The middle of August

Yeah!  We've made it to September!  Everyday I think things are going to cool off and it's true, the mornings seem to have a hint of the aroma of autumn, but the afternoons still get pretty hot.  Here's hoping for the heat to wane next week.

I am happy to report that I am back at the swimming pool after three weeks away while my thumb healed.  Getting stitches out was a breeze and I was back to cooking and washing dishes with no problems.  Drawing I picked back up quickly too though tatting and hand sewing have eluded me until this past week. 

I did get back to at least mornings in the sewing room (with a lot of sweating and cups of ice cream afterwards) because I wanted to get started on a quilt for Taiga.  Leiya chose an Elizabeth Hartman pattern of robots for Taiga and as I'd made a dinosaur quilt from one of Ms. Hartman's patterns a couple of years ago, I was pretty sure I could pull off the robot quilt if I kept myself organized.  I readied 5 boxes to hold precisely cut fabrics for 4 robots and background and now I'm pulling out one box at a time to construct my robots in six colors...  It takes a lot of fiddling but I figure I can get 6 robots made in one week's time.  I need to make 24 robots.  My first 6 robots above.

And my second set of robots finished this morning.  

Leiya reports that recently Luka-kun is the one who has taken an interest in robots so HE may be getting this quilt eventually and Taiga-kun may get a hand-me-down dinosaur quilt...  Anyway, it is good to be back sewing!

You may remember that I was making a reversible kimono coat.  Well, my student/sewing teacher has taken it home with her to put in button holes so I don't have that back yet to model.  I was bemoaning how sewing that coat and not knowing what I was doing, was rather a stressful experience... Well, other friends/students that I get together with weekly and I decided we wanted to make blouses from a summer kimono that I had (this was before the thumb accident) and we also decided not to use the sewing machine and instead hand sew our blouses from start to finish.  One summer kimono got made into three identical summer blouses and it was a much more relaxing experience! 

With scraps, we also made pretty matching brooches.  This has been such a nice cool blouse to wear this summer!

Of course I am still painting and sketching.  One challenge was to paint a room in our house and so I tried to get my living room down on paper.

This is the actual living room.

I scribble sketch while waiting for things...  The vet's reception desk...

A Shinto altar at a ramen shop...

I've started Tangling again, and I really like to find patterns to try.

With pen and in, and sometime a bit of color and a lot of strategic shading, some of these tangles begin to look three dimensional.

They are all sort of fun and they give me a figuring out a puzzle sort of vibe...  Can I really do this?

Cleo is still hanging in there...

John and Tetsu have become friends.

The tearing apart of the earth behind our house has begun and even now I can hear the bulldozers cutting and growling and crashing things to the ground.  I'm not sure how much of this scenery that we have had the past 5 years will remain, but here is a final photo of how we could see Mt. Nantai, rice fields and the undergrowth of the original forest there in the foreground.  Much of the undergrowth will be gone in a few more days...  Already, that building on the right has joined the scenery from last year... part of the complex that is being planned behind our house...

Changes are part of life...