Camera outing

Tetsu and I went out for a jaunt on Monday.  We had hoped to find some cherry blossoms but we headed into the mountains where they weren't blooming yet...  Nevertheless, it was an "eventful" day.

The weather was good and as we've been cooped up for so long, and as I had been saying that I was using my camera less and less, we decided to make it a camera day out.  So at 9:30, off we went towards the mountains saying good-bye to John (he hasn't been allowed into Tetsu's new car yet) and promising to be back in a couple of hours.  We arrived in the resort area of Yunishigawa which is about an hour and 20 minutes from our house.  

I guess we didn't have to worry about crowds of people.  There was absolutely no one around!  I walked near a river and took pictures of the signs of spring...  

This is fukinotou which is a spring delicacy that tastes great as tempura.  

And these are tsukushi which can be boiled down with soy sauce.

There was a lady out with her big kitchen knife gathering watercress it looked like.

I took advantage of a foot spa that was near the river.  Piping hot!

No one else around.

Please remember this picture...

We decided to go check out a nature park... as if we needed any more nature than what was already around us.  But we found someplace just beautiful and spent about an hour walking around and taking pictures.

This seemed to be a camping ground but it was still closed for the winter.

The birch trees were just beautiful.

It looks colder than it really was.

So, it was a lovely day.  We enjoyed taking pictures.  We headed back towards home but got way laid again at a hot spring that had cherry blossoms blooming out in front.  

There is a blue and black butterfly on one of the cherry tree branches.

After a hot bath (we carry our hot spring stuff... towel, hair brush, moisturizer etc. in the trunk of our car) we were on our way again though we stopped for a quick, very late lunch.  It was 4:00 when we got home!  Poor John, all locked up in his circle all day!  While I took John for a walk, Tetsu brought our camera things and hot spring things in from the car.

But...  When John and I got back, Tetsu announced that he had lost his camera case somewhere.  Not his camera.  He hadn't put it back in the case, but the case and a lens was NOT in the car where he expected it to be.  Where could he have left it?

Go back to that foot spa picture...  There at the base of the pillar right next to me...  That little black baglike thing...  That's Tetsu's camera case and THAT is where he'd left it!

Well, he called the foot spa place hoping that someone had turned it back in but nope, no one had.  

"It HAS to be there!"

"Then let's go back for it."

We headed back to the mountains.  And called the spa place again on the way to ask them to go LOOK for the case.  And then called again to confirm that now they had the case and that we would get there in a little over an hour so please do not close up before we get there!

A long trip to the mountains, pick up the camera case, a long trip back...  We were home around 7:00 and we were both tired, even John who had spent nearly his whole day in his circle...

  

 

Machine quilting student

I haven't been a very good blogger.  

I have been thinking about the Celtic Knots class that I signed up for and decided that I needed to rearrange my sewing room so that I could use some space for a desk and a place for my computer.  I've got all these pens and pencils and bullet journals and sketch pads and I wanted someplace besides the dining room table...  I have now pushed my cutting table which will double as a desk, to the wall (meaning less space for cutting) and moved the sewing machine to the window.  This gives me more light but less quilting space.  In a pinch I'll move the sewing machine set up back against the cutting table again.

The rearranging also coincides with the finish of the Atomic Starburst quilt!  Yes!  It is done!  Alas, on my walks with John I've canvassed the neighborhood for someplace nice to photograph it but I haven't come up with any gorgeous tree or fence...  And everything is still gray and leafless...  I'm hoping in another week the cherry blossoms will be blooming and I'll find some great landscape to take quilt pictures!  

But!  I do have some pictures of an Atomic Stars quilt, though it's not my own...

My young quilting student, M-san, put together a wall hanging out of the stars that she made and she finished it up earlier this month.  The paper piecing stars were a challenge and M-san said she was satisfied with what she'd accomplished at 5 stars (rather than the 20 I made... actually 30 because I miscounted).  So we put together the stars to make a longish quilt and she took it home to hand quilt.  She said she really didn't want to ruin it with machine quilting...

M-san came back with a perfectly lovely quilt with some very intricate hand quilting!  Great job!  M-san is very dedicated to hand quilting!

Even so, I still thought that she is very quick to catch on to any handwork I've given her and so I insisted that she try her hand at some machine quilting on a practice piece we prepared.  This was her first attempt at the pattern I'd shown earlier on my blog.   

After she got the circles and the straight lines mastered, she worked on swirls and fronds.  Wouldn't you say that is an absolutely wonderful first time try at free-motion machine quilting?!  I'm so impressed!  We decided this practice piece was so well done that even if it is a bit off centered it should be bound and preserved someplace, and so yesterday we finished up the practice session by putting on some binding.

I'm very proud of my student!

(Actually, M-san took a picture of me awhile back and I guess I'll post it...  Me with my steadily growing white hair which makes me look very witchy.  Goes with my personality Tetsu would say...)

 

Quilting diamonds

I'm almost through with the Atomic Stars quilt and I thought I'd show the remaining diamonds that I quilted and also some photos of how I quilted the black diamonds.

I was really pulling at my brain for the last set of diamonds to quilt...  Feathers always can be made into different variations.

Here was another feather variation but the fabric didn't really do it justice...  Or maybe it was just too busy.

A leaf...

Pebbles, which actually worked out well though it took quite a bit of time.

In the lattice I did freehand swirls.

For the black diamonds I started each one by chalking out an inch inside the seam line and running a center line through the inner diamond.  The little circles I could actually do freehand by the end...  One at each diamond corner and three in-between...  But it was easier to not get lost if I roughly chalked them out first.  No tracing or template.  First I quilted along the inner line.

I went around each circle in one whoop, changing direction at each side of the circle.

I went back up to the top of the diamond (retracing any already quilted lines if I had to).  I could have started at the bottom as well but it is too hard to sew backwards in a straight line (I don't use quilting rulers) and so I'd rather see where I'm quilting for the first line.

Once at the bottom of the diamond I used my eye and the freehand foot to gauge the space and sewed backwards...  More slowly than when I came forward, that's for sure!  I moved the foot over a bit along the already quilted diamond line and then went back and forth in the same way for the rest of the diamond.

This is what the finished diamond looks like...  A little wiggly but presentable.

Today I'm hoping to get the binding on this!

Bullet Journal Art

I think I've mentioned that I started Bullet Journaling last June and I've pretty much kept up with it.  It has turned into a sort of planner, Bible thoughts record and "artistic" encouragement.  

The planning I do once a month when I think up a theme and then make "spreads" of the month and then each week.  I fill it in with household chores and things on my schedule.  At the end of the day I very briefly record what I've done or where I've gone and who I've met which actually began when I thought I very well might come down with Covid and I'd better have a record of who I had been in contact with the week before.  I keep a lot of the Bible reading and thoughts in the Bullet Journal as I rarely go back and see what I've written on my blog Bible page.  I also daily check off habits that I'm focusing on... like drinking more water or getting my crosswalk log filled in daily.

I find I spend a lot of time on Pinterest for ideas on how to do lettering, the better to enhance pages and write out Bible verses or inspiring quotes I stumble upon.  The color and larger writing gives the eye a break from my monotonous scribbling thoughts.  I think the enhanced pages are what keeps bringing me back to journaling whereas trying to keep a diary in the past always fizzled out.

This month, my theme is Music.  Why, I don't know, because I'm not very musical.  I found some music note washi tape and went from there...  Scary what a two dollar roll of washi tape can lead to! 

A quote from Joanne Fink on Zenspirations.

Bible verse though I think I forgot to make a note of the verse...

Another one at the top of a weekly page...  I try to remember to write out whatever we had for dinner that night too...  My musical washi tape at the top.

I remember seeing this quote on a plaque wall in Hobby Lobby one summer...

For some reason, this month turned out to be fairly colorless...  Black and white piano keys, black and white notes.  I had to add a bit of color from Pinterest.

This is a trial run of... an art class I've signed up for!  

I've mentioned before how inspired I've been by Valerie Sjodin's art and when she opened up a class for Celtic art based on the hymn Be Thou My Vision, I signed up right away.  The 20 week class will focus on Scripture, the drawing of Celtic knots and verse by verse colored pencil art for the hymn.  It begins next week and I'm looking forward to taking my first online class!  I've got a new set of colored pencils and a brand new Bullet Journal!  I'm ready to go!  

 

Sweet!

I am still diligently quilting the Atomic Stars quilt upstairs but when I'm in front of the TV I work on the BOM applique tapestry I've started.

I must have downloaded the A Tisket A Tasket quilt instructions when they first came out years ago and I made the quilt month by month and in the end sent it to a friend in the States.  

As I'd come to the end of the hand quilting I'd been doing for most of last year, I decided to pull out the A Tisket A Tasket instructions and make the sweet little quilt again.  I have someone in mind for this quilt too but there is no rush to get it done.

The original instructions came with ideas for applique and also for Redwork but my embroidery skills leave something to be desired and so, as before, I've chosen to do this applique style.

Yes, I had planned to do this month by month but the sewing is easy and goes quickly, and I've already finished three blocks.

I started with March...

Then went ahead with April.

And finally went back to February (I couldn't see doing snowmen in August or whenever I got to that point if I continued in monthly order).  

Right now I'm working on January (snowman!)  

Let's see...  What else is sweet?

Three of my kitties were sleeping together this morning.  They are sweet!

Luka is sweet!  He is posing on the Hugs and Kisses quilt I made him.  It makes a colorful background!

Going with the flow

Japan has opened up a bit as the Covid numbers are declining... though not at the speed that people had hoped.  Vaccination has started with medical workers but it will be a couple more months until the public (the older public... including me) will get it.  On this time schedule will the Olympics really be held this summer in Tokyo?  That is the big question...  

So, many emergency alerts have been lifted and I have even started back at the pre-school and teaching English to ladies again.  Masks and face shields are firmly in place now but we are able to meet, or maybe I should say we feel a need to meet again.  This past week my morning class met at H-san's house and we enjoyed coffee and cake and a bit of studying...  

AND we enjoyed H-san's house!

H-san lives near the center of the city on a very large lot of land (amazing in the center of the city) and in a very old Japanese style house.  She said her house was built by her mother-in-law's mother and this year it is 95 years old!  It has a large Japanese landscaped garden out in front with beautifully pruned trees and artistically arranged stone lanterns and stepping stones.  H-san said it really is costly to have the upkeep of the garden done so precisely and also to maintain repairs to the very old house.  

I didn't want to appear too nosy or too rude so I refrained from taking too many photos but I was intrigued by the indoor wooden hallway with the outside visible under our feet and the way the tatami room walls were separated by decorative wooden slats that let the air flow freely (and did nothing to keep warmth in!)  

I noticed even that under the tiled roof of the house the porchway wall, between indoors and out, had space (around the porch light) for the outside elements to flow through to the inside and I couldn't keep from commenting how cold that must be.

"So cold!  Yes!  But remember that in Japan, the humid summers are very hard and a wooden house needs to have freshly flowing air to keep the wood strong."

So actually there is a reason for a somewhat breezy Japanese house.  

H-san pointed out her family characters on the ornamental tile at the top of the porch, and she said, like the garden, it is very costly and almost impossible now to find craftsmen who know how to repair a tiled roof like the one on her house.  The repairmen who do come, don't really know the intricacies of the tile calking nor use the same materials and their repair work doesn't last long.  

More and more the old houses of Japan are being torn down as the upkeep is just too hard and too expensive.  H-san says that when she first married she really disliked this house and her mother-in-law's stories (of course they lived together) but now she considers her house a real treasure and wishes she had learned more about its history.

Speaking of tearing things down, the forests around us have been completely removed...  Sigh.  This is the back of our house right now but I think that stand of trees further away will also be removed in another couple of weeks.   Tetsu's garden area at the right, had originally been forest but until the beginning of this year, there was still forest behind it where the shovel was was still standing and also a thick portion of the forest directly behind our next door's neighbor's house.  

With that part of the forest gone (can you see all the tree stumps) we can even see houses at the corner of the neighborhood now.  

It is true that we will have a picture view of Mt. Nantai and the mountain ranges, and that we'll probably see some beautiful sunsets...  Trying to be positive!

I can't find too much positive with the view outside my front door however.  This is how the wood cutters desecrated the forest there.  The forest behind us was taken down by professionals with their professional equipment, but the forest in front of us is being cut by older men who are farmers and have chain saws and tractors and such but very little know-how.  It is frightening watching them work as they tie a cable to a branch of a tree and attach the cable to a tractor and pull while someone else uses the chain-saw.  Everyone scatters as a tree falls because they tend to go every which way.  

I don't know if they are going to get to that final line of trees in the background because they stand next to the main highway and a tree that falls in the wrong direction there will disrupt city traffic...  and fall on power lines as well...  I think the wood cutters are thinking those trees are going to need a bit more planning...

At any rate, wouldn't you think someone could cut down trees in a more pleasing manner?  Tetsu is quite upset with this view but as trees further down the street were cut in this manner a few years ago I was not at all surprised at this lopping...  Tetsu did ask the guy driving the tractor to push some of the debris back from the road and he asked if he could put flowers in the open space...  Maybe I can put pots of flowers on each stump?