty well...  I wasn't sure if I should apologize for OUR dog (which came to us through the vet) and his misbehavior, or gloat that she had seen IRL what we go through regularly...  You would think after more than two years of living with us that John would change a little but he is still as ornery and controlling as ever!

With all the photos and videos that Leiya sends, I've got to include a couple baby pictures here.  A recent family photo...  Getting some fresh air I guess.

"Ooh...  What big ears you have Luka!"

He sure looks like Tony!

And one more photo because grandmas get that way...  Have to boast about grandchildren!

My neighborhood

On one of my recent posts, someone asked me to show more of the residential area that I live in and so one day when I was out walking with John I took a right turn into the neighborhood and took some pictures with my iPhone.  

This is right out our front door.  Our driveway grate can be seen on the right.  We live on a corner and these 5 homes were all built around the same time by the same builder (though they are not the same inside).  4 of the homes, including ours had not sold after being two years on the market and so when we showed an interest the prices were lower.  Probably the reason for not selling at the time was because of the dense forest in front of the house (where I am standing when I took this picture) and then even denser forest behind all the houses on the right.  All that forest, in front and behind, will be gone in a couple of months.

This very uninteresting building, is the community center.  There is nothing much in it except a large room with long tables for meetings and a kitchen where things can be heated.  The trees on the right had the denser forest behind them but those are already gone now.  Maybe without the forest the center will get more light and maybe flowers will finally grow?  They never do so well usually.

Goodness... not a very cheery picture....  This is a soba shop at the very end of our neighborhood.  You can tell by the blue flag out their in front of their parking area.  And beyond that are the big machines that are getting ready to cut down that part of the forest.

Here is the one and only mailbox in our neighborhood.  You can see I'm pressed to find things to photograph on this walk.

And here is a garbage station (I'm really getting pressed!).  This is one of four stations that serves maybe 200 households in our neighborhood, and this is one of the better ones!  It is enclosed!  The other three are just a designated corner of a lot with nets thrown over the area to keep the crows out.  HOWEVER, Tetsu got the job of figuring out a new garbage station for the one closest to us, because that lot had been sold and the new owners didn't want a garbage station on their corner.  The new station will be moved to the Community Center parking lot AND IT WILL BE ENCLOSED LIKE THIS ONE!!!  Maybe even nicer!  (Newer for sure!)

These are the only other commercial buildings inside our neighborhood.  The small yellow prefab hut is a bakery that opens only on the weekends.  No store per-se but there is a glass case out in front under that tree and the baker slides open a window and sells her wares when someone dings a bell on the case.  Her husband just recently built the brown building alongside her bakery and he sells used records there!  (I've actually never seen ANYONE come to buy anything in this new store...  I wonder if he's even opened up yet.)

So that's inside the neighborhood.  Across the street, the street I walk to get to the school, is a mechanic's shop and yes, as far as I know it is a working mechanic's shop.  It sure looks unused doesn't it?  The man who owns this place is an older single man who hauls wrecked cars and dismantles them for use elsewhere I guess...

Behind the mechanic's shop is a real for sure factory though I don't think anyone knows what they produce.  It is called Better Shark but no one knows why...  It is well kept though and seems to run with very few employees...  I rarely ever see anyone coming in or out.

From the other side of the street looking back into our neighborhood is a hair salon!  I'd forgotten it.  Again, a single man who works alone and lives over his shop.  Not too many people patronizing the place but I have seen little old ladies slowly pushing their pushcarts from their farming homes to come and get their hair done.  The only place around they can walk to I guess.  

There is a trucking station next to the fields and in front of the cemetery that I like to visit.  The trucks are very well taken care of and everyday when John and I walk to the cemetery there is someone out front washing a truck or two and they always say hi as I go by.

Here is the office to the very cheery cemetery that I like.  The four people who work here always nod as I go by or say hello if they are checking the grounds.  I am probably the most frequent visitor to the cemetery (quite often twice a day... once in the morning, once in the evening) and they know me, John and have even asked about Choco our older dog.  

Might as well show a shot of the cemetery itself.  It is very easy to walk along the rows and not have to worry about cars or people that John would normally bark at.

Off behind the cemetery is a pig farm.  We get a whiff of them if the wind blows the right way.

And this is the back side (from the cemetery) of the very large and booming lumber yard that we call hear at all hours of the day or night.  They are working 24 hours a day though during the shelter-down of the past few months the place has been eerily quiet.  We missed the hum!  

Well, that's my neighborhood.  Maybe I'd better do this photographic tour another time in the spring when I can get some color into my shots.  I'm horrified that my little part of the world looks so drab and dreary.  February can be like that!

Cats Day

In Japan, it is February 22.  2/22.  Otherwise known as Cats Day.  This is because in Japanese cats make the sound "Niao" or sometimes "Nyan".  And 2 in Japanese is, "Ni".  There is a play on sounds or words so that today's date becomes "Nyan-nyan-nyan" (2/22).  In honor of Cats Day, I am featuring my cats.

This is Cleo, the old man of the group.  He is 16 years old but still in pretty good health.  He has a torn ear tip because he got in a fight with Toi, our other male cat but Cleo is a pretty laid-back feline.  He mostly lives upstairs because he doesn't much care for John but they can walk past each other without any hissing these days.  Cleo waits by my bed in the morning and complains loudly if the bed hasn't been made.  As soon as I straighten up the blankets and quilts Cleo burrows under it all and spends most of his day sleeping there by himself or cuddled up to Mi.

Here are Toi and Patora.  (Toi in the back, Patora in the foreground). Toi is a big male bully and he is pretty self-centered.  As he doesn't get along with Cleo (or Chip) he lives apart from most of the other cats either in the outdoor cathouse in good weather or in the winter upstairs in Takumi's old room.  Toi must be around 14 now...   Patora is Cleo's sister and she gets along with Toi but not with Cleo or Chip, thus she too has been relegated upstairs to keep Toi company.  The cage is there so that I can keep Toi and Patora separate when feeding because Toi eats faster and steals all Patora's food and she became quite thin and Toi quite fat until I realized and now feed them separately.  They have an electric heating pad in their cage but the room is very cold and thus all the blankets over most of the cage.

This is Chip and she is a beautiful cat though she doesn't much like anyone at all.  She is very angry that she is not an "only-cat".  She will claw any other animal in the house and all the other cats and John live in fear of her.  She also has bit me once and also one of my friends so I don't trust Chip at all.  She absolutely loves Tetsu though and so he takes her side in most of the animal confrontations.  She too must be about 14.

This is Mi who is the darling of all our household.  She trills!  She purrs!  She cuddles!  She gets along with all animals!  I don't know how many of our visitors have said that if they could have a cat like Mi they would really be a cat lover.  Mi makes her way into everyone's heart.  She isn't the prettiest kitty with her squashed face but she is loveable and loving.  Mi is 12.

So there we have Cats Day!  Nyan-nyan-nyan (Meow-Meow-Meow).

John is very disgruntled about the discrimination and thinks there should be a Dogs Day.  (And by the way, there is...  for pregnant women getting a girdle put on them on that date because dogs apparently give birth easily.  How's that for some trivial bit of information, John?!)
 

Flowers on the Vine finished!

Not only is it finished, my latest quilt finally has a name!  All these months with me just calling it the applique quilt, and when making a label the simplest name flitted into my head and so that is what it has been christened.

I can't really say when I started this quilt because I had appliqued the four vine panels years ago, planning to use them as outside borders to another quilt.  For some reason when putting the very busy quilt blocks together, the leaves just didn't look right and instead I think I put a quiet yellow border on that quilt and gave it to Leiya and Tony as a pre-wedding quilt back when they first engaged.  And I had made THAT quilt a couple of years before so these borders were REALLY old!  Anyway, these four leaf borders have been stuffed into a box for a few years now and I stumbled upon them last year not long after we started sheltering-in-place.  Now what can I do with these boring, straggly borders?  

I started energizing the vines with appliqued flowers in all different colors and somewhere along the line realized that they were long enough so that I could add strips between them and make a single bed size quilt instead of bordering a quilt.  My Leaders/enders bins got pulled into action and pretty soon I had enough panels in checkerboard and in flowers to sew them all together.

The quilting was started in December and I have been hand quilting in front of the TV in the evenings for the past couple of months.  I picked up an awful lot of dog and cat fur during the quilting process (the quilt was dragging on the floor) so this quilt will have to be washed this weekend.  I hope I don't get a lot of color bleeding on this....  I'm never sure until a quilt is out of the washer. 

I'd like to send this quilt to California but still don't much trust the postal service...  I'm not sure if I don't trust the Japanese service or the US service but it's probably safer to hand carry this to the States when and if I ever get there...

  

More scenery

The other day we had a big rain and wind storm and I stayed hunkered down for most of the day.  But in the evening a friend in the next city over sent a group SNS message (in English) saying,

"Look!  Rainbow in the east sky!"

I ran out the front door and beyond some yet standing trees and sure enough, there was a beautiful double rainbow in the sky!

UNFORTUNEATELY, I'd run out without my camera so I could only take pictures with my iPhone and they didn't turn out very good.  The rainbow reached across the whole sky and it definitely didn't fit in my iPhone screen.  

As I turned back to the house, looking to the west, the sunset was just as amazing as the rainbow and I took some pictures on my way home, alerted Tetsu to the rainbow (which by that time was fading), grabbed my camera and went back outside again.

I wish I could capture these colors in my quilts!

Mt. Nantai was seemed very small against the vibrant sky.

The beautiful view from our backyard.

  

Skiing?

Yesterday, our long time friends, Mr. and Mrs. S, invited us to go cross country skiing with them.  Or more correctly, the husband invited us to go with him.  His wife said she was NOT interested in any way or manner in going skiing and so she would walk around the area or rent snow shoes or something.  Tetsu didn't think he was going to be able to do any skiing either as he usually can't find any shoes that fit him but we decided to give it a go.

As there were remnants of a fierce wind storm from the day before and Mt. Nantai, where we were headed, was barely visible through snow clouds, we really thought our trip up the mountain was going to result in a nice drive and then a return to the flatlands...  but we loaded our friends' car with their ski equipment, thermoses, snacks and cameras and off we went!

The trip up the mountain takes only about 30 minutes and there was NO ONE at the top!  All the shops along the lake were boarded up, maybe for the winter but possibly because of Covid and travel restrictions.  We continued along until we found the cross country course that seemed to be open (and rental skis available though we didn't need them.  Mr. S had ski boots big enough for Tetsu).  

I had actually been to this cross country ski course some 30 years ago when Leiya was still in kindergarten.  Tetsu had opted out that time and the kids and I had joined a city tour and spent the day on the ski course and I recall having a great time!  It has been 30 years since I've been on a pair of skis again...  Let's just say that I couldn't figure out where my center of balance was, I never did figure out how to stop, and I couldn't keep my skis from crossing over themselves.  

For some reason, Tetsu didn't have much trouble with a new-to-him sport.  This may be because he was raised in the snowy areas of the north and had skied A BIT when he was a child.  

I had thought I was going to take pictures along the trail and had my heavy camera bag slung over my shoulder but alas, Mr. S finally took my bag so that wouldn't have to worry about that throwing me even more off balance than I already was.  I'm sorry to say that in total, I crashed onto my backside 7 times and each time had to have Tetsu pull me back to a standing position only to wipe out on "ant-hills" a few meters along...  These nothing depressions in the snow ahead of me and I was sighing and quaking like I was about to attempt huge moguls!   A skier I'm not!!

The time went quickly (though maybe not for Mrs. S who sat in a cold car for most of the morning) and we managed to take a few pictures and get back to the car with no broken bones.  There we enjoyed instant ramen noodles and pastry breads and hot, sweet cafe au lait. 

As expected, the scenery was beautiful!  This is the back side of Mt. Nantai.

And this is at the top of a waterfall heading for Lake Chuzenji.  

A group selfie!  What a hodge-podge bunch!  Mask Faces in 2021!

When we got home, Tetsu had the gall to say he expected me to be a better skier as "you've done it before."  

"WHAT!?  That was 30 years ago and a one time deal!"

My arms and shoulders are sore from all that propelling myself with the ski stocks yesterday.  I don't think I'm going to take up this sport and feel lucky that I got back without any damage but it sure was fun!