Where did autumn go?

Summer dragged on this year and even into October we were still complaining of hot days.  

We've been looking forward to the mild days of autumn but those days have whizzed by and suddenly I'm having to bring plants in at night so that they don't freeze and I'm wearing gloves and a neck warmer to the crosswalk in the mornings!  Japanese scientists have been warning us that Japan's beautiful four season climate is going to be shortened to two and that sure seems to be the case this year!

A big event that I got involved with was a school festival promoting the community and school.  Someone knew that I had made cookies for an international event earlier this year so they asked me to make cookies for this event also.  I spent four hours baking 300 homestyle cookies and packaging them up to sell on the big day.  

6 tupperwares of cookies, a bright quilt to attract customers, and my old Halloween outfit that I used to wear to kindergarten events.

The cookies sold out though I didn't have any grand rush of customers...  Marlene had warned me that cookies aren't really festival food in Japan...  In the next booth over the frankfurters on a stick and the deep fried tornado potatoes were very popular but people politely bought cookies as an afterthought...

Other events at the festival were a Japanese drum performance by a local preschool, a tie-dye booth where children could make their own tie-dye T-shirts, a leather craft booth, face painting, pot stickers by a local ramen shop and udon noodles and vegetable soup by the PTA.  The turn out was very good even though it was a rainy day.  The event was successful but I'm relieved it is over!

The only really exciting thing that happened last month was that I won a prize in a Skillshare drawing from an artist from Belgium, Barbara Luel, that I love and follow.  She contacted me to say she would be sending me one of her books and I could choose which of the many.  I chose to have her send me one of her books on Japan!

I was so excited when her package arrived that I saved all the bits and pieces from it and made a page in my bullet journal.  A sketch of the book, a stencil using the cut out on the book's cover, the stamps from Belgium, Barbara's sticker that I carefully removed from the package, bits of washi tape, quotes in the book and Barbara's handwritten return address (which I covered up with an airmail stamp.)

Oh, the book is so beautiful and Barbara's artwork is something to sigh over!  I'm determined to look at every painting on her website and in her book and take all her classes on Skillshare in hopes that some of her skill and technique (if not talent) rubs off on me!

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Leiya sent pictures of the boys at a Halloween event.  Luka was dressed as an explorer, that's why he has bugs and bats all over him.

And because Taiga is rarely seen without a ball of some sort in his hand, he is dressed up as a basketball player...

I did finish Taiga-kun's Robot quilt!  I need to get a better picture taken of this but it is really too big to hold up and try to photograph.  Forgive me if I show you more pictures of this in my next post once I get someplace to photograph it...

That's about it for the past two weeks.  This weekend Tetsu and I are making our annual trip to Morioka to see friends and clean up our family grave.  I hope I have more tales to tell when I get back!