Directing

At my crosswalk, cars come at us from three ways. The crosswalk button stops oncoming traffic from two ways but the other street, coming around the corner, doesn't give a good view of the light. Nevertheless, it is hard to miss 10 or 20 kids by a crosswalk.

When the children get to the light I motion them to wait until I see that most of the cars have gone by and then tell someone to push the button (in English! I'm sneaking in a little English comprehension that they don't know about!) After that, I wave my flag a little and have the children check both ways. Finally I blow my whistle and step into the crosswalk myself. Hopefully all the kids get across the street before the light changes back.

On Friday I went into my routine but as I stepped into the street a car coming from around the corner advanced to the crosswalk. He's supposed to stop. I waved my flag at him and he finally braked with his bumper nearly in the crosswalk. The school principal was with me that day and he held up the kids at the crosswalk. Wait a minute. Let's let these kids across. I motioned to the car to wait. The principal motioned for me to let the car go first. The kids were already halfway across the crosswalk and looking confused. The car advanced a bit further probably wanting me to get out of the way. I fumbled for a few seconds, car first? children first? but finally kept the car waiting and let the kids across. The car went on his way.

On Monday as I was just finishing my duties a car pulled up at the corner and a man rolled down his window.

"You don't blow your whistle loud enough. Drivers can't hear it. And your flag directions are too confusing. You've got to be clearer in your directing. No one knows if they are supposed to go or stop or whatever. What do you think you are there for?"

I thanked the driver for his advice and he went on his way. A little discouraging for me. I had thought I was doing so well... Friday's driver?

I spent a couple days thinking about the complaint. The driver has a point. If no one understands my directions then I'm not really fulfilling my duties. Regardless of who has the right away, me and my flag and my whistle are there to direct traffic and make it EASIER and SAFER for everyone involved. I vowed to improve my directing skills.

From Wednesday I've been out at the crosswalk waving my flag around like a mad-woman, shouting out directions and blowing my whistle loud and long!

"LOOK BOTH WAYS!!! LEFT!! RIGHT!! LEFT!! PWEEEEPPPPPP!!!!!"

One of the little girls told me that I sure yelled loudly.

"Well, someone told me I needed to be clearer in my directing. I want you all to be safe."

"Actually, you look sort of strange."

Ah well. Strange but clear.

Quilting magazines

I have all four Alabama Beauty blocks in my possession again. I took a picture before I lose them for the umpteeth time. I'm thinking that I need some brighter colors in this... The new block is the one on the right.

The other day I was looking through some old quilt magazines that a friend had sent me. I've browsed through them before and marked the things I'd like to make someday or pictures that I find inspiring. On one page that I'd marked was a quilt called Fireflies and I'd thought it stunning when I saw it. I realized looking at it again that it is the Alabama Beauty block but done with all dark background the sparkles of light fabric in some of the outer curves... Very pretty... So I guess if this block has caught my fancy twice that I'm supposed to make it. I don't know if I want to make a whole quilt with the dark colors (I don't have enough dark blue-black fabric) but I might try a Firefly colorscheme next.

Question. When I was Googling images of quilts I came up with another "I want to make someday" quilt. And following the link took me McCalls Quilting website and a picture of the quilt. But there seems to be no available pattern for a quilt from the 2009 September issue. That's okay. I'd be willing to buy the issue to make the quilt but I can't figure out how to do that either... Is that because I'm not a member? But I've signed up for their newsletter. I can't really figure out if this quilt (cats of course) was just a gallery quilt and maybe there IS no pattern anywhere. In which case I'm ready with my tag board and colored pencils to make the pattern myself! But if I could save myself the trouble I'd be a lot happier... Does anyone know how these quilting magazine websites work? Where does one find and purchase back issues of quilting magazines? Or maybe I'll have to go hunting in the local libraries when I get back to the States.

I've got to do some major cleaning today! And I want to quilt the last quarter of my Patches and Pinwheels quilt. I'd better get off the computer.

Rain

We are in the middle of the rainy season and everything is wet. The floors are wet. The book pages curl. My hair frizzes. Cat fur sticks to everything. Choco is in a bad mood because there is nothing to do but try to stay dry.

Actually I love the rain so I'm one of the few people who don't really mind the season. I love the sound of the raindrops in the forest and the patter of them on my crosswalk raincoat.



I love the colorful umbrellas against the green. I love the hydrangeas soaking up the life giving water.

It's a great day!

Star Within a Star

Rats. I left the box containing my latest Alabama Beauty block that I wanted to post at Mrs. Furui's house. It is a running joke with my patchwork group that I can't leave Mrs. Furui's house without forgetting something. My sewing box, a quilt, my camera, it's always something. This week it is my 4 Alabama blocks that I was showing (off) to my group.

Before I get back to that I had to make another block of something different. This is called Star Within a Star. I don't remember where I first saw this block but I loved it and saved the instructions to my computer thinking I'd make this someday.

Well, I'm still up in the air about what block to select for the next patchwork group game/block swap. Everyone else is choosing small Lemon Stars or Prairie Stars or something. One lady has chosen a large applique block. One person would like Pineapple blocks. A lot of variety on this game. And you already know that I had been thinking about the Alabama Beauty block but zipped that idea just because it is too much of a challenge. If I asked my friends to make that block for me I might have fewer friends... So I've been browsing the Internet... looking through books... making a few trial blocks myself... If I don't watch out I'm going to have a good start on an Orphan block quilt!!!

Oh yes, and I'd tossed around the idea of making Spools too, right? but I think I'd rather have large blocks that I can point to and say

"This one was made by Mrs. Furui. This one was made by Mrs. Harada... etc."

So I'm playing with the Star Within a Star.

Not too difficult. I could suggest even just making the inner star for anyone who thinks the double star too much of a challenge.

Actually the biggest challenge is going to be writing out the instructions in Japanese for my friends... (Other people can just copy a page from a book...) Maybe I should go back to my Spools...

Japanese Word

A couple people asked me how the kids and Tetsu do Chat. It is a little complicated but we manage.

We have two computers in our house. The old one rarely gets used because the screen is going bad but we can't toss it because it is the only one that Tetsu can operate. Whereas any computer can be modified to write Japanese printing (don't ask me how... Takumi did it for me, but Leiya's host family managed to fairly simply download something that allowed Leiya to write in Japanese too) our old computer has a keyboard with Japanese characters on it.

Usually Japanese will type in the Romanized alphabet version of Japanese (they can just look at an English keyboard and just type letters) and by hitting the Space tab, the Romanized letters will change to Japanese.

For example.

Watanabe

Japanese Word automatically will switch to a simple Japanese character when I input a letter.







The underline there will let me know that those simple characters (called Hiragana) can be further changed into Chinese characters. 渡邊






And the black around those characters lets me know that I have numerous choices of Chinese characters that I might use so if I continue to hit the Space button, Word will give me choices until I select the correct set of characters and hit Enter.

It's the second one that I want... 渡辺

Actually we are far from the question of how Tetsu and the kids and I communicate.

The kids can write an e-mail to us using either Japanese or English. Both the computers in our house can accept both languages. BUT if Tetsu wants to write an e-mail to the kids he has to go to the old computer because he is dependent on the Japanese keyboard. (Or he asks me to transcribe for him on mine.) He has never learned the Romanized way of touch typing.

If we are on Chat (MSN) which we are only registered with MY computer, then we can both read whatever language is being written by the kids. They know enough to write in English when they are chatting with me and to write in Japanese when they are chatting with Tetsu. Sometimes both languages and characters get used in the same sentence.

Nowadays we also have Visual and Voice Chat which means we can see each other and just talk over the computer, no typing involved. This works best when both Tetsu and I are around because we all go into Japanese and Tetsu and I don't have to worry about reading or writing or transcribing or translating any language. Occasionally Leiya will type some message in English that she doesn't want Tetsu to know about,

"I sent Tetsu-san a Father's Day card at his office. Let me know when it arrives."

but Voice Chat and Visual Chat work best for us. (Unfortunately only Takumi and I have cameras on our computers... We never get to see Leiya.)

The Japanese language is extremely complicated with all the Japanese and Chinese and Romanized characters and letters going around. Japanese Word DOES make it all easier. I would never be able to write Japanese at all if it weren't for the computer but this way I only have to choose which character I need (they all mean something different even if they sound the same!!!) and after 30 years my Japanese READING ability is about jr. high level. WRITING? Put me back in 1st grade.

Tetsu and the kids' and my lives are really enriched by the computer world and thanks to technology it never seems as if we live on opposite sides of the world!

So that's the long round about explanation of how our family communicates. Now... I wonder if those Japanese and Chinese characters are going to show up on this blog anyway... Can you see them or are they disappearing into scribbles?

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, Tetsu!

Let's see... That must be about the 5th or 6th time he's been wished that this week.

I started last Sunday by wishing him a happy day and realizing later that Father's Day wasn't til THIS weekend. Pretty much par for the course with me... I always get dates wrong.

And I'd bought him some new swim trunks so I gave him an early Father's Day gift and more blessings.

Then yesterday Leiya was on chat and wished him a happy Father's day.

"Thank you Leiya but you're a day early... That's alright your mother was a week early."

Leiya got a good laugh over that.

And yesterday Tetsu took rare interest in something in the store so I bought it for him as another Father's Day present. "Happy Father's Day!"

And when we woke up this morning I wished him a Happy Father's Day again.

Yesterday was Tetsu's day off but bright and early he got a phone call from his office. I snapped this picture wondering if he was going to end up going to the office after all but he did manage to have a relaxing rest of the day. Actually Tetsu hates his cell phone but this is a pretty typical shot. It's not like he's a detective or a doctor or something, but still he feels (someone feels) he needs to be on call all the time.

Well, yesterday Tetsu took the day off but he's working today... Maybe I'll stop by and wish him a Happy Father's Day!

Quilt show

Quilt show! Quilt show!

I am proud to announce the unveiling of Utsunomiya's Crazy Lady Quilters 2010 Mini-Round Robin quilts. We seven quilters are thrilled to finally get a look at the mini-Round Robin quilts that have been passed around, consulted over, agonized about, stitched in, (ripped out), and loved through and through for the past 19 months. Yes. Nineteen months! How that ever happened I don't know and we blithely guessed that this had taken us about a year until I went back to the first entries of this blog and realized we started our Mini-Round Robin in November of 2008. Horrified! Well, I guess we aren't particularly speedy quilters but all in all we are proud of our results. (And remember how I despaired over some of these?)


Mrs. Takami's quilt. She is our one member that was never able to attend our Thursday meetings. She ended up working on quilts and passing them along without ever asking for suggestions or getting advice. And she never missed a deadline!


This is Mrs. Furui's quilt. Obviously all of us know she likes blue and has a musical bent. The musical notes appliqued and embroidered on this was done by our one very un-confident member and I think her idea is inspiring!


This is Mrs. Yamaguchi's quilt and I think everyone picked up the colors pretty well. The painstakingly appliqued little coffee cup was an especial hit with her.


This is Mrs. Harada's quilt. It was interesting how the blocks at the bottom sort of directed this quilt because it looked so much like a fence... but that wasn't what the block creator had imagined. I, of course, think the embroidered cat that someone put in (it wasn't me!) MAKES the quilt!


This is Mrs. Takagishi's quilt and again, the simple polka dot block in the center set the quilt's theme and lots of circles got added to this quilt. The wavy binding especially thrilled the member who had put in the pink border but hadn't gotten around to quilting it. Well, if she'd quilted the border it couldn't have been cut into like this.


This is Mrs. Ochiai's quilt. It was quite a surprise to everyone and a couple people said "where are the borders?" Well, we made the rules (apply a border) and we are allowed to break them. The border is there... just doubled on one side...



AND THIS IS MY QUILT!!!!!

I cried! Do I ever love the colors in this! And look at those kitties! And look at what they are looking at! Green pastures and a fluffy sheep and Psalm 23!

As the story goes, our non-confident member (whom we all love dearly!!!) got to her part and couldn't do, didn't have time, didn't know how to do the embroidery. But this friend is very good at directing and so she brought the quilt to Mrs. Furui LAST MONDAY and said things like,

"That space is too blank. The cats need to be looking at something."

So Mrs. Furui put in a sheep.

"There needs to be something above that. Psalm 23 would be a good verse to put there."

So Mrs. Furui probably went without sleep to embroider the verse. The two of them make a great team! This is SOOO wonderful! I put it up in my living room as soon as I got home and I gaze at all the love stitched in every time I walk by.