Blocks and birds

The weekend found me doing more piecing of the Alabama Beauty block. I guess I'm making a few more of these... I don't know how many or for what reason. I just like to see the different color combinations possible and the curves.

I also finally got around to making the June block for the Tisket a Tasket BOM. These have caught up with me and I really should get ahead of this project again since I'm not going to be around for much of the month of July and August. I think my bird needs a ribbon or something according to the pattern but I'm in a hurry today and can't go looking for ribbon.

And speaking of birds, we found a swallow sitting on top of my mother-in-law's electric meter at her apartment. She (the swallow) must have eggs that she is sitting on because she watched us ever so closely but wasn't leaving her nest.

Leaving a mark

Yesterday Tetsu and I went out to lunch at a friend's Thai restaurant. I love Thai curry and the exotic flavors and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. For dessert the chef served some of his homemade melon sherbet and it came adorned with this beautiful display of carved melon and carrots! He said he does fruit and vegetable carving as a hobby and it takes him about an hour to carve one melon. His carving will last for three days before it gets made into sherbet and he carves another one. He said he had carved 5 this week for a party the day before.

Different hobbies for different people. It made me wonder if I'd be willing to put in 5 hours on patchwork or quilting if I knew that in three days it was going to be made into pillow stuffing or something. Probably not. I like the idea of my quilts lasting for a few years or a generation and that maybe someone down the line is going to say,

"Wow, look at all the work that went into this."

or

"Interesting color combinations this person used."

or even

"I bet I can do better than that... Maybe I'll give it a try!"

Which probably means I ought to be putting more labels on things. But then again I don't really care to be remembered by name as much as just leaving a mark... Does that make sense?

Well, the melon sherbet is remembered in my tummy (yum!) and the chef's melon is leaving its mark on my blog (whether he knows it or not). The chef offered to teach me vegetable carving if I'd care to learn but I think I'll stick with patchwork.

Quilting, hand or machine?

I am quilting.

Both hand and machine! The hand quilting on the Feathered Star has finally moved from the center onto the border. I thought I'd never get here! And since the border is so white I decided to change from white thread and bring a little color to the border. (Well, not color, more definition?)

I think I'm in the last days of quilting this because as soon as it gets hot this quilt is going back in the cupboard. How much can I get done before summer arrives in Japan? At least the end is in sight. Maybe I will get this finished this year.

And for machine quilting I put the first quarter of the Patches and Pinwheels quilt under the needle. What to do, what to do? I'm still too chicken to try an overall pattern... I get lost too easily in big spaces. I guess you could say that these are petals in the triangles and the gradation thread makes a pretty addition. Size wise, breaking the quilt into quarters was a good idea. So far this is very manageable in the machine.

I hope I don't get waylaid before I get to the other three sections.

White Out?

When I was 11 or 12 I decided I wanted to go to Japanese school and learn Japanese. 40 plus years ago, there was a small Saturday morning Japanese school where first generation Japanese immigrants enrolled their Japanese-American children. I knew one girl who went to this Japanese school and I thought it sounded most exotic. Learning to write intricate scribbles, participating in the makeshift Japanese festivals, eating unusual foods with chopsticks. On the walls of the building were photos of kimono-clad Japanese girls with American names like Shirley Matsumoto or Helen Fujitani and they boasted of being the Japanese-American representatives in local beauty pageants. I begged my mother to let me go to Japanese school!

My mother couldn't figure out what the attraction was. She knew next to nothing about Japan, couldn't speak Japanese, couldn't manage chopsticks. As far as she knew, there was no reason for me to take an interest in Japan. What on earth was I going to do with my knowledge even if I DID learn to write a few hieroglyphics? But she relented and I was enrolled in Japanese school.

Japanese school turned out to be a lot less fun than I thought it was going to be. I was put in the kindergarten class and set to work practicing the most rudimentary Japanese symbols in endless boxes of calligraphy drill books. The little kids laughed at how lopsided my writing was and given the fact that I didn't know the vocabulary to match the symbols my interest waned quickly. I quit Japanese school after a couple months.

I tried to master the Japanese language again in college and took four years of Japanese language. Again the notebooks and scribbling but I never got much better. The professor assigned a daily journal but I became discouraged when I'd show my journal to my Japanese room mate and she'd ask

"And WHAT were you trying to write?"

So I concentrated on Japanese conversation with only satisfactory results. I still couldn't speak Japanese when I came to Japan.

Not being able to write Japanese has been a trial. There was the time when Tetsu was hospitalized but I couldn't fill out forms. There were the years when I'd have to ask the kids to read me school papers and when a reply was needed to write a sample for me to copy.

I tried. I swore I'd study right along with Takumi when he went to 1st grade. I'd master this language yet! ...I was left by the wayside. That's okay. I'll have more time when Leiya goes to 1st grade. Nope. ...Leiya, will you write this for me?

When teaching adult English students I'd tell them that it was important to keep an English journal. What was needed was perseverance and consistency. But I rarely applied these principals to my own Japanese lacking.

BUT!!! As of April I have been required to keep a daily crosswalk guard log. I am FORCED to write Japanese. DAILY!!! I can just hear the kindergarten children laughing at me again. The characters are lopsided and crooked. The grammar may be wrong (if I started worrying about that I'd get all hung up again)and the Japanese is too informal.



Right now my best friend is this little correction tape gadget. It sits on the desk right along with my logging sheets and pen. Cleaner than the White Out brush type, I can press a bit of this tape over my goofs and go on writing. In the two and a half months that I have been logging I have yet to make it a day without using this gizmo so my Japanese still isn't very good.

At least I'm persevering!

Practicing

Yesterday Mrs. Ochiai came over (and braved the cats... She does not like cats.) and practiced machine quilting. After months of procrastinating she decided to GET THIS QUILT FINISHED and she called me on Monday to say that she was ready to start quilting and wanted to come over on Thursday.

"All the applique pieces are fused down. All I have to do it buttonhole stitch them."

WHAT? That's ALL she has to do? That is quite a lot of work. I honestly didn't think that she would be here yesterday.

"Mrs. Ochiai is NOT going to be able to applique all that down in three days."

She did! She said she spent three intense days doing nothing but buttonhole stitch! See, if we put our minds to something we can get it done! I don't know how long this project has been on Mrs. Ochiai's shelf.





For all that though, when I set her down with a practice sandwich to work on some stitches she decided that she needed to do a lot more practicing before she puts her quilt under the needle. This is really the first time for her to use a quilting foot and to try and maneuver a quilt in different directions. (She cheated on her Happy Village quilting and turned the quilt at each corner...)

"Don't practice too long. Practicing is just another way of procrastinating. If you start quilting a quilt you will get all the practice you need."

I need to follow my own advice.

Isaiah 11:5-7

As you all know, I am an animal lover. I love cats and dogs but my heart goes out to all animals.

I probably go overboard trying to give my cats and dog pleasant lives (at the expense of humans!) and I spend time trying to figure out what this or that cat is thinking when it sprays the furniture or what frustrations Choco must have if she is digging up the yard. As someone pointed out, one can hardly figure out people psychology why worry about animal psychology? True... true... But I do.

Here is Toi HANGING on the front door handle. Even though I try to provide a comfortable atmosphere for my cats, Toi especially has his quirks and does not like Velvet and Cleo. A big bully, that's what Toi is! So in order to keep Velvet happy and because Toi's frustrations are beginning to extend to the other cats, I have been letting him out regularly every morning. He plays in the forest for an hour or two and always comes back. He seems very happy and the other cats are very happy that he is not around. Problem solved. I have kept peace in the animal kingdom.

WRONG! Last week Toi brought home a mole. Watch Tanya freak out!

"BAD CAT!!! DON'T CATCH MOLES!!! POOR MOLE!"

My cat is a murderer. Tetsu removed the mole for me.

Yesterday Toi brought home a quail.

"NO, NO, NO!!! LET THE QUAIL GO!!!!"

I ran to the yard and Toi took the opportunity to bring the quail (dead) into the house and upstairs. I was screaming and stamping and the other cats were flying. Finally I got the poor quail away from Toi and laid it to rest in the forest.

Why am I such a wimp? I feel very bad for the quail. Because of my dumb cat, it lost its life. Somebody tell me I'm obsessing too much. This is what cats do. This is how the world works. This is normal. I decided that I won't let Toi out anymore. Velvet and the other cats will have to put up with him. But he escaped this morning when I came back from crosswalk duty. Right now he is out ravaging the forest creatures.

The wolf will romp with the lamb, the leopard will sleep with the kid. Calf and lion will eat from the same trough and a little child will lead them. Cow and bear will graze the same pasture, their calves and cubs will grow up together, and the lion eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will crawl over the rattlesnake dens, the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent. Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill on my holy mountain. The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive, a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.

Isaiah 11:5-7

The Message

I wish...

Elaine's HST border

I have put the border on ONE of the four pieces of my Pinwheels and Patches quilt. I loved the way Elaine did hers on her Split Nine Patch (definitely go see how she did it!) and so I've blatantly copied her idea. But remember, copying is the highest form of flattery and I've let her know how innovative I think her ideas are (and she has so many good ones!)

I like the way the points of Elaine's quilt goes into the border but I never would attempt trying to piece all that in... But Elaine came up with a way of inserting and appliqueing the points down later and I just HAD to try it!

Well, I like Elaine's color scheme better than mine. The light side of my points get lost in the border... but still this is a great technique to remember and I can see doing this for circles and other pieces that one might want to bring into a border but piecing is a pain. (I wish I'd known this technique when I was making the Wheel of Mystery last year. I pieced those circles into the border and I must have done it 4 or 5 times before I got it somewhat right...)

Today is Wednesday so I'm not going to get to the other three parts of my quilt but I'd better not let them set too long or I'll forget how to do this!