Introducing... Shirley!

Queenie posted her last step of Stumpwork this weekend and my Stumpwork lady now has a hat!!!

I was inspired by all of the fashionable millinery worn by the female wedding guests at this weekend's royal wedding.  My Stumpwork lady NEEDED a hat to join in the festivities!

I had a teeny-tiny scrap of that sheer ribbon left (that I'd used in the clothing step) and I decided to try and fashion it into a hat.  I cut the scrap into two parts, one to cover the head, one to make a brim and with a lot of effort got a hat made.  The sheer ribbon kept fraying and my pieces kept getting smaller and smaller!!!  Well, this is definitely NOT going to be washed in a washing machine so I think the ribbon will withstand time with delicate handling.

And, though not too original, I made another bundle of flowers for the hat to match the corsage on my lady's dress... and VOILA!  Shirley is born!!

Yes, I have christened her Shirley as a couple blog readers submitted the name (her middle name can be Tilda... another name suggested).

This was such a fun project!  I will see if I can get Shirley into card form or into a frame.

THANK YOU CARIN!!!!!
 

Stumpwork hairstyle!

Queenie's Saturday Stumpwork post made all the difference!!!

I can now show my Stumpwork lady without scaring people!  Just making my lady makes me think what a difference a hairstyle makes.  Maybe I need to go upgrade my own look!

Ta-da!  My elegant Stumpwork lady is now a CHIC, elegant lady!

I played around with different threads and yarns but ended up with this pink/orange...  I tried yellow which was nice but blended in too much with the white background.  (If there is ever a next time on this project I would like to try a colorful background).  I tried sparkly blue which was very pretty but a bit on the funky side.  This odd fuzzy pink was from a sample bundle that for some reason Mrs. Furui had given me years ago but the amount was such that it would never get used in scarves or hats or anything but made excellent hair (if you like pink.)

Long hair...? short hair...?  A long style (I sort of flopped a few threads over the head to get a feel) sort of got in the way of the clothing and became very wild and turned my lady into a free spirit.  As I was going for elegance I tried a short bob... with bangs which was a bit of an adventure for me...  I actually trimmed the bangs after they got sewn on.

I tried bead earrings but then remembered I had some necklace clasps leftover from some of my tatting projects and those were easily sewn in place.  Ooh!  A bob and hoop earrings!

I'm tempted to leave this just as is because I'm so satisfied but Queenie is thinking about one more lesson on hat making and I already have ideas for that!

My Stumpwork lady now has personality...  What she needs next is a name...

Deco-lattes

Two of my friends came to visit yesterday and we chatted from 11:00 to 6:00!  That's a lot of chatting!

Though I have friends/students that come to my house regularly, some very close friends only get to my house once every 15 years or so!  It is just easier for me to make the 30 minute trip into the next town and do errands while I am in the city than for the friends to drive out to the country where I am.  There isn't much to do out here besides visit and no one is going to be able to get a few errands done on the drive home...  Thus, I don't get that many friends coming out this way.  One of yesterday's friends actually lives in Tokyo and though she makes the drive to my nearby city for patchwork once a month, the extra 30 minutes out of her way to get my house makes for a long drive.  She said she left her house at 7:00 yesterday morning (that means she had a 4 hour drive!)

Anyway, the only thing I can offer except for a long chat looking out onto trees and forests is the Deco-Latte cafe I found a few months ago not too far from me.  Thus every time I have out of town friends over I make it a point to take them to the cafe.  I am becoming a regular at this cafe.

Yesterday's deco-latte (decoration latte) we enjoyed with many oohs and ahhs again.

 I asked the barrista to make me a Nikko Sleeping Cat latte....

And my cat lover friend asked to have a cat sitting in a coffee bath....  We loved how it jiggled in the "bath" as she lifted the cup.

And the other friend happened to have a photo of a drawing her artist friend had made and the barrista did a 2 dimensional take off from the photo.  Rather a talented fellow!

We sat and enjoyed looking at and photographing our lattes for quite awhile before sighing and finally drinking them down.  A fun way to pamper ourselves and sort of an unexpected treat in my countryside town...

My Tokyo friend took the expressway back to Tokyo and arrived in an hour and a half.  Great, but it costs $40 to use the expressway that distance.  Makes it an expensive deco-latte!

Stumpwork clothing!

I am expecting guests in a few minutes so this will have to be short...  But I did want to show you my Stumpwork homework from Queenie.

And so that we can avoid another scary Stumpwork head picture, here is Chip on our bed.  This is a long ago made quilt from Bonnie Hunter's website.  I think I called it Cherries Jubilee though I don't remember what her pattern was called....

Anyway, on to Stumpwork!  What fun! Yesterday's homework was dressing the Stumpwork lady.  It was a hot sort of day around here and when I started thinking about clothing (at 9:00 at night) I wasn't inclined to think about scarves and coats etc.  I went pawing around my scrap baskets and odds and ends drawers and found a short piece of sheer ribbon that I hadn't been able to throw away.  PERFECT!

Actually I think I made the neck too short on my lady, or at least it could have been a bit longer to get the beads to lay flat, but anyway, I wanted to hide the short neck with something and thus the beads.  I never wear beads!  I had thought that maybe my Stumpwork would end up as a reflection of me (you know... sub-conscious self-imaging) but I do not wear beads or anything as elegant as this sheer jacket/blouse/shawl.  And I am not a particularly pink person either but my lady is looking rather stylish!

If she's going to be stylish I thought she needed a corsage too and I just happened to have some interesting yarn with these thread bobbles interspersed along the strand...  A few of those bunched together and I have a corsage!

The next step is going to be hair and maybe a hat...  I tell you, I DREAMED about my Stumpwork lady's hat last night!!!

Story sequel and Stumpwork LIPS

Oh dear...  I really ought to figure out another miscellaneous photo as my Stumpwork head is still scary... 

How about that? According to Julie this is a Ootemari bush/tree.  It is one of the smaller plants we bought at the nursery on Saturday...

****************************

I have a sequel to that story about the talkative man Tetsu and I met on Saturday morning when walking around the fields of our community.  Remember he had been enthusiastic to tell us about the history of the community and about his own ancestral background and about the mythology of the mountains and THEN he found us again on the return part of our walk and told us about the food customs of the area.

Later that morning Tetsu and I took off to go to the plant nursery in the next city and didn't give the man a second thought and we didn't get home until afternoon.  When I checked the mailbox there was this ream of papers rolled up inside.  I flipped through the pages which were copies of newspaper articles and found the talkative man's name at the bottom of a couple of the articles...   The man had found us and brought over written proof of all the stories he had been telling us that morning!

It is true that while talking we had exchanged names... his a rather unusual name, ours an extremely common name.  The man had pointed off towards a farmhouse and said he "lived there".  We had told him the name of the neighborhood where we live.  The man had tracked us down and brought us his papers!  There are four or five other WATANABE families in our neighborhood so he had to have done some checking... And remember several posts back I had written about our nameplate by the front door so his search was made a bit easier.

And honestly...  how difficult is it to find a WATANABE in the neighborhood if you just ask someone "The Watanabe with the foreign wife"?  I realize it is not hard to find us...

I said to Tetsu that we ought to let the man know he had found the right house as we did know where he lived also but it was evening and then in was Sunday morning and I took off for church leaving Tetsu at home because he needed to get his car fixed.  That afternoon when Tetsu and I touched bases again he said,

"You know that Mr. K?  He showed up at the house again just after you left!  He really wanted to chat but I was just leaving myself so he says he'll stop by again.  I asked him why he was so good at researching the community history, and what his background before retirement had been.  Guess what!  Mr. K used to be a policeman!  I guess that's why he can find out things (like our address) so thoroughly!"

The next day when at the crosswalk I was relating the tale of the talkative man to the school principal as we waited for the children to arrive.

"Don't tell me.  Mr. K?  He shows up at the school all the time with his papers and wants to tell me all about the community.  An interesting man but he doesn't seem to catch on to when his audience might be in the middle of something else..."

We will probably see Mr. K again sometime...

**************************************

Okay...  On to the Stumpwork LIPS.

The LIPS were rather easy, just two small daisy chains that met in the middle (hopefully making a smiling Stumpwork lady)  I chose very pink "lipstick" color.  The more I work on my Stumpwork, the more she wrinkles up.  Still, that bit of bright pink makes her sort of cute.

Stumpwork EYES

This is a quickie post today as it is already 5:00 and I've got to go get dinner started.  Today's post is Stumpwork progress.

Queenie has already posted instructions for making LIPS on the Stumpwork so I wanted to prove that I did yesterday's homework...  The EYES.

The only problem with the EYES on Stumpwork is that they have to be somewhat similar to each other and that is harder to do than to say.  One eye was always bigger no matter how many times I re-placed my needle.  Hmm...  Well, my own face isn't particularly symmetrical (though it is my mouth that is crooked) so this will have to do.  It seemed like I was doing everything so minuscule and it made me think that maybe I should have started with a larger circle for the head to begin with...  The stitches were simple enough but getting a black pupil centered in the brown iris was a challenge and then the white "gleam" sort of disappeared in the french knot loops...  Eye lashes could have been longer I suppose...  And those eyebrows!  Well, those are definitely not mirror images but this was the best I could do!  Still, I am rather pleased with my Stumpwork so far and look forward to each and every one of Queenie's tutorials!

This is not a great photo of Mi with her dirty face but this is how she takes over Tetsu's newspaper in the mornings.  She has to be there right between the pages!

The first photo of the morning's fog and Mi's picture are just on today's post because I didn't want to scare anyone with my Stumpwork's EYES right off the bat!

Off to cook dinner and then MAYBE I can squeeze in Stumpwork LIPS time!

Gardening, Mother's Day and Stumpwork!

More yard work for us and more buying of plants! 

I feel rather the fraud as I cannot grow plants nor keep them alive very well...  But I can BUY them in abundance and they stay nice for a few weeks and then new plants will be bought and will replace the old ones.  If one really had a green thumb wouldn't one be able to grow flowers and plants from seeds and bulbs and cuttings?  Alas...  I only contribute to the nursery economy...

But Tetsu and I can take up quite an afternoon just wandering around the local nursery claiming that this plant won't last in our shady yard, or that plant was the same perennial that we planted the year before that disappeared in the autumn never to be seen again.  We end up with one or two very small and inexpensive pots and are hopeful for the outcome but rarely put any know-how into our gardening.  I even have to pressure Tetsu to PLANT the things because he is quite content to let them stay in their small pots and come to their demise as is...

This weekend's purchase was a very tall, $3 plant that was marked "Yellow Flowers".

"Look at this one with all the buds!  And it's cheap!  It will be fun to see just what "Yellow Flowers" means.  Let's put this somewhere in the yard."

So we bought the tall plant with many buds and brought it home.

"Umm...  Tani, You know this plant that we bought which we thought were a lot of buds?  I just looked closer and maybe those buds are really the left-overs from already bloomed flowers.  In which case we've bought a plant that probably won't bloom again and we don't even know if it is an annual or a perennial...  so maybe we just bought a green leafy plant..."

Tetsu and I have a lot to learn...

************************************************

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and motherly!  I heard from both my children and even got desserts and a card game from Takumi! 

I made the request of the card game as Takumi always tries to buy me something and I can picture him flipping through the Internet trying to think of something.  I thought by ASKING that I would save him the trouble but he bought a set of cakes for us to enjoy also.  So good of the children to make a fuss.  

I have to admit that I did nothing for my own mother this year but maybe I haven't for the past couple of years as I don't think she really catches on much to the goings ons anyway.  I will try to make it up to her when I go to the States this summer.

 ***************************************

I am also learning how to make Stumpwork and Queenie gave instructions on the NOSE. 

My little embroidery hoop clump of pink now has a NOSE.  Does it look like a NOSE?  Actually, with the making of the NOSE I seem to have added a lot of WRINKLES.  So maybe my Stumpwork lady is going to be a lady of age.

Queenie is getting ready for the EYES next so get in on the Stumpwork while you can!