Random August going's-on

We're on the last day of August already here in Japan.  It was a miserable month because of the heat and the rising number of Corona cases, but it was very inspiring to watch the Olympics and despite the fears and doubts, it was good for morale to watch the athletes.  We are still in amazement of the on-going Paralympics and pray that it will come to completion without any Corona situations.

Yesterday Takumi spent THREE HOURS on the computer with me while we tried to figure out my computer issues...  More accurately, my Wi-fi issues.  Even I know that in order for Takumi to be able to get into my computer to check things out and fix things, we need to have Wi-fi and if Wi-fi is the problem he is not going to be able to get into my computer.  He was willing to give it a try though I'm sure he didn't expect to have to spend three hours doing it and even when we called it quits at 1:30 AM his time I'm not sure all is right...  

Again, thanks to Takumi, he had the foresight earlier this year buy me a NEW computer and that one works just fine!  But it WAS handy to have one computer downstairs and one up in my sewing/drawing room.  The old computer stopped connecting to Wi-fi or if it did, it would only connect for a minute or so...  So, I had Takumi on ZOOM on the new computer, controlling it and SHOWING ME what to do on my old computer.  I amazed myself by typing in IPaddress numbers, making data configurations to the hard drive, finding Ethernet cables and connecting to routers in the right place.  And FINALLY Takumi could start controlling my old computer.  I feel like I'm lost in space when I am in the depths of the computer and get cut off from him...  I'll give it another try today...

Okay... something to show!

Mrs. Furui sent me a text message and a photo yesterday.  That in itself is a wonderous event as she has just started using a SmartPhone and we recently manage to connect up to each other.  This is a quilt she has been making for her newest grandson though the finished product she now feels is too chic for a baby quilt.  But isn't it a work of art!?!  Mrs. Furui does exquisite hand quilting and this probably is all hand pieced too.  I really should get back into some hand quilting...  The results are always an heirloom!

My non-heirloom quality of sewing this month has been applique blocks (the one on the far left hasn't got its applique yet.)  Only three more blocks to go.  I wanted some handwork after the completely machine pieced and machine quilted dinosaur quilt and this is what I'm working on for the next couple of months.

I'm rather embarrassed about showing some of the next pages but it is what I've been doing. 

With the Celtic Knots class, I discovered the world of online learning and I signed up with another artist I admire, Sandy Allnock, for a 30 day sketching class.  

Every day, one lesson, one page.  

If I want to learn to do ANY sort of art I realized I was lacking in the basic skill of sketching and I'm hoping this class will help with that.  

Let's say.... I'm on lesson 21 now and though it has been fun, the harder the technique gets the worse my drawings turn out!  

The class is called 30 Days to More Confident Sketching, and I'm heading towards the last turn...  

And still not much more confident...  

But everything takes practice!

Animals?  John developed a sore on his tummy that he kept licking and it got infected so...  now he's in a cone collar!  Poor John!  This puts him into an even worse mood than he usually is in...  And the vet said blithely that I'd need to put ointment on his sore twice a day.  

"Do you realize this is the dog we can't touch!!!?"

But actually, because of the sore neck problem last month, John has gotten used to me picking him up, and with the cone around his head, I can quickly scoop him up, keep my hand away under his cone as he dangles in my arm, and spread on the ointment with no danger to myself.  I would have said it couldn't be done but I'm doing it!

Julieta sent me a wonderful picture of herself and Takumi and Hazy their dog and the mayor of Idyllwild, a mountain town where my brother has a cabin.  This is Mayor Max!!!  Yes, Idyllwild's mayor is a Golden Retriever!!!  Actually this is Mayor Max II as I think Mayor Max's father was also Idyllwild's mayor for a number of years.  I love it!!!  Hazy got a Mayor Max's deputy necktie!

Leiya and Tony and Luka on an outing.

I guess the family likes to hang out in Luka's playpen!  I thought that was so funny!

Oh dear...  Let's end with a funny picture of me that M-san took when she came to do some patchwork.  I think I had some of Marlene's carrot cake to serve her and we social distanced ourselves as we ate.  M-san at the sewing machine table, me at the cutting table!

Dinosaur quilt finished!

Yeah!  I can announce another quilt finish!  The dinosaur quilt I was making for Luka is bound and labeled.  Now it goes into the closet until someday when we can get to the States!  

This quilt went together much more easily that I expected though it took a lot of organization.  Last week I showed it to Mrs. Furui and she is planning to make a smaller version (given in the directions) but my advice of using different boxes for the different dinosaurs, stickers for each piece to keep them from mixing them up, etc. made her question her ability to follow the process.  

"If you follow the directions TO THE LETTER it all comes together!"

It took a bit of innovation to find a place to show this quilt...  It is too big for our floors...  My past favorite tree branches have either been trimmed or the tree cut down or it would take a bit of bush-wacking to get to them.  Tetsu rigged up an area in our back yard...

A balancing act with a ladder, and a storage chest and his handmade bird feeder.

Okay, get me in there for posterity.  As you can see, some of the dinosaur colors could have been chosen better but I guess looking closely you can tell they are all dinosaurs.

You can tell I like bright with all the color in my shirt too.

Even the backing is colorful!  I do like this backing!

Sort of like camouflage...

Actually, we've never determined if I am going to be called "Grandma" or "Granny" or "Obaachan" (Japanese) or whatever and Luka does have two grandmas... oh well.  Hopefully he'll someday know I'm his "Quilting Grandma"!

 

Be Thou My Vision

Sometime in the middle of March I signed up for an art class based on the hymn Be Thou My Vision by Valerie Sjodin.  In her class, she combined her weekly art lessons with a weekly devotional and I looked forward to learning how to draw and design Celtic Knots.  Before the class even began, her students were linked up with Trinity College in Dublin for quite an extensive course on The Book of Kells and I learned so much about Christianity iin that era and how the Book of Kells was made.  I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know much of anything about the Book of Kells and I was mainly interested in doing this art class because I have always had a fondness for this hymn (we had it played at our wedding) and I so admired the way Valerie uses color in all her art.  It also helped that the course was going to be taught using colored pencils which I felt was a bit more within my range than water colors or painting with acrylics.

 I readied a new journal for this class, bought myself some nice colored pencils and a few ink pens.  I also splurged and asked Leiya to buy me the Celtic Lettering stencil that Valerie uses but that arrived halfway through the course so it wasn't completely necessary but it made lettering easier.  I also thought I was going to learn how do lettering with a calligraphy pen but that proved to be too difficult to master before the lessons started.  Also in this class were 5 zoom meeting where we could talk with Valerie and meet some of the other students.  I was from the Far East, there was someone from Australia, someone from Scotland and quite a few people in different parts of the States.  I think Valerie felt challenged to get us all at a meeting when someone wouldn't have to stay up late or join at 4:00 am.  (Which I did!)

The course went through the middle of this month and every two weeks there was a page spread devoted to two lines of the hymn with art lessons and then two page spreads were left for thoughts or Bible verses suggested in the devotional part of the class.  This means that at the end of 20 lessons I have 60 pages filled!

For posterity's sake, I am showing the colorful pages of the booklet here but there are so many more pages that I've drawn knots and borders etc.  AND I went along and did each art page in my regular bullet journal intertwined with my regular messy pages, so you can see, the past 5 months I've immersed myself in Celtic knots, colored pencils and Bible verses.  

It was a wonderful class and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Christian journaling and color pencil art.  The designs lend themselves to meditation (the repetitive method of making knots) and this was such a soothing exercise as Covid invaded other parts of my life.  

My pages...

The page on the right-hand side was a challenge page that Valerie suggested.  Using any of the techniques we had learned in the class, make a knot of our own and color as we liked.  Well, at a loss for originality as usual, I remembered a Celtic Stencil I had in my closet for quilting!!!  Of course the size was completely off, but because we'd learned how to use a compass to make knots, I was able to recreate the stencil on paper.  So proud of myself!  And though the colors were all so thrilling to do, I liked the elegance of mainly black and white with a touch of gold paint.

My battered stencil.

 The last page of my wonderful 5 month's journey with Valerie and Celtic Knots!

Remembering

Obon has come and gone in Japan and we are into the last couple weeks of summer vacation.

Obon is the season when the spirits return to their homes for three days and there is a lot of activity such as the cleaning and decorating of the graves and special foods prepared for the feasts at home.  It is also a time for family to gather, much as Thanksgiving in the States.  Unfortunately, again this year, as last year, the Corona virus is gaining strength and so the citizens have been warned to do as little travel between prefectures as possible.  Our prefecture went back to a state of emergency as of yesterday and we are back to being very careful about meeting with friends or going out...  

Anyway, Tetsu and I took a quick walk (between rainstorms this week) to the cemetery across the street during Obon and it was a lovely place with the stones shining and more than half the graves decorated with flowers.

I thought this a very pretty gravesite because there were lantern flowers amidst the other pretty colors. 

Actually, lantern flowers grow even along our road in front of our house, but they are very pretty.  As they dry out, one can see a little ball-like "fruit" inside and Tetsu said as I child it was great fun to play with the ball and see if one could get the seeds and pulp out without breaking the ball.

Back at home, Tetsu set up a table with his mother's photo in our living room.  At times like this I see him as such a traditional Japanese man.  Obaachan passed away four years ago right in the middle of Obon, so this is not so much an Obon altar, as just an acknowledgement of the day that she passed.  I don't know why, but he put an apple and plum there and a tomato of all things because we remember when she grew tomatoes in front of her old apartment building.  Tetsu hadn't been out on this day and he regretted not buying flowers for her picture, but I suggested he just go out and pick some from his garden which he thought was a great idea...  Offering up his own flowers is a much better way to remember Obaachan!

Speaking of remembering, Leiya was on the Indiana news this past week, talking about my grandfather again.  It is amazing to all of us that for 60 years no one but our family really had many memories about him and suddenly he is being honored by his old town and his great-granddaughter (Leiya) is being interviewed.    Fort Wayne news.  (the wedding quilt I made Leiya and Tony in the background...  yeah!)

https://fortwaynesnbc.com/2021/08/12/japanese-businessman-shinzo-ohki-gone-decades-forever-remembered-by-columbia-city/

 I think you can follow the link to the Fort Wayne news and hear the story again of what he meant to the small town.

Guest Blogger

I asked my quilting friend, M-san, if she would write a little about her house and if her family wouldn't mind if she took pictures.  Yesterday M-san brought me her "essay" and lots of pictures of her house and the garden around it.  I have corrected the composition a bit but M-san wrote most of it herself in English.

My house is almost 200 years old.  It is very old and it has a traditional atmosphere everywhere.  For example, the pillars, the sliding doors etc.  The whole structure is old but there are interesting places to look at.  

In the olden days there was no separation between the rooms.  There used to be a sunken hearth in the middle of the main room where firewood was burned.  A traditional Japanese wooden house can adjust the interior's humidity and temperature.  In winter, because of the lack of walls and doors, the whole wide area was kept warm thanks to the hearth.

Our family has lived in this wooden house for many generations because we are a totally agricultural family with rice fields and vegetable fields surrounding us.  In this background, I am now learning to quilt, to do patchwork and even other kinds of handwork (tatting) from my teacher, Tanya-san, whom I respect.

Surrounded by nature all around me, I am relaxed amidst the quiet scenery of tall trees, my grandmother's flowers and the huge sky overhead.

And these are some of the pictures that M-san took for me.  I asked her a bit about each place and so I will try to explain as best I can.

Japanese farmhouses are actually very large compared to other homes where the rest of us reside.  I think they are always one-storied though there is sometimes a ladder that gives entrance to storage space in an attic.  In front of M-san's house is a main gate which also isn't often seen these days... and in front of the gate is the beginning of the many rice fields that M-san's family keeps.  This is actually the gate to their house though it isn't used much and instead visitors go around it to a large round-about driveway.

Here we are coming around the gate (which actually houses farm equipment), and heading towards M-san's house.  Don't you love the way those trees are pruned on the right! 

Directly behind the gate is the large farmhouse.  In generations past, this house might have had a thatched roof (I didn't ask about that) but preserving a thatched roof (even a tiled roof these days) is almost impossible now and I rarely ever see a thatched roof in my prefecture unless it is under protection of the government.  All the glass doors facing the main yard slide open so you can image how the house might stay cool in the winter with breezes blowing through.  There to the left is the sliding front door to the house.  M-san thought that maybe generations ago part of the house on the far left might have even stabled horses though it is now used as a regular room.

To me, some of the most amazing parts of the house are the intricate slatted wooden doors and windows and lintels between the rooms.  This is another type of handcraft that is no longer much seen and the pieces of thin wood are fitted together into patterns without using any nails.

Here is another example on the sliding paper doors between rooms.

And this must be a lintel over a door.

Actually, stepping back to the gate in front of the house, here is a beautiful example of how the eaves under even a gate roof have been fitted like a puzzle to provide strength and beauty.  No nails!!!  This type of carpentry can also be seen in the shrines and temples around Japan but especially at the beautiful Nikko 5 tiered pagoda and Tosho Shrine.

Instead of having a hallway through the middle of a house, traditional homes in Japan have the hallway directly behind the front windows and the rooms can be entered off the hallway.  Again, this lends itself to coolness in the summer because front sliding doors can be opened, and the room doors can also be pushed aside or even removed completely.  Of course in the old days the now glassed in sliding windows (doors) were heavy wooden shutters but most farmhouses now have glass so that light can come in but the elements can be kept out.

M-san couldn't understand why I wanted to include this picture...  It is of their living room and it no longer has tatami mats and has more furniture.  Even so, the "wall" behind the TV is another sliding door that could be removed, as is the sliver of an open doorway on the right of the picture which actually is directly next to the entrance.  M-san said that the door can be replaced in winter to keep the heat in the room and making it very cozy.  From where the picture was taken M-san was probably sitting at their "hori-kotatsu" which is a low table with a hole under it for legs (so that everyone doesn't always have to sit on their knees).  This is the modern replacement for the "hearth" that M-san wrote about.  The hearth used to be an open fire pit but the "hori-kotatsu" will have a heating element under the table, usually electric nowadays but even a generation ago it was a brazier of sorts.  Blankets and quilts will cover the table to keep the heat in...toasty warm legs and freezing shoulders!  I can remember sitting in a "kotatsu" when I first came to Japan and though I felt warm because my legs were warm, I could see my breath puffing from my mouth as I talked...   I questioned M-san as to why all the calendars on the wall and she said that since every commercial business hands out calendars at the beginning of the new year, her family's custom is to put them all up instead of letting them go to waste.

This is the Buddhist altar in the family home...

 ...and this is the Shinto altar probably in the same room.  Japan has an interesting mixing of different religions that Westerners find difficult to understand, but families will be devout about praying to their ancestors at the Buddhist altar as well as keeping the Shinto gods satisfied at the Shinto altar.  I am very grateful to M-san's family for letting her photograph her family's altars.

Near M-san's house is also a "torii" which I think is associated with Shintoism...  But somewhere nearby is also the family cemetery with generations of ancestors' ashes interred, in a Buddhist grave.

There is a Oya stone storage building near the main house...

...and a stone seating area in a shaded part of the farm, to relax and listen to birds sing or to get some relief after working outside...  

And THIS is M-san's latest quilt!  She named it Psychedelic Flowers!  I'm not sure how it is going to match her family's traditional home but it is a lovely splash of color to the beautiful natural surroundings she lives in!

Thank you M-san for all your pictures and for your explanation about your family's lovely home.