Cute guests

I have been non-blogging for four days because Tetsu and I had some cute guests visiting us!  We had Tetsu's sister's grandchildren with us and we did our best to give them a good time!  We weren't really sure if we were going to be able to pull off this visit because Japan is in the middle of a very large typhoon and the parents were iffy about whether they would be able to drive three hours to get here, leave the children (or stay) and then drive back four days later... 

I said that I thought the purpose of the visit was to give the girls some English experience and so they didn't need parents around while they were visiting.  Tetsu's purpose was to give the children and their grandmother (Tetsu's sister) time together as she has no way to visit them or even have them over.   So it was decided that the 10 year old was responsible enough to take care of her 7 year old little sister and the two girls came by themselves by train!  That was a confidence building experience all on its own!

So Monday afternoon Tetsu and I went to the train station to meet the girls.  They made it!  This is Ageha and Yuzuka.  Ageha is 10 and as tall as I am.  Yuzuha is 7 and was most excited to spend the days with our cats.  We fed the girls a lot of sushi before bringing them back to our house for the evening.  As expected, John was very excited about having strangers in the house and he barked for most of the evening...  We've really got to figure out a way to keep him from getting so upset when people are over...  I can hardly entertain any friends anymore!

But John is pretty good when he is outside (far from his own territory) and so early Tuesday morning (5:00AM) we all went for a walk together.  The girls had said that they would never be able to wake up so early in the morning but in their excitement they were the first ones up this morning!

Proof that John can walk with people fairly obediently.  Ageha did the honors of holding the leash for a little bit.

Yuzuha said this was the first time she had ever seen rice fields...  I rather doubt that because although the girls live in a high-rise apartment in the city in another prefecture, they HAVE visited other grandparents and seen a bit of Japan.  It was true though that for them, this visit was a chance to experience four days of country living in Japan.

About these fingers...  EVERYONE IN JAPAN flashes the peace sign when you point a camera at them. This is true for little children who can barely walk and for old grandmas who also can barely walk....  I think I heard that the custom started when an American figure skater who visited Japan flashed the peace sign back in the 1970's... or it may have started when Olympic athletes were photographed giving the peace sign... anyway, the custom caught on and has stayed in Japan...  I get so tired of all the peace sign photos that get taken...

Part way along our routine morning walk, there is a corner of blueberry bushes that no one but Tetsu and me seems very interested in. 

We stood for a few minutes picking and eating blueberries.  This is real country living!

That is our house there in the background.  Tetsu must have been holding on to John when he took this picture for us.  See how tall Ageha is!  Age 10!

Back at home after breakfast I showed the girls our photo albums of Leiya's wedding and our trip to Michigan.

 Yuzuha was more interested in playing with Mi.

 Mi got a year's amount of love in four days just from Yuzuha.
The night before, Yuzuha had her dream fulfilled by being able to sleep with three cats in bed with her.

More fingers...

Mi IS pretty lovable and she doesn't flash fingers at us when we point a camera.

More tomorrow!
 

Scenery changes

Though almost every day we have had hot humid rain in the evenings (and the accompanying thunder) in the mornings we have been pleasantly surprised to look out the bedroom window to see Mt. Nantai in the distance. 

Yes, the removal of the forest means that we can see the fields and countryside to the north of us and as hoped, Mt. Nantai is partially visible through the remaining trees.

"Are you getting used to the changed scenery?" Tetsu asks hopefully.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I am."

I actually can see the beauty of what had been hidden by my beloved forest these past 30 years (for me).

Mt. Nantai, the largest mountain in our prefecture, is just behind those left trees.  The Kirifuri Range is on the right.  

This photo was taken in the evening just a few steps from our house as John and I enjoyed watching the changing colors of the sky when we went out after a hot day.  

The other day, our friend Toshi-san came over unannounced (meaning that we weren't home!) to see what change had come about and he flew his drone over our house.  Here is the back view of the house.  You can see we are at the end of the neighborhood.  The forest there at the top of the photo is reportedly due to be removed too but I'm not thinking about that and there have been no loggers around for the last two weeks...

Here you can see how the forest was clear cut just past our house...  The rest of that forest is also up for cutting but we hear that the land owner is wavering over costs... The change in scenery may be inevitable but I HAVE learned that one can get used to things and also find something beautiful in the change...  We will just have to wait and see.

In the meantime I enjoy sitting in my sun room looking at the mountains in the distance and listening to birds and cicada

 

Cleaning, sewing and books

It has been SOOOOO hot and humid that we don't go out much and I feel just sweaty and yucky.  And for all that Tetsu decides that we need to clean the upstairs room!  There is NO air-conditioning there and it is another good place to collapse from heat stroke!  We are having guests next week and we do want the rooms to be presentable and thus the major cleaning. 

I just get in the way when Tetsu and I work together (he is so much better at cleaning than I am) but I didn't feel I could let him suffer alone and thus I cleaned my sewing room, making more space in the closet for the overflow from the room Tetsu was working on.  I have made a few resolutions.

Make more scrap quilts as the room is overflowing with scrap bins.

Do not, in any way or form, use cardboard boxes for storage!

So much of what came out of the closet and from under the bookshelf were hidden remnants of fabric and cuts that I'd put away for someday use...  But if I forget they are there and can't see them... well, out of sight out of mind....  I discovered treasures...  In my own sewing room!

So that is what we've been doing...  My sewing room looks great and I wish I could sew!  But it is way too hot to be up there for any length of time and using a fan means that blocks on the design board blow away...  I will have to wait for cooler days to get some sewing done.

I did finish up the baby quilt that I'd been machine quilting..  This was a very nice panel with even the quilting lines marked out on it and so I didn't have to do any thinking at all.  Is this for a boy baby or a girl baby?  I think it is a boy's baby quilt (and I sort of need a girl baby quilt) but there are some flowers on this...  I don't really need to give the baby's mother anything but as I've got this quilt... better than nothing?

On a completely different line of thought, Mrs. Furui gave me this book a few weeks ago as her sister had helped with the translation.  It is the story of the Tsunami disaster at the elementary school which lost most of their students that tragic day.  Not light reading but it was very good and insightful. 

Not published books, but books I had made for myself.  Leiya's wedding album that I had made through Mixbook. 

We are so happy to have this beautiful book which I had made with heavy stock-board and personal touches (like scattered leaves and lettering etc.)  It was a rather expensive album for 20 pages but so worth it!  I love taking it with me to show people and looking through it myself... 

Another book I had made was through Blog2Print which was the only website I could find for slurping blogs into books.  In the past I had used a different website but for some reason they've stopped offering blog "slurping".  Our two weeks in Michigan in May were so wonderful and I had written so much detail on my blog that I decided I really wouldn't go back to look at the blog posts even though they were there...  and I really wanted to be able to relive those days... 

This was a hefty book too (in price also) because there are 158 pages of blog posts!  The cover is paper, the photos are all one size, but the quality of the pictures is excellent and I am so thrilled with this book too!  My only "complaint" is that I really didn't need my blog signature (which is considered a photo) after every post but I couldn't figure out if it was possible to remove all the signatures...  So there they are. 

 Okay...  back to working in the heat!  John is rather heat exhausted also!

The Selah quilt finished!

I'm a bit disappointed in my photos today but I'm not disappointed in my quilt.  The Selah Circle Challenge is finished!

As advised by blog friends, I have spent the last week quilting the middle of the Selah quilt. It looks much better, at least no puckering, but the quilting doesn't really show up very much.  In the center around the words I continued with grid quilting the same as I'd done around the circle of flowers.

Then around the flowers on the inside and the outside, I have quilted feathers which ended up being done freehand.  My marking pencil didn't show up and I got to thinking that if I can do freehand feathers on the machine then I should be able to do them at a slower pace by hand. 

Thus my feathers aren't uniform around the wreath of flowers but they can't be seen very much anyway.

One reason for the invisibility of the quilting is because of the deep blue color and batik blending of the fabric, another reason is because I didn't want the quilting to interfere with the flowers and words and so I used matching thread. 

It is only on the outer border that I used white thread and that border of feathers shows up a bit better.

The quilt pattern is called Insomnia by Lotusland and Queenie gave it to me when I saw her at the Tokyo Quilt Festival at the beginning of the year.  So...  this took a little more than 6 months to make.  Mrs. Furui took one look at this and said,

"And you are the one who said she didn't like applique!"  I guess I do now!

It is so nice to have a finish!

Summer heat!

Life is very boring around here lately.  It is too hot to do anything!!!
 
I'm know there are other hotter places in the world but Japanese humid summers really are miserable!  And actually this is the first year in a long time that I've had to live through it for any length of time.  Usually I'm in California where it is hot but a dry desert heat.  This oppressing humidity starts my head to pounding even before I get up!

John and I don't go for a walk during the day anymore and I don't get much movement in until nearly 8:00 at night.  John is in a bad mood too for most of the day and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think the weather is making him cranky. In this picture he took refuge under our bed for awhile and attracted all the dust bunnies under there...

We start the air-conditioner from about 8:00 am and it stays on all day which I've always felt guilty about but really, without air-conditioning we are liable to succumb to the heat...  We are all getting older and my body at least doesn't seem to adjust the way it used to!

For all that, Tetsu still thinks he's a young man, until he comes gasping into the house begging for water and a cool towel.  He still goes out to do yard-work which he claims he loves but I'm afraid I'll find him prostrate.  The other day, for some reason only known to him, he decided to cut the weeds in a large empty lot halfway across the neighborhood.  When he didn't come back for an hour I tracked him down by the sound of his weed-whacker and I brought him ice water and asked him to call it quits.  He didn't come home until 2:00 in the afternoon!!!  The hottest part of the day!  He said the various neighbors kept coming out telling him he should stop, bringing him cold water bottles and warning of heat stroke.  It wasn't until some man came out dressed in working wear and took over the job that Tetsu finally gave in and came home.

"Tetsu!  You think you can still do these things but the neighbors just see you as an old man who is going to die on the street if someone doesn't step in and help him!  Please come back inside by 11:00 at least!"

Tetsu thinks I am a bossy nagging wife and pooh-poohs my harping at him...

Another project that Tetsu has embarked on outside is to add some life to our yard that no longer is protected by the forest.  This also entails some heavy physical work because he rolls tree stumps from where the loggers piled them and brings them back to our yard (getting permission of course). 

Now the tree stumps have been arranged at the edge of where the forest used to be. 

 In this picture every other tree stump was originally a tree that had stood there and the ones in-between are what Tetsu rolled back.  I guess we can find ways to enjoy the new look of our yard...

Anyway everyone living through the summer, DON'T OVERDO IT and stay cool!

Caught in the rain

John and I took advantage of a break in the rain to go out for a walk.  Unfortunately I misjudged how much time before another downpour and we got stuck out in the fields as the storm clouds rolled in and thunder became audible in the distance. 

Before the rain we enjoyed the flowers and the sparkling countryside.  The sunflowers finally have enough sun to bloom.

 A nothing bit of clover looks quite pretty in the leftover jewels of raindrops.

But we did get caught out in the rain... and me without an umbrella, though an umbrella doesn't do John any good he is so close to the ground.  We were on the other side of this field near where the pig farm is (the white buildings in this picture), when it began thundering and raining in earnest.  Remembering the lightning strike earlier this month, I tried to quicken our pace and make a run for it but John isn't a great runner.  I can just hear him say,

"Tanya-san, I'm at a jog the whole time when you are just walking.  How can I go any faster?"  (You notice John does not call me Mom.  I am still an underling in his eyes.)

We stood out under a tree (smart move? dumb move?) when someone drove by us and went down the country road.  At the end of the street I noticed the car making a U-turn and the driver leaned out of the window when she got to us and handed me her umbrella.  That's why there is an umbrella in the above picture!  I had no idea who she was but she seemed to know me.

"My child goes to the elementary school.  Just give any teacher the umbrella when you get a chance and tell them it is Mrs. T's."

Wasn't that nice?  She must have recognized me as the crosswalk guard.  I still have no idea which child is hers or where she lives but I will try to get this umbrella back to her before I forget her name!

John and I came home dripping but we still can't touch John to be able to dry him off...  He had to drip dry!  Another reason why John doesn't like the rain!

Sewing finally!

This did start out to be a quilting blog but I haven't been reporting much on what I've been sewing... That's because there haven't been too many finishes...  And what I have finished have been smaller projects.

Last week was Tetsu's birthday and I was racking my brain for something to get him even though he says he doesn't want presents.  I did buy him something but he seemed more grateful for the handmade present I made him...

A computer "sleeve".  I guess one could call it a sleeve, it isn't a bag because it doesn't have any handles though I've offered to add handles if he wants some (he doesn't).  Tetsu bought a new laptop computer in March but it sort of has taken over the desk in the "sunroom".  Unfortunately, the cat house cats also make use of the sunroom when it is raining out or especially stormy and they like to sit on the chairs but they will occasionally get up on the desk.  We have already had one "accident" with a cat spraying on the desk and I could just imagine the fury if a cat peed on Tetsu's computer!  He had been putting notebooks and papers on the computer to dissuade the cats from sitting on it but I decided to make a waterproof sleeve that the computer can be slipped into easily... thus no handles.

I found this waterproof "fabric" and asked how one goes about sewing with it and found that I already had a silicon (I guess) sewing machine foot that sews on plasticized fabric.  I made the sleeve according to the computer's dimensions and then I also added a felt lining (as sewing the fabric meant that moisture could still get through seams).  Tetsu was thrilled with his new laptop sleeve with cats and a John dog on it.

Tetsu's sister, whom we see about once a month, asked me to make her a drawstring bag...  I had made her this same bag nearly 20 years ago and she claimed it was such an easy bag to use and wanted another one to replace the first.  I still had the original pattern though I haven't made it in the past 20 years. 

This is an easy project that I did in about two days by hand.  Just combine triangles, add a top piece folded inside to hide the inner seams and then add the bottom with bias tape hiding the base seams.

I also finished machine quilting the baby quilt panel completely forgoing the walking foot.  It came out much to my satisfaction and I still don't know why my walking foot was such a trial.  It was connected right...  It probably could be oiled but it was moving smoothly.  I cleaned the feed dogs and bobbin case because it seemed to me that the walking foot was moving more quickly than the feed dogs (because the top fabric pulled ahead) but in the end I just felt that there was less a possibility of ruining this quilt by just freehand quilting all the straight lines.

I am now sewing down the binding on all those scallops.

I was with my patchwork group on Friday and the purpose was to put borders on a quilt we are making for one of the members.  This quilt has been in the making for years but we never had a person in mind to give it to.  We decided that we'd all feel inspired to finish this for our newest member who never sews for herself but helps us with all the other projects we make.  Basting and quilting will begin next month.

And while I was at Mrs. Furui's house she got me started on crochet beading!  This is one of those projects where the purpose is to see if I can really do it!  I got the instructions on the basics and then came home and raided my bead box.  Actually there weren't enough of any one bead to do much of anything so that is why this looks so hodge-podge.  I guess I can say I can do this craft now though I don't know much what I am going to do with the skill.  By the way, I will have to go back to Mrs. Furui to find out how to join the ends to make a bracelet as I don't know how to do that yet...  Right now this looks like a long yellow earthworm...  Yuck!

And finally...  advice needed.  I have put the final quilting stitches into the Selah quilt.  This is also ready to be bound.  The question is, do I need to do some quilting in the center of this quilt?

Everywhere else is heavily quilted, the outer border with feathers, the inner square with a lattice, the flowers with stitch-in-the-ditch, the word Selah also outline quilted, but the rest of that center is a bit puffy...  I can't figure out how to quilt around the words "Pause in His Presence".  This is hand quilted so I don't want to start using a filler stitch with the machine.

Can I leave this as is or should I put more lattice in the center?  Any other ideas?