Spring has sprung!

Yeah!  April is warming up!  We are so glad that we can start putting away fluffy pajamas, room heaters and knitted caps.  

Tetsu has changed the snow tires off our cars!  The daffodils are out!  

The forsythia are blooming!  I can hear nightingales in the mornings!  Pheasants are running across the lot behind us!  Yeah spring! 

 

I decided I needed to get a post written while I can because at the end of the week Julieta-san and her mother and brother are coming for a visit!  Tetsu is in full cleaning mode and he has a plan to wash one or two sets of curtains everyday until they arrive.  He is also out planting flowers near our front door to give the house a welcoming appeal.  We will have Julieta and family at our house for one day and then we are off to an onsen over night (they are only in Nikko for two days) but we've been excited and planning for their visit for months!  Hopefully I'll be able to write about their visit in the next post.

Actually, the cherry blossoms have already come and gone in our part of Japan, but as always the trees were beautiful though the blossoms fleeting.

My friends and I went out for a day of sketching and enjoyed riceballs and snacks while we played with watercolors and pens.

The elementary school had their entrance ceremony for the incoming 1st graders and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom that day.

This year there are only 10 first graders in the school.  Japan's population is shrinking!

Our daily morning walking at the cemetery where we were the only ones there to enjoy the bank of cherry trees.

And here you can see how the falling blossoms start looking like snow on the ground...  No, it really wasn't cold enough for me to need that down jacket, but it WAS 5:00 AM in the morning and I was too lazy to change out of my pajamas and I just wore the jacket over all...

After the cherry blossoms, the rape blossoms begin to take over the countryside.

On the quilting front, I finished the applique quilt I've been working on.  I'm not sure this was a success or not.  My purpose for making this quilt was to duplicate an old quilt I'd made 10 years ago with antique flour-sack fabrics (they were given to me nearly 40 years ago from an older woman who had had them passed on to her from her great aunt!).  Anyway I wanted to make a modern version from batiks and dyed fabrics that I have used and collected an abundance of scraps.  For that purpose this is really a nice showcase quilt, however instead of using the original pattern, I eyeballed the old quilt and just started in, realizing half way through that my squares were too small and my spacing too narrow.  This led to the overall quilt being smaller and though I had hoped to be able to display the two quilts side by side, they dont match up...  I had spent weeks making the tatting for the first quilt but with this one, I still had leftover tatting lace from Leiya's wedding veil from 5 years ago, so I put that to work for this quilt.  This is the modern batik version,

And this is the quilt from 10 years ago with antique fabrics.  M-san is also making a version of this quilt so stay tuned for her creation in the near future.

Luka got a drastic haircut!

Taiga is enjoying being barefoot!

And that's about it for the month...  Lots of end of the year meetings.  Lots of new school year meetings.  

Happy Easter!