The last photos of November

And finally, an end of the month post...

Corona numbers are up again in Japan and at least for Tetsu and myself, we are laying low.  We are scheduled to have our fifth vaccination this month so I'll feel easier when that is done.

I finished the Christmas stocking that I was making.  This is for a little boy named Ken.  Nice that the name was so short and easy to embroider!  In all, I made 6 Christmast stockings autumn/winter!  (Though I didn't show all of them...)  They use up some of the scraps and strings that I have in one of my bin so this is a good project to remember.

I have also finished making all the blocks for the Plaidish quilt and hopefully I'll be able to start putting the blocks into rows...  then the magic appears where the scraps of fabric actually turn into something resembling a quilt!  I can't hardly wait for a block of time tomorrow or the next day for some serious sewing!

Last night I stayed up late getting my bullet journal set up for December.  Some months I don't get into so much decoration but it was fun to work with craft paper and gold paint.

My life is so quiet with very few things on my schedule that there is really no need for all this planning.  I've definitely reduced things like task lists and habit trackers as autumn left me with no few things that I could do.  Still it is fun to fill up the pages with Bible verses and color!

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And finally family updates though as usual, I only really get phots from Leiya featuring Luka so another Luka update.

I did pull a photo from Julieta's Instagram of Takumi and their two doggies.

I don't know where they were but Luka had fun throwing stones.

Leiya and Luka.

Luka got his face painted as a tiger at some town festival.  His first cotton candy too!

Indiana had its first snow!

It's almost December!  Is everyone getting ready for Christmas?

What I've been up to

I sort of fell short of blogging this month but it wasn't because of poor health.  

I'm doing amazingly well and have even been taking longish walks to the cemetery across the street with John and Tetsu!  I go up and down stairs easily again and though I still have a limp, I feel like life has returned to normal despite the cold weather setting in!  Let's hope things stay on this upward curve.

(not finished yet)

For the most part I have done small projects this month.  I made two more stockings that I think I showed and since they are relatively easy to do I've begun another one for one of Takumi's friend's child.  

This friend regularly stops by bringing us strawberries from his farm and I wanted to make his son something in return.

M-san and I also worked on a small bag that she can give to her sister when she visits this New Year's.  I try to stay away from anything with zippers and I didn't even have instructions for this little purse but I do remember making the same pattern years ago.  I warned M-san that is was going to be like the blind-leading-the-blind because it was going to be trial and error with the zipper but we did get our little bags made.  (I forgot to take a picture of M-san's.  She made hers in blue.)  The little leaf on the zipper pull is a nice touch.

I also decided to take the plunge and start on a Plaidish Quilt. Annie on Annie's Quilts Orts blog had shown her Plaidish quilt which I'd just loved and I followed the link to Kitchen Table Quilting.  This is a free scrap tutorial and she has another Plaidish quilt pattern that she offers.  I've cut up my fabrics and this week I hope to sew the blocks together. 

On the artistic side of my days I've been sketching and painting and inking up random pieces.  I do wish I could come to some sort of  "style" but what I get is sort of what I've been following that day on YouTube or from the online lessons that I sign up for.  The biggest news is that I have signed up for Skillshare which is a year membership to lessons in all sorts of genres... Photograpy, business, music, and art.  At least I'll always have somewhere to turn if I run out of motivation!

The bamboo forest with changing leaves.

A neighboring farmhouse.

This ginko grove was still green two weeks ago.

Two views out the window of a KFC I stopped at for lunch.

Bullet journal doodling.

An idea from Pinterest.

A road-map version of my day in my bullet journal.

Wonky John.
 

Handwork and such

The days are getting colder and colder and Tetsu has to bring our potted plants indoors at night.  I am wearing layers and layers of clothing every morning when I go to the crosswalk.  How quickly winter comes!

John doesn't like the cold and he doesn't like walking but I made him go out for a short jaunt early this morning...  He is going to get a trim later this week but we'll keep his fur a bit longer than usual during the winter.

I have done a bit of knitting and am happy to report that the rheumatism medications are allowing me hand movement with no pain.  Yeah!   I was so anti medication my whole life but now I am very grateful for what all these pills can do for me.  Still my doctor is hoping to wean me off of quite this many over time...  This year Tetsu says he doesn't need anything knitted from me as he only wears sweatshirts and t-shirts in the garden while he works so I have pulled out some old yarn and I will see if I can make something for myself.

I also have been sewing Christmas stockings!  I got one made for Luka and sent it back with Erin and then I decided to make two more, for some friends' grandson and a new baby brother.  

It took me forever to figure out how to put the white trim on and each of these stockings were made a different way.  Well, they will only be hauled out at Christmas so maybe they won't get so much wear and tear.

Yesterday M-san came over with her latest quilt.  Back in May I had bought M-san a jelly roll of batiks as a gift from America and so we've spent the last few months deciding on a pattern and then she has been working on the piecing at my house.  

When she got to the quilting, M-san decided that she wanted to do it all by hand and she has spent a month or so diligently quilting away on her free-hand drawn feathers.  She did an absolutley fantastic job and her handwork is exquisite.  M-san likes the meditative process of hand quilting and so she says she found the whole project very calming.  On to her next project!

Patora

We had a hard though not unexpected last few weeks ending with one of our older kitties, Patora, passing away yesterday morning.  

(Pato in the foreground, Cleo in the back)

Patora was 18 years old and she and Cleo are brother and sister.  The two of them and another sibling were brought home by Tetsu and me from one of our morning walks when the three kittens came running to us from a box where they'd been left.  The other sibling got adopted out a few weeks later but Cleo and Patora remained in our family all these years.

Patora was never a lovey-dovey kitty though that may have been the humans fault.  For some reason she and Cleo decided they didn't much like each other but she could stand to be friendly with Toi who has his own issues of bullying the other kitties.  Patora and Toi ended up keeping each other company for the last 10 years and they move from the outdoors cat house in the spring and summer months to the upstairs bedroom in the fall and winter.  Neither cat had too much contact with humans... no sitting on laps or snuggling, but they've always been supplied with heated mats and expensive veterinary prescribed catfood.  Still, I feel guilty that Patora didn't get all the loving she might have had.

For the past month, Patora has been off her food but Tetsu and I decided not to force her to eat nor take her in to the vet for energy shots or whatever.  She didn't seem to be in pain and when the days were warm and sunny she would go out on the veranda and sun herself.  When I ended up in the hospital, I didn't really expect to see Patora again but she lasted that week and then this past week has been just sleeping and occasionally mewing.  I spent more time petting her than I have in years...

Tetsu arranged an area in the corner of his garden, near his chrysanthemums, and yesterday around noon we buried Patora there...   All our cats are over 13 years old and so we are heading into a more somber time of their lives...  Everyone, including humans are on some kind of medication...

Now that Patora is gone, we don't know how to incorporate Toi into our family again...  He is still a bully but it seems cruel to leave him to a completely lonely life and so we've opened up the doors and hope the remaining four cats will work out places for each of themselves so that they don't have major blowups...  

My sweet kitty.

 

Visitor!

It is getting cold around here and I'm starting to bring out sweaters and even my down jacket.  

The colors of autumn are gold and orange and red and we don't even have to go anyway to have beautiful scenery.

Thursday was a holiday here in Japan and we had a special guest come up for the day to be with us.  Erin is Leiya's friend from high school when she was living in Ohio and though the girls went away to different colleges, they have kept in touch.  I last saw Erin 5 years ago when she drove from Ohio to Detroit to come help Leiya look for a wedding dress and when I made the week trip from Japan.  I remember having such fun with the girls those few days!

Anyway, Erin has lived off and on in Japan for the past few years, she married a Japanese boy and though they live in Ohio, she was in Tokyo for a business trip.  She had visited with Leiya not long ago and had heard of my hesitancy to mail quilts to Leiya and offered to take some back with her when she returned to the midwest.  At first I was going to mail the quilts to her Japanese address (I trust domestic mail more than international mail) but then she offered to come to Nikko and pick them up herself!!  We made a day of it!

Erin arrived a bit before lunch time and Tetsu and I picked her up at the station with her pulling a large EMPTY suitcase alongside her.  "For quilts!"  We drove back to Nikko (40 minutes away) and had lunch at a chinese restaurant and caught up on our lives.  Tetsu was so happy that he and Erin could speak to each other in Japanese now!  

It would have been nice to take Erin sightseeing but with only a day trip and this being the peak of the tourist season and thousands of people heading to the mountains and shrines to see the fall colors, we opted to just come back home and sit in our garden and chat.  

And finally we got down to the business of filling Erin's suitcase.  On one side we packed in the two Songbird's Garden quilts that I had made for Leiya, and also the Labyrinth quilt that Julieta-san wanted.  Leiya promises to forward that to Julieta.  I had also made a Christmas stocking for Luka and Leiya had wanted one of my ancient quilts from her kindergarten days which we got packed aways also.  Throw in a couple children's books for Luka and onc side of the suitcase was filled.

The other side of the suitcase we reserved for Erin.  I had told her that she could pick out what quilts she wanted to take home herself and so we pulled out quilts from my closet, old ones and new ones, Christmas, applique etc.  Erin made a few choices and with more space we went back to the Christmas pile to choose some for her mother.  That was one quilt loaded suitcase when we got done!  I am so pleased that some of my quilt horde are going to be adopted into homes!

Erin will be headed back to Ohio at the middle of this month and then she and Leiya are going to have to figure out how to get the suitcase from Ohio to Indiana, but at least the quilts will be on the right contintent!  Thank you Erin!  That really helps us out so much!

Home again

Yeah!  I am back at home and in my own bed and starting a normal routine again.  I've gone shopping for groceries, I've eaten ramen for dinner, I've even gotten to the pool!  I'm planning to go back to the crosswalk on Friday and then be back regularly from next week.

When I entered the hospital this street in front was still green.  A week later and the ginko trees are turning gold.

So what was all the fuss in the hospital?  Well, I was there to determine if I had diabetes (which does run in my family) but I don't.  So now I've started agressive medications for the rheumatism and that will be checked twice a month until medications can be pulled to their minimum.

The week in bed did my knees and hips wonders and I have been feeling pretty good since I got home.  And of course maybe the medications are already kicking in so I don't feel quite as robotic and slow as I have been the last few months.  The rheumatism has been affecting my hands and wrists though so I found it difficult to knit, of all things, though I am able to tat with no pain.  That's interesting.  I'll see how hand sewing goes sometime this week.  I would think that machine quilting wouldn't be affected...

I got four crosses tatted while in my hospital bed.

Tetsu and the animals survived without me and John and Tetsu hit it off pretty well.  The cats all stayed close to Tetsu, meaning they slept with him while usually they sleep with me.  Our oldest cat hasn't been doing very well this past month and I was afraid I wouldn't see her again but she is still with us.  Tetsu's a good caretaker!  

I've sort of gone back to a clean diet of no dairy and snacking and keeping to smaller food portions.  If nothing else maybe a little less weight on my knees will be good and I have heard dairy products are bad for systemic inflammation...  But that's my layperson's treatment with no professional backing on it.

My first meal back from the hospital.  We went directly to Marlene's and her neighborhood was having their monthly "Cafe Day" where they make obento for the community.  Marlene had set aside two obentos for us and Tetsu and I brought them back to our garden and ate our lunch in the good outdoor air!

That's a big lunch for me after all those hospital meals!  Rice with seaweed, miso potatos, pork cutlet, simmered vegetables and fish cakes, vinegared salad and quiche!  SOOOO  DELICIOUS!!!  The cafe is an event that got started by Marlene and her neighbors and now once a month they make between 60 and 80 obentos.  Amazing!  No professional chefs among them but a lot of home cooked meals experience.

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The last week of October Leiya did send me some more photos of Luka so here is an unscheduled Luka update.

Leiya said they got to go on hay rides.  Doesn't Luka look grown up in this photo?

Tony's hospital had a Halloween event for staff family and neighbor children.  It was called Trunk or Treat and Luka just loved it!

Luka dressed up as a cowboy.  I think Leiya even made him a stuffed horsey for his basket.

Preserved in my sketch book...  

But the real thing is cuter!