The last of December and 2022

There are only a few hours left of 2022 here in Japan.  Tetsu and I have eaten our End-of-the-Year soba noodles (I think long noodles are supposed to bring long life) and he is settled in front of the TV watching boxing so you know that's not where you are going to find me!

So...  what were my arty endeavors this month?   

I painted up the shadows on our yard table one afternoon...

This was a try at the misty morning scenery near the school.

I took a class with Shari Blaukopf on snow scenery and I think I really learned a lot.  

Here was another challenge photo...

And one more.  This is the second online class I've taken with Shari and if I can only remember what she teaches I could probably get to enjoy this watercolor painting!

There is a famous mouth artist in Japan and I pulled out one of his postcards that I had and attempted to reproduce it with watercolor and ink.  

The sunrise was just beautiful one morning and so I tried painting that.

The real thing was better.

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Family (mostly Luka) updates.

Luka is transitioning from the baby stage to toddler stage.

He got to the dentist.  I don't know if he's been there before or not but at least he wasn't screaming.

Headed somewhere with Teddy bear and Santa.

The family got to California for a surprise trip Leiya had planned for Tony.

A tree-dweller!

I got one picture from Julieta of Takumi taking the dogs out for a walk one night...  Wait a minute!  They live in Southern California!!!  What's with the hat and scarf and jackets that all three of them are wearing?!  If they think their town is cold they should spend a evening with us these days!

And that's about that for this year.  As I wrote in my bullet journal tonight.

"The year was filled with joys... (meeting Luka, seeing Takumi's house and Leiya's house, getting together for Kiana's wedding) and surprises... (my rheumatism diagnosis and hospitalization) and tears... (the passing of Patora).'' 

What will next year bring?

End of the year going-ons

We are doing last minute errands around here and somewhat getting into heavy cleaning for the New Year.

I had to take at least one photo of the Christmasy entryway before I take everything down for the New Year!

We had a quiet Christmas here with presents like socks and towels but actually we have been very blessed with gifts from friends and neighbors!  One of Tetsu's pool friends seems to like to visit my blog and for the past year he has been saving the photos of Luka and he made us a CD of Luka's past two years complete with background music!  Such a lovely gift and such a surprise!  Thank you Mr. K!

Going out for a curry lunch with Marlene's family was the highlight of the season!  Doesn't Marlene look pretty in her bright red Christmas shirt!  

The greatest gift though for us was a message from our vet saying that John's tests had come back clear.  A couple of weeks ago he had to have surgery to remove what we thought was a wart on his eye but the vet sent a biopsy in to some lab because she suspected it was malignent.  I decided not to dwell on the "what are we going to do" about future aggressive surgery or letting John go naturally until the tests came back and we knew what we were dealing with but I've been praying about it constantly.  

The message that John is going to be OKAY raised my energy levels 100 percent!!!   Praise the Lord!!!  This problem dog sure grabs my heart!

My quilt output wasn't great this year but I got a few things done and some of them were quite large. Two Songbird Garden quilts.  The Labyrinth.  A Happy Village, something I just played around with featuring John, A Scrappy Leaders/enders quilt, and an applique and pieced bedcover size quilt.

And I can finally show three of the Christmas stockings that I made for Leiya, Tony and Luka.  Leiya's and Tony's were a secret and Leiya got them today... a few days late for Christmas.  I made three more this season, so I've gotten pretty good at making Christmas stockings!

I hope to post one more time this year with Luka updates and arty things!

Projects and a party

It is December 24th here in Japan already and we have a white Christmas!  

It has been snowing since early morning and it looks like it is going to stick.

I guess I don't have much to report on own life around here but I did hear from Mrs. Furui this week and I saw M-san yesterday and they both have finishes.  

Last year sometime when I finished up the dinosaur quilt for Luka, I was so proud of it I took it to Mrs. Furui to show her and since she has a grandson about the same age, she decided to make the smaller version of the quilt for him.  I loaned her the instructions and gave her some hard earned advice from the lessons I'd learned about organization for this quilt and since then she occasionally updates me on her progress.  And this week she sent me an email with a photo attachment saying that she finally finished the quilt and sent it off to her grandson.  What a difference in two quilts made from the same pattern!

Mrs. Furui's quilts are always lovely, elegant pieces done with intricate hand quilting.  

Mine are always a bit funky, wild colors and in this case I machine quilted Luka's dinosaur quilt.

I haven't seen M-san for a few weeks because Covid is hitting our town hard again but she ventured out yesterday and we had a few hours chatting and reading The Phantom Tollbooth together.  (That's one of my favorite books and it has a lot of interesting English idioms in it.)

M-san made me a lovely little quilt from orphan blocks that I'd had lying around.  M-san is determined to practice and improve her machine quilting and so she put together the blocks, added the border and did the quilting and binding all herself!  

Didn't she do a nice even job on the quilting? 

M-san also told me that her sister-in-law had visited her and taken an interest in the patchwork that M-san had been doing and that using some leftover 2 1/2 inch blocks that she had, M-san taught her sister-in-law some of the basics and next time was going to teach her how to quilt a piece.  Now that news is thrilling to me!!!  I've passed along some of my sewing skills to M-san who is now passing those along to someone else!!!  It makes me feel connected to other people and maybe future generations!  My student is a teacher now!

And the other big news for the day is that today (US time, yesterday Japanese time) is Luka's birthday!  Luka is two years old today and Leiya said she wanted to make it special and separate from Christmas so she went all out!  This morning Tetsu and I got to sing Happy Birthday to Luka as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake.  (He was going to do this numerous times as he likes blowing out candles and they were going to have the whole ritual again online with his other grandmother.)

Luka is really into cars and construction vehicles right now so Leiya made a construction zone in their living room and his cake was a construction site.  

Looks like a fun birthday party for just the three of them!

Days whizzing by

I have noticed that there is less time for me in Japan than there is in America.  Of course I know that this is not true but my year round lifestyle in Nikko, Japan compared to what my summer holidays were in California, is vastly different.  Every summer in California, the sun would still be out at 8:00 in the evening, the family would be taking a final trip out to Starbucks or to visit friends.  In Japan, especially now, the sun goes down at 5:00, we eat dinner and close the house up against the cold soon after and as I don't watch TV, I go upstairs by 7:00 and am in bed by 9:00.  

Our upstairs rooms are unheated so I snuggle in with cap and neckwarmer and plan to read for awhile but I usually fall asleep before 10 minutes have passed...  And there goes another day!

So what all this is leading up to is that I can't think of much that I've been doing and the days go by quickly...

I do have my bullet journal which should somewhat be a record my days...

Speaking of bullet journals, Tetsu suggest we go to the art supply store where I can buy my journals and so I spent an hour there gathering things I think I "need" for my art...  Pens (mostly Copic pens), more water color paper, a new journal, and some paint brushes.  Much too much went into my basket and out of my wallet!

Another day, I joined Marlene and husband and the Sugas to go to Costco.  Costco recently built a new store in the city next to us and the Sugas are members and they let the rest of us tag along.  Japan Costco is almost exactly like any American Costco but of course it does have a lot of Japanese products.  

I can still buy strictly American products too so I filled my cart with peanut butter (that is a difficult one to buy in Japan) and chocolate chips (we definitely can't get this size at the local supermarket!) and some salad dressing.  Someone needs to bring Ranch Dressing or Blue Cheese dressing to the Japan Costco but this brand is the next best thing.  We took a pizza home for lunch this day!  And I brought back a couple of slices for Tetsu who hadn't been able to join us.  A taste of home!

Other things I've been doing...

I've started hand quilting the Plaidish quilt and so far I'm just getting lines into the squares.  This is going to be my winter bound project.

Gasp!  I'm NOT knitting anything for Tetsu this year!!!  This will be a first since we got married!  A break with tradition.  His closets are stuffed with sweaters and vests that I have made him over the years and that he no longer wears since retiring.  A few of them have moved to my closets so that I can wear them, but at any rate, he doesn't need anything more!  I've bought him towels for the bath this year.  (so uninspired).

I did get out my knitting needles a bit for another project which I can't show yet.  You get the idea.

Toi has had free range of our house since Pato died and he loves the freedom and being with people.  People, he likes, it's the other cats that he still can't get along with.  Tetsu is surprised though at how loving Toi wants to be with him.

We did get up Christmas quilts in our house and a few Christmas decorations, and M-san's father brought us over a beautiful Poinsettia plant for our entry way.  Christmas is coming faster than I can get ready for it!

 

Arty supplies and thoughts

The other day a blog friend wrote to ask what type of watercolors I have been using for my painting and such.  I explained what I could but I decided to write a post about it and take pictures of my desk which doubles as my cutting board when I'm quilting.  (You can see my sewing machine on the other side of the desk.)

Long time followers of my blog know that until maybe two years ago I had never done anything arty at all.  My creative outlet was dedicated to quilting and sometimes knitting.  

A chance encounter with a book about bullet journaling and then a look on Pinterest and YouTube and I found a new to me way to express oneself through art.  I bought a bullet journal and some pens and a bunch of stickers and washi tape and since then my bullet journal has evolved quite a bit.  One thing I continue however is to write out a Bible verse everyday and then some of my thoughts about it.  

From washi tape I started doodling which is a sort of a cartoonish activity to record in visual form some of what my day has included and I added brush pens hoping to make my handwriting prettier (but I've since decided that my handwriting is what it is and it conveys who I am and even how I'm feeling that day so I haven't tried to make it more attractive recently.)

Takumi bought me some Tombow ink pens (I asked for them for a mother's day present) and I played around with those.  

I bought a small set of 24 colored pencils at the stationery shop and that added more color to my bullet journal.  

Next I bought a small set of watercolor pencils as I'd never heard of them before and I was intrigued with those and they have been great fun!  The smaller sets led to larger sets when Tetsu saw that I had developed an interest and my 24 colored pencils have expanded to include a box of 90 pencils.  The 12 watercolor pencils now include a box of 60!

I'm not sure when I started using the watercolor set I bought as I find watercolors very intimidating, especially for "real" art.  For adding a bit more color to the bullet journal doodles though, this has been a great medium.  

For the real stuff though I've learned that one needs to have real watercolor paper which comes in different weights and are made of cotton and such.  The artists out there teaching seem to have their preferences (cold press vs. hot press) but I still don't understand that.  While I haven't found too much success with my watercolors yet, I have found that watercolors and ink together seems to not need the delicate shadings and blendings of the colors so much so I'm still on that style and I really like adding ink to what I've tried to paint or vice versa, I ink out something and then add water color to it afterwards.  Again, this seems to depend on the preference of the teacher...

I also have a set of Coupy crayons but I haven't really explored how to use those yet...

My first online art class began with Valerie Sjodin and her course on Celtic Knot art with colored pencils.  That was a big jump into something that wasn't really beginner level but I loved that class!!!

I discovered that online learning was a resource that I could so benefit from and later I found an artist named Sandy Allnock who has many classes especially for beginners and I've gone through quite a few of her classes now.

Another online class I've taken is from Shari Blaukopf and I loved that one too.  I even have bought access to another class that I haven't started yet.

On YouTube I've followed Tony's Urban Sketching, 

and Grandpa Shibasaki, both have led me to different types of painting and art.  Such fun!

Then just last month I decided to take the plunge and sign up for SkillShare which is a year long membership that is somewhat pricey initially though if you think of it monthly it is only about $15 a month...  I've already been jumping around at that website and come accross many other artist/teachers that I'd like to study with. 

So, for anyone going into the artistic world I guess I'd say, buy the best quality materials you can because even a small set will last a long time and before you've used it all up you may want to explore in deeper ways with better quality materials.  I'd also maybe suggest as gifts for someone, a gift card to an art supply store might be even better than trying to buy what you think your loved one might use or like.  He/she will probably have a better idea of what can be a good addition to the art room.  And I really think that this SkillShare (and there are other art/teaching websites like Domestika) would be a great gift for someone who then could explore different styles and techniques!

(Things I like and like to do.  Four cats, John, Duolingo, quilting, knitting, nature, swimming, rain, iPhone, Bible, cross walk job, camera, art journaling. )

One last idea.  Most of what I've been painting, drawing, doodling is for my own satisfaction though I do get greatly cheered when someone on my blog or on Instagram (where I post only arty things) gives me a pat on the back.  Still, the doing is all about improving and right now I just do SOMETHING everyday and whether it looks any good or not, I will consider it a learning experience and a step on the stairway of improvement.  It has been a fun journey so far!!! 

 

Getting things done

I made fast work of all the blocks I'd cut out and sewn for the Plaidish quilt and have spent the last two days sewing the blocks into rows.  

Ta-da!  A flimsy!  This has turned out large enough so that I had to get Tetsu to stand on a chair and hold it up for me outside as there is nowhere to lay the whole thing out nor will it fit on my design wall.  You would think that this has made a dent in my scraps but not so...

Today I've set up the diningroom as my basting station and I will work throughout the day on board basting this.  I've rolled backing (an old sheet) and the flimsy onto two long narrow boards and sandwiched the batting between them.  I go across in a herringbone-like stitch to the end of the narrow area that I'm basting and then I pull the whole quilt towards me and unroll more backing, batting and the flimsy.  This has worked the best for me these days as I no longer am able to crawl around on my knees and of course have to floor in our house large enough to spread everything out.  

Yesterday afternoon Tetsu and John and I walked to the school and back with Tetsu picking up trash as we went.  This was my first walk to the school since probably July and Tetsu's chore made the going slow enough for me to plod along with very few problems.  I used to take this walk daily in 15 minutes to the school and 15 minutes back but though our walk took an hour, I felt a great sense of accomplishment and gratefulness that I am healthy enough again to be able to do so much exercise!

And speaking of exercise, Tetsu and I are back at the pool regularly and I've stopped grumbling about the exercise as for awhile it was all that I was getting.  I even asked Tetsu to buy me a new swimsuit as a Christmas present and yesterday afternoon we went to a sporting goods store hoping that I could find something.  I'm not happy with "grandma" style swimming suits that probably fit my body shape a bit better, and I wanted something sportier but I really need to be about two sizes smaller!  I stuffed myself into three suits and finally chose the one that seemed like it could hold me together without bursting a seam...  Trying on swimsuits is such a horrifying activity!!!