February update

Let's see what February brought us...

I've been experimenting with different online drawing classes.  I tried sketching for awhile and then I tried Whimsical sketching.

This is from my sketching class.

And something I tried on my own.

Sandy Allnock's Whimsy class was great fun but each page took SO MUCH TIME!

I made a smaller page in my bullet journal and combined a previous whimsy lesson on birds, and then colored it all in.

I've now moved on to a Typography for Bible Journalers class, also by Sandy Allnock.

They make for nice small additions to my bullet journal.

From Takumi and Julieta we get news that their new doggie, Pollo is slowly getting used to his new family.   I hope Hazy is happy with the new family member.

The family doesn't live far from Idyllwild, California and they get up to the mountains whenever they can.  Idyllwild has a Golden Retriever for their mayor!  Mayor Max!  I love this photo!

Of course at the end of every month I have to give a Luka update!

Luka playing under the quilt Grandma Tani (me) made for him.

And outside enjoying a warm day.

Tony got Luka dressed up and presented him to Leiya as her valentine present.

Luka has been to a children's play park and he is learning how to make friends.  He is also beginning to talk and likes B words.  Birds.  Blueberry.  But Daddy is still his favorite word!

As for quilting?  Nothing yet ready to show!  

Flimsy made

Wrapping up the month here and February sure was cold!  We didn't get too much snow but the mornings were bitter!

So I promised to show you what I've been doing up in the sewing room and I now have a flimsy.  This is my 16 patch quilt that I'm not quite sure why I'm making...  Is having an over-flowing leaders-enders bin enough of a reason to make a quilt?

I actually have two bins filled with leaders/enders, one bin with 2 1/2 inch squares and one with 2 inch squares.  I threw out the idea to M-san that maybe we could make the same quilt and she could use one of the bins and I would use the other.  She was game and said she'd prefer to use the 2 1/2 inch squares.  The PLAN was that she would take the bin home and start sewing the squares together as she did other things and when she had made enough blocks we would talk about the next step.  In the meantime I was going to do the same with the 2 inch squares.

Alas, Corona hit our prefecture hard and most everything has been canceled.  No English classes for me, either the women's class nor the preschool.  No going to church, no going to the pool.  Even M-san said was getting fearful of going out and so we agreed to put our meeting up to sew on hold.  I offered to take the bin of leaders/enders over to her but she said she has been quietly tatting and she'd rather wait to get started on a new quilt.

I still had my hand quilting going on downstairs but I did want to start working with my new sewing machine and so I've gone ahead and sewed the 16 patch blocks.  Once that was done, I worked on the interlocking x blocks using only stash fabrics and now all the blocks have been sewn together.  

I realize the quilt would have had a crisper feel if I'd used a plain white for all those x blocks but the purpose of this quilt was to use up fabric and so all hues of lighter fabrics got used.

The next test is going to see how my new machine holds up to free-motion quilting and once I figure out how I want to quilt this I'll sandwich this up and get to work on it.  This quilt made a dent in the 2 inch squares bin so I do hope M-san and I will be meeting up again soon so that she can start using up the 2 1/2 inch squares!

Super Cats Day

In Japan it is already February 22, 2022.  2/22/22.  I was pointing out this unique sequence of numbers to one of the 6th graders at the crosswalk this morning and she informed me that today was Super Cat Day.   And why is it Super Cat Day?  Well, February 22 is usually called Cat Day because of the numbering and the super comes because this is the year 22.  

Japanese love to make puns and word plays out of numbers and the number 2 in Japanese is "ni".  It so happens that Japanese cats say "niao" rather than "meow" and kittens might consecutively say "nyan-nyan-nyan".  That's why February 22 is called "nyan-nyan-nyan day" and this being 2022 makes it "Nyan (February)  Nyan-nyan (22nd)  Nyan-nyan (2022) Day".

In honor of Super Cat Day I am posting recent pictures of my cats.

I had hoped to report, and planned to blog, about how my cats were mellowing out.  Because everyone is getting old, we were experimenting letting Toi and Patora out of their isolation to mingle with the other cats and it seemed to be working.  There is Cleo in the foreground with Mi looking over her shoulder and Patora and Toi snuggling in the back.  Toi and Cleo are arch enemies but I found them all on the bed together!  

"This is finally going to work!" I thought. 

Alas, a day later, Toi ambushed Cleo again, fur flying, Cleo trembling and traumatized and Toi was placed back into his large room with Patora occasionally keeping him company.  

On another day, same bed, Patora and Cleo sat within sniffing distance of each other.  These two are actually brother and sister but they have had past issues also...  And anyway, Patora would prefer to sit with Toi so it all works out.

Here we have queen Chip who wishes she were an only cat.  She doesn't like anybody and spits and slinks away rather than fight with anyone.  She sticks to Tetsu like glue.  She hates John with a passion and the feeling is mutual.

John and Chip are putting up with each other in near proximity only because both of them want to be on the warm side of the heated carpet.

And here we have Mi-chan, the darling of them all.  She loves everyone, she'll play with John, she'll snuggle with feisty Toi and try her best to get close to Chip and Patora.  She is the least healthy of all our cats (feline aids) but she is hanging in there and all the cats are over 10 now, Patora and Cleo are 16!

John thinks the house is over-run with too many cats and he's probably right.

"Nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan!"

    

Squirrelly for art supplies!

Though my blog started out mostly about quilts and cats I don't have much to show in the quilting department.  I am quilting in the evenings and I am very glad I have this quilt to work on in the cold winter months.  Upstairs in the sewing room I have been putting together a smallish leaders/enders quilt that should be in flimsy stage tomorrow.

Actually, what I have been doing is a lot of arty things, most of them by watching YouTube videos.  It is a surprise to me how I've been drawn into the drawing, painting world as I have never had much of an interest until the pandemic started.  I always knew that I wasn't artistic, just very gung-ho about making things and not worried about intricacy and the time things take.  But once I began to think it might be NICE to be able to draw, I went at it whole heartedly with the philosophy that drawing something daily can only lead to improvement.  

I picked up the cheapest set of watercolors paints I could find.

I bought a set of 12 colored pencils (not even realizing there was a difference between colored pencils and water-colored pencils and then I signed up for the Celtic Knots class given by Valerie Sjodin.  

I bought a better set of colored pencils for that class, 24 colors! and some pens and enjoyed myself immensely.  

Tetsu said he wanted to buy me an even larger set of colored pencils for Christmas and my present from him was a set of 100 colored pencils.  He had actually wanted to buy me a set sof 100 art crayons but I said I didn't know how to use crayons and asked for the pencils instead...

Then a few weeks ago, while we were in a recycle shop, I came across a full set of 60 artists crayons in a slightly dented box.  YEAH!!!  I stepped into crayon art!  

And then this weekend at the same recycle shop, I came across a NEW box of 60 water-color colored pencils!!!  Another snap purchase!  That recycle shop must be an outlet for a local stationary and art supply shop.  Two treasures to my eyes!

So... what have I been doing with my art supplies?

There is an elderly Japanese artist on YouTube who calls himself Grandpa Shibasaki and I tried following his art lesson using watercolors.  He makes it look so easy.  It is NOT.

I got out my crayons hoping I could control them better than I can control water colors...  Hmm...

Then I tried out my water-color pencils using a technique on "whimsical sketching" I'd learned in an online class with Sandy Allnock.  That was only partially successful.

I had gotten started on all this art because I wanted to add color to my bullet journal so I got out the regular colored pencils and doodled in a whimsical squirrel to the corner of a page.

And finally, trying to remember what I'd learned in another of Sandy's classes on pencil sketching, I gave it another try last night.  

I guess I feel most confident in pencil though it doesn't help with my wanting to learn to use color.  But I have to start somewhere!

Snow

We had a snowy day this week which is a bit unusual for us.  

We live right on the edge of a range of mountains to the north which usually keeps snow clouds just beyond us.  It has been a couple of years now since we've had a heavy snow that entailed a lot of shoveling.  Global warming is showing itself in our part of the world also.

Still, even the little snow that we got on Thursday was enough to send most of the citizens of our prefecture into a panic of getting ready for being cabin-bound.  I understand their feelings completely.  Being a Southern California gal, I DO NOT DRIVE IN THE SNOW!!!  I barely even WALK in the snow!  Tetsu finds me and all the rest our neighbors as being weak-kneed, wimps.  He grew up in the snowy part of Japan where you had to dig your way to the front door every evening and where he wore skis in order to get to school.  The small amount of snow we get nowadays is hardly even snow in his book.

Anyway, school was scheduled for Thursday and so Tetsu offered to drive me to the school and shovel snow around the crosswalk if needed.  I could imagine me having to leave home an hour ahead of time just to get to the crosswalk on time if I was going to walk it so I gratefully accepted his suggestion.

This is what the school looked like when I got there to open the front gate.

There really wasn't that much snow sticking on the sidewalks so Tetsu went at it with a broom rather than with a shovel.  I asked him to sweep the short slope leading from the neighboring residential area as the kids tend to slip and fall when they are running down the hill even when there isn't snow.  My hero with his favorite Japanese twig broom.

Tetsu's Bitmoji looks just like him!

Across the street from the school is a bamboo grove and it looks so different when all the bamboo have snow on them.

Yesterday morning there had been another dusting of snow during the night but it didn't stick on the asphalt.

Winter isn't over with so we may still get a heavy snow.  Being housebound just means we spend more time in front of the TV watching the Winter Olympics.  I noticed at the Opening Ceremonies that the Olympic nations' placards looked a lot like the Celtic knots that I had learned to make last year, so I added a page to my bullet journal.

Bath topic but mostly a post about food

We are having a quiet week this week.  One reason is that Covid numbers are climbing and things are being canceled right and left.  (school evaluation meeting, first aid course, pre-school English, Friday patchwork with M-san).  

The hardest thing for Tetsu is that he is not able to go to the pool/bath facility that we normally use.  That is, I frown on us/him going and so he grumbles about it but usually agrees to stay home.  I have always used the pool facility as a place to get my exercise, swimming laps begrudgingly but I do it and I guess I am good at it.  Tetsu will walk his laps at the pool but he really wants to go for the very large hot bath facilities.  

Our house originally had a tub room with a bath tub and a shower in it (it is a separate room).  But we stopped using the bath tub part of the room over 10 years ago as I could care less about taking a bath, and Tetsu didn't like being cramped in a small tub in a small room. (The bath tub faucet has since broke and we've never fixed it.)  He wants space, he wants to spread out his arms and legs and soak, he wants ultra-hot temperatures.  If possible, he wants some beautiful scenery to look out on.  This is why he loves the hot springs so much.  Bathing to Tetsu, and probably to most Japanese, is an activity for rejuvenating, heating of the body's core, absorbing the healing minerals of the steaming water.  For me, bathing is getting clean.  Period.  I can sit in a hot spa for 5 minutes after scrubbing down but it is not a relaxation experience.  I don't know how many Japanese have told me how wrong I am about my thoughts on bathing.

At any rate, Tetsu misses the pool's hot bath (it doesn't provide the beautiful outdoor scenery but all the rest is there) because he wants to soak and reset his body every night and our quicky shower just doesn't do it for him.

"I'll just go for 30 minutes.  I won't talk to anyone.  I'll make sure there aren't many people in the bath when I go in." 

 

... but I frown and point out we don't know WHO has been in and who might have Corona and that no one wears a mask when in the pool or in the bath, so Tetsu is not a happy camper right now.

On one of our last hot spa outings, we had lunch at the little diner area and enjoyed ice cream parfaits.

Not a parfait you'd find in the States.  That is green tea ice cream and vanilla ice cream with two omochi (pounded rice) bals, sweet bean paste, whipped cream, sweet chestnuts, two Pocky sticks on a bed of corn flakes.  (For some reason, ice cream is often served on a bed of corn flakes.  It probably pumps up the volume but it also adds some nice crunch!)

I don't think I ever showed this picture either, of my ladies' English class at the house of a friend.  English classes have been canceled since this picture until March...  Anyway, we were all sitting around a low heated table the quilt spread over us all, and we enjoyed coffee and crackers and in front of each of us are dried persimmons.  Yum!

This was another dessert plate from a hot spa diner.  I loved the presentation on this.  Apple slices, tiny cubes of green tea cake and chocolate cake, and two types of decorative bean paste and omochi dumplings.  

And this is another bean paste sweet that one of the crosswalk children brought me last week.  She actually brought two and Tetsu got the other one and ate it before I could take a picture...  Cute cat!

You probably don't think much of this snack food but Tetsu and I love them.  These are an almond fish snack that we eat like potato chips.  Munch, munch, munch.  The little fish have been baked with a sweet seasame coating and they are eaten whole.  At this size, fish heads don't bother me at all.  The almonds are unsalted.  The package is labled as an excellent source of vitamins and calcium and we go through a bag much too quickly!

My friend sent us some BEAUTIFUL strawberries!  The are called Heart Berries and when sliced they look like valentine hearts.  Sweet and delicious too!

And this was this morning's breakfast which Leiya practically swooned at when she Facetimed me this morning while I was making it.  This is natto pizza.  Natto is fermented soy beans which are slimy and have a distinct aroma that most foreigners do not like...  I happen to like natto.  Though usually natto is eaten with rice, we occasionally put it on bread with mayonnaise, soysauce, green onions, top with cheese and then toasted.  As it was breakfast, I added a fried egg on top.  The soup is left over sweet potato potage from the night before.

That's a sparse sampling of what we've been eating!

Updates

I had planned to get a Luka update before the end of January but I got waylaid with sewing on my new sewing machine...  I've decided to get into some of my leader/ender bins and so I'm working on a 16 patch scrappy quilt now.  No progress yet to show.

I went to the crosswalk as usual this morning and noticed that there had been a change in the walking group leaders coming from the different directions to school.  Almost all children walk to school and they are made into groups to go and come home from school together.  Each group has a leader, usually a 6th grader or one of the upper graders, who leads the line (and they are supposed to walk in a line) and then another upper grader who brings up the tail of the line.  Everyone has their regulation backpack on their back and often carry along other tote bags with gym clothes or extra shoes or whatever.  And these days every child wears a mask when coming to school and of course within the school also.

Earlier this week we got word that one of the grades of the local jr. high had been canceled for three days because of a Covid outbreak and sure enough, this morning the elementary school 6th grade class has been kept at home for the rest of the week because someone got Covid.  That was the reason for the group leader changes.  The pandemic has hit our town now...  Today Tetsu and I have appointments for our third vaccination.  I hope we'll have gotten it in time!

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Okay...  Luka update!

Luka-kun checking out the snow.

Fun times with Daddy!

And Mommy.

Um...  I think you've got the wrong idea about how to wear sunglasses...

That'ta boy!

And an update from Takumi and Julieta.

They've adopted another dog!!!!  That's Hazy in Julieta's arms, whom they adopted last year, and Pollo, whom Takumi is cuddling.  It seems to be somewhat of a challenge to train Pollo so they need a lot of patience and love.  

He's getting the love!