A versatile scarf

Two weeks into the new year and I finally have a finish.

The Snowflake Scarf has been blocked and is ready to send out to Leiya.  I've decided that she probably needs a thick, warm scarf more than I do.  The colors sure are pretty!  Teal to lavender with bits of gold strands.  Looks good?  Good because this actually has a major mistake in it!

The pattern was this pretty dark block with white snowflakes.  I love it!  I wanted to place the dark blocks at the ends of the scarf (I had more white yarn than colored)  When I got to the other end of the scarf I happily knitted away making more two more layers of snowflakes before I noticed....

BLUE SNOWFLAKES!!!

Arrgh!!  I'd knitted in the pattern backwards!  Sometimes I amaze myself with my denseness.

I really didn't want to take two blocks out (why didn't I notice in the first block?!) and I decided that I could call this a "versatile" scarf.  It can be worn with the white snowflakes prominent or the blue snowflakes prominent.  What a great solution!

Thank you June!  Your yarn was a joy to knit with!  I'm sure Leiya will love it!


 

Staying warm

It was minus 7 degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit) this morning at the crosswalk.  I know because the principal told me when he came out to the crosswalk flapping his arms after he had checked the school thermometer.  My fingers and face felt frozen.  And we still haven't hit the coldest season of the year!  February will probably be colder...  And no snow yet either.

When Choco and Tetsu and I go for a walk early in the morning there are pretty little ice pillars around the rice fields that crunch when walked upon and disappear as the day warms up.

The brush is frosted in powdered ice.

Back home from our walk, Choco has to work at getting a drink of water.  Her water bucket is frozen!  If she licks it enough she can break through the thin crust of ice to the water underneath...  Of course over a few days it will completely freeze (like this morning) and we'll dump it out and get her a fresh bucket.  When I dumped the ice this morning it had frozen two inches deep!  I feel sorry for Choco outside in this cold but she really doesn't do well indoors unless left in her small crate.  And wouldn't you rather be outside barking at birds and passersby in the cold than cooped up in a crate in a warm house?  Hmmm.  I'm not sure about dog psychology...

After a couple of hours Choco's backyard gets a bit of sun and Choco searches it out.

Catching the sun!

Dontosai Festival

I was in the next city over yesterday doing errands.  Our little town is separated from the larger city by a range of mountains.  Going through the tunnel opens up a world of rice fields fields and far off mountains.

Yesterday was Dontosai in our area.   Earlier in the day the neighborhood children had come around ringing doorbells asking if we had any New Year decorations to burn.  As I understand it, the decorations from the past year and the New Year decorations that had sacred meaning, can't just be tossed into the garbage pail when they've completed their purpose.  Many people will take them back to the shines where there are also Dontosai Festivals being held, but in our farming area, an evening is set aside for making bonfires and praying for good health etc.

As I drove through the tunnel yesterday, I could see spirals of blue smoke rising from different fields across the plain and exploring a bit I sought out a couple Dontosai bonfires with children running around eagerly and old wizened men squatting near the fires drinking heated osake.

There is some tradition of toasting colorful rice balls on branches and I see one man was ready to toast weenies too!

The volunteer fire corps was out in full regalia making sure the bonfires didn't get out of hand on the dry, overgrown fields.

Nikko is getting colder and colder, and as the night encroached everyone drew nearer the fire and ate and drank and watched the sun go down.   I wonder if anyone remembered to pray for good health...

Liberty fabric

Before I left our patchwork gathering on Friday we put away our bazaar work and gave some thought to the quilt for the hospital.

Mrs. Furui's hospital volunteer group was given some Liberty fabrics.  That is not Liberty fabrics, that is LIBERTY FABRICS!!!  Boxes of cuts of LIBERTY FABRICS!!!  A Liberty fabric collector from somewhere in Japan had decided she'd never get around to using her fabrics so she packed them all up into cardboard boxes and shipped them to the hospital volunteer group.  When Mrs. Furui brought home samples of the fabric (a box full) our mouths dropped open and some of us nearly drooled!

"Oh my!  What a collection!  The volunteer group will just cut them up to make pot-holders or something.  We have to save them and make something beautiful!"

So Mrs. Furui had been put in charge of finding ways to use the Liberty fabric.   Some lovely fabric necklaces were made for the hospital bazaar a couple of months ago.  Those sold like hotcakes.

With such a collection we really wanted to show off as many fabrics together as possible and Mrs. Furui has been making simplified instructions for her volunteer group (many non-patchwork people) to follow.  Over the last couple months our group has been marking and cutting fabric for some future intensive hand-piecing.  We chose 100 fabrics and cut one or two strips from each (still leaving a lot of fabric for future use!)  From each strip we were able to mark 6 bricks.

This is what we laid out on Friday evening.  Some bricks in blue tones...

Some pinks and yellow tones too.

We each chose 12 Liberty bricks and 12 white bricks and took them home to make strips as homework.

And this my strip.

Once all the strips are sewn, our group will be given the job of sewing the zig-zag seams together...

Hopefully someday this year the hospital will have a beautiful quilt adorning their waiting room...  It is a joy to run my fingers over these beautiful fabrics as I sew.  I'm eager to get another row's worth from Mrs. Furui!
 

My friends' hands

Yesterday we had a great, l~o~n~g~ day at Mrs. Furui.  I usually go home at around 3:00 but I stayed til nearly 6:00 last night.  I wonder what Mrs. Furui did for her husband's dinner last night (I served left-overs to Tetsu.)
  
Mrs. Furui and I had decided that we would confine our handwork to two projects yesterday.  Everyone has other projects that they need help on but we sent out the message... 

"Patchwork on the 10th is only for working on the bazaar quilt and the hospital quilt.  We need to make some progress!"

Well!  That was clear enough.  But nearly everyone showed up jokingly saying that they understood that they weren't welcome unless they were willing to do some collaboration work.  Good thing our friends don't take offense easily...

Even our LCM  (least confident member) who doesn't really come to sew showed up saying to give her a job to do.  She didn't want to be left out.

And work we did!

 Some people did their embroidery on the bazaar quilt blocks. 

Everyone has young looking hands but we all wear "sewing glasses".

 Our LCM diligently drew lines on squares for the next step in our bazaar quilt.

And I made hearts with freezer paper and starch!  16 hearts to hand out to people to applique!  Whew!  I'm glad that job is done!  But everyone was grateful for all the pre-applique work I'd done on their pieces.

"It's so much easier to applique."

Here is one of the finished blocks.  The quilt kit is called Kitty Tales by Lynette Anderson.  I can't wait to see all the blocks together!

So that's the progress on the bazaar quilt.  I guess I'll show progress on the hospital quilt in another post.

Our very small group of quilters has gotten together for 20 years.  The members have changed at times but Mrs. Furui and I are constant... a couple others who are newer... they've only been coming for 15 years or so.  We sew and chat.  Don't all quilters?  We share our secrets, our joys, our concerns, our pride.  The once-a-month day is important to each of us.  Mrs. H drives three hours to attend yet she says leaving her home when it is still dark and knowing the camaraderie that awaits her makes the drive go by quickly.  I think all our families are amazed at how each of us so look forward to the day set aside to just enjoy these special patchwork friends.  Dinners are forgotten, housework left for the morrow.  We aren't just doing patchwork!  We are bonding!

"An angel is not only a set of wings,

but also a set of hands to guide you through life."

Sukiyaki

I'm off and about in a few minutes...  Patchwork with Mrs. Furui to get some planned projects in motion.  My favorite day of the month!

So....  With not much to tell you about I thought I'd show one of our New Year's dinners.

Tetsu requested Sukiyaki for dinner one night.

We live in an area famous for green onions (we seem to live in an area famous for a lot of things... Apples...  Yuzu...  Yuba...  (I'll have to explain that one at a later date.)  Anyway, at least in our prefecture, Nissato Negi, the name of the green onion, is fairly well known and the onions cook up to be sweet and tender.  And after we bought a couple large bundles of green onions (one for Tetsu's mother) Tetsu wanted sukiyaki for dinner... one of the tastiest ways to enjoy the green onions.

So we had the green onions and I bought konyaku noodles, and enoki mushrooms, of course tofu and some greens called shunniku.  And of course the most important ingredient, paper thin slices of beef.

Isn't this a beautiful way to display beef slices in the supermarket?  I know... It is a bit strange to get excited about a meat display, but the black and gold styrofoam meat tray... made to look like laquerware, the artistically arranged slices... it may be trying to look like a pink flower... Well, I have to give the supermarket points for trying, even though I'm not a meat eater...  Tetsu was happy!

I have made sukiyaki for my family in the States but for some reason it tastes better at home in Japan.  I think the reason is the pot that I use!  Tetsu mother had a heavy iron pot that is specially made for sukiyaki.  Making sukiyaki in a fry pan just doesn't do it for me (though my American family doesn't complain.)  I would love to take my American family an iron sukiyaki pot, but it is extremely heavy and needs to be oiled to keep it from rusting.  It sure makes delicious sukiyaki!

You can make sukiyaki sauce with 1/3 cup soy sauce, 3 Tbsp sake or mirin, 5 Tbsp sugar, and 3/4 cup water.

Cook it all up...  if you have a burner on the table put the pot in front of everyone and add more ingredients as the family eats.

"Ittadakimasu!"  ("Chow down")

Scrappy Mountain Majesties

I've been cleaning up my computer files and trying to transfer things into my iPad.  Talk about frustration!  I really am not good with the computer and I just keep adding things and copying things and pretty soon I don't know where anything is.  After I had THOUGHT I'd organized the picture files... you know copy last year's files to an external drive... I tried to update the iPad.  This was around 6:00 in the evening but when I went to bed at 11:00 (after staring at the screens for too many hours) it was still syncing.  This morning I find things basically updated, but there still seem to be missing files.  And that is what I am trying to do this morning.

I'm going to need a coffee break pretty soon...

SO....  What I'm NOT doing but had planned to do today was make some more Scrappy Mountain Majesties blocks from Bonnie Hunter's quilt pattern instructions.  I had wanted to try this quilt in batiks and so for no other reason than I didn't have any machine piecing going on (but I have knitting and hand applique and Y-kun's blocks etc. etc.) I started cutting fabric and sewing these blocks together.  I'm going to try to keep this in a blue and green color scheme but so far I think there is too much green in there.  This will be another S~L~O~W~L~Y~ made quilt so don't expect much progress.

Especially if I have to mess with the computer files in the meantime...

UPDATE:  Yeah!  I think I did what I was trying to do!