May is full of smiles!

Already into the latter part of May and I'm only getting around to blogging.  I have numerous projects going on and I seem to be drawn to those before I sit down at my computer...

First off, I finished the Misted Pines quilt that I had been making!  Yeah!  The quilt is sure a beauty with the gradations of color and I'm pretty happy with the fabrics I chose to use though this would have been easier if I'd just had a pallette of colors in a kit or something.  I have seen this quilt longarm quilted with a woodsy pantograph pattern but as I've never done overall quilting on a large quilt I stuck to just machine quilting within all the blocks.  As I mentioned in the last post, my quilt shifted as I was doing the quilting and I had a number of pleats in the backing so I did spend one day ripping a corner out and redoing the quilting and I had to go in with hand repair (tacking down folds) on a few of the smaller pleats.  I'd definitely do a better job of basting the next time I try this!  

This quilt will eventually go to Leiya but I'll enjoy it on my wall for a few months.  We had talked about making two narrow panels so that each of us could have a strip of this quilt but definitely the quilt width is what accentuates the flow of colors.  This would be so beautiful in a queen or king sized quilt!

As usual I've been drawing and painting and May has given me lots of flowers to try my hand at.

We visited a garden of lupines one day.

Our own yard had a cluster of Japanese iris blooming.

The rice is growing throughout the countryside and there are patches of green carpet everywhere.  This is how the fields are flooded.

Whenever the weather is nice on Saturdays, Tetsu and I make it a habit to eat breakfast outside.

A had an absolutely wonderful time with 6 of my friends.  One friend lives in the central part of Japan and for the past 10 years or so we would meet up with her when all of us would go traveling for a couple of days.  Before Covid, every year the seven of us would travel and we've been to the northern prefecture of the main island of Japan, to the very southern part of Japan, we've visited dams and onsen and snowy Japanese gardens.  We've flown over Fuji-san and ridden on resort trains, and soared over mountains in cable cars.  What fun memories we have made!  Alas, because of Covid we haven't been able to go traveling for the past 4 years but while we chatted this week (5 hours!) we made plans to step out together again towards the end of this year.

This was our delicious Japanese lunch.  Can you imagine cooking all of that?  (Can you imagine washing up all the little dishes!)

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Leiya keeps our gmail box flooded with baby pictures.  Looking at grandchildren photos is a wonderful way to start the day!  Taiga-kun is sitting up (sort of) now.

When Tony holds him he still looks pretty small...

I thought this was hilarious!  Talk about multi-tasking!  Leiya took Luka and Taiga to visit Daddy at his office and here is Tony doing something on his computer, WHILE holding a baby, WHILE getting some exercise in!

And here is Luka in Daddy's big shoes!

And a project that has been taking up a lot of my time is a booklet I'm making with Valerie Sjodin in her online class A Beautiful Word.  For 2024, I chose the word SMILE to be my word of the year and so I've jumped in with that and am trying to put together art pages that represent it.   This is my front and back cover. 

The inside pages (that may need a bit more...)

Another inside set of pages with an insert...

And the insert opens up to this.

I've got four more pages to go...  My imagination is running thin.

And I leave you with an beautiful photo my friend sent me taken from her condominium on the 14 floor.  Early morning clouds drifiting between the streets and buildings.

The beginning of May

Japan is warming up nicely and we have had some wonderful clear days these past few weeks.  It is warmer than usual which makes us wonder about how the summer ahead will be, but it seems a shame to worry about the future and not enjoy the present.  That must be true of all things and not just the weather.

Last week was Golden Week with quite a few days off from work and school.  The farmers use this week to prepare their fields and for planting rice.  Right behind our house there are a couple of rice fields that have already been flooded and soon there will be tractors setting the rice plants into the deep water.   

Did you ever think about why some fields stay flooded while the next field over has vegetables planted in soil?  I learned a few years ago that the process of flooding the rice fields (which probably have a combination of soils in them) and immediately tilling them, results in layers of soil, the heavy bottom layer settles into the porous earth which keeps the water from draining away.  

In the middle of Golden Week is Boys' Day and when driving to town, we noticed the lovely carp kites flying over the fields and farmhouses.  Sorry, I couldn't get a good picture while we were out but I did come home to try and paint the Koinobori.  Koi means carp, and nobori means climbing, so the Koinobori are flown in hopes that the children in the household will grow up to be strong and able to overcome difficulties just as carp are able to swim up raging streams.

The good weather allows Tetsu to spend time in his garden and he has planted some vegetables in the back in hopes that we can enjoy Tetsu-grown produce.  Tetsu is not much for fertilizing nor for spraying to keep bugs away, and he admitted that he bought a couple of plants that he had no idea what they were.  He isn't counting on too successful a vegetable garden but it keeps him happy.  

We also don't have access to water where he has cultivated his garden and so he stands at the edge with a hose and sprays what he can haphazardly.  Some years he has good luck with cucumbers and green peppers so we shall see... 

Tetsu's garden is nice for Saturday morning breakfasts outside...

And for visiting with friends...  (Marlene and Kohei came over one afternoon.)

Keeping the coffee morning memories alive in my bullet journal.

Speaking of memories...  Every couple of years (it seems like only the years that I get to the States) I write a few blog posts and then decide I want to keep the memories and photos in book form (because how often do we go back and read our old blog posts?)  Years and years ago I found a website called Blog2Print and I have made 5 or 6 blog books that we just love.  

They are more than albums because they have all those written blog thoughts and actually the photos are large and very clear.  Though blog books have been a bit pricey (I tried to order when there was a discount going on) they have been worth the cost and this last blogbook has brought us a lot of joy already.  SADLY the website announced that they are closing so I don't know what I'm going to do from here on if I want to put blog posts to paper.  Does anyone else know of a good blog to book website?

I have finished sewing the Misted Mountains quilt and now am sewing on the binding.  I'll be able to show the finished quilt at the next blog post.  I had quite a few problems with the quilting however.  I decided to pin baste the quilt and either I didn't do a good enough job, or I didn't use enough pins.  At any rate, the quilt shifted as I quilted and I found as I got towards the edges that there were PLEATS in my backing!!!!!  Grrr!!!!  For heaven's sake!  Haven't I been quilting long enough to avoid problems like this?!  I should have spray basted this quilt as I do find that spray basting really holds the layers together more firmly...  But I didn't and so I had pleats.  I decided to leave them in...  This is going to be Leiya's quilt, she's not going to care.  Alas, I care (though I do preach to avoid perfectionism).  I took out a quarter of the quilting I'd already done, readjusted the pins and tried again.  

Better.  Not great.  The only thing in my favor was the very busy backing that I was using so I resorted to repair...  Most of the pleats are mainly visible because of the shadows they cast so I opted for sewing down the pleated area hoping to minimize the shadows.

It will have to do.  Next time I'll use spray baste.

I had to go to the local elementary school to teach traffic safety to the children a couple of weeks ago.  It was a rainy day so we all gathered in the gymnasium and the police officer who came to speak set up signals and a canvas crosswalk for the kids to practice.  Yes, we teach children to hold their hands high when they use a crosswalk and I remember when I first came to Japan seeing children and little old ladies bolting across the streets with their hands held high as if they thought they were putting a protective shield around them while cars screeched to a halt.  In theory, holding one's hand high lets the drivers know that you are not just standing around at a corner and that you'd really like them to stop, and also the high hand (and in the case of our school crosswalk, the yellow flags) will hopefully make the person more visible to the drivers.  That's also the reason for yellow hats and yellow backpack covers.  (As an aside, we crosswalk guards do NOT wear yellow...  just deep blue, hard to see uniforms.  The theory THERE is that being dressed like police officers will make the drivers think twice about ignoring the yellow flags and yellow backpacks and yellow hats and raised hands.)

The other day as I typed in my traffic safety log recounting my hour at the school, Tetsu peered over my shoulder and pointed out some grammatical errors I'd made and then corrected some of my awkward sentences.  I don't ask him to help me often because in the past, more often than not I'd get offended as he rewrote things and laughed at the characters I'd chosen.  He found quite a lot to correct on this day too and I thought again of how much humor I must add to the people at the City Hall who have to read my log each month!

I leave you today with another photo of the beautiful countryside I live in.

What we're up to...

Another week gone by and I can't say I have too many photos to show for it.  

In years past, I used to get a lot of pleasure from taking out my largish camera and photographing many of the mundane things I did each day.  The camera was heavy but I religiously carried it around and I had some software which automatically downloaded photos into my computer when I hooked the camera to it with a cord.  I enjoyed cropping and editing photos with the same software and Tetsu, who had a similar camera with exchangable lenses, and I would go out and pretend to be amateur photographers.

Tetsu would take many, many more photos than I ever did and we were both overloading our computers with photos so I started to leave photography to him and I was satisfied with my iPhone.  It was easy to carry around, it took adequate photos for my blog purposes, all the pictures were right there without any need for cords etc...  Around the same time the software I was using to edit camera photos was discontinued but I could do similar things on my phone...  I bought a new computer but never learned to use new photo editing software.  When I did get them into my computer, they seemed to disappear into a cloud app which started telling me I was going to have to pay for storage space.  I became frustrated with the whole downloading, editing, saving process.

The last straw was when my camera lens refused to operate.  I'd had this happen twice before and bought new EXPENSIVE lenses, as did Tetsu when his camera did the same.  This third time I just gave up.  I'm not going to buy another expensive lens.  I'm rather put out with the camera brand I was using but I'm not going to start over with another camera and lens set.  The iPhone makes visual recording easy and I guess I'm not that interested in photo quality anymore...

Along came the pandemic and we didn't get out, I didn't take photos and instead I started drawing.  Now I take a photo of something on my iPhone and then try to draw or paint it in my journal...  Photos have become a tool for my new drawing and sketching hobby.  Leiya encouraged me to post my drawings on Instagram and so I began doing that and my blog became a place where I put a few of my sketches but not too many to bore anyone.  I feel bad for blog readers that I no longer show points of Japan or my life through the camera lens, but anyway, my process and purpose of recording my life have changed...

I'm not giving up entirely though anyone can see that I sure don't blog as much as I used to.  I'm just saying there isn't that much to talk about or show unless we are visiting with family or if Leiya sends me family photos.  I've gotten away from using the computer much at all these days... I still am quilting, I still am walking the dog, I still love up my remaining kitties, but I'm also drawing and painting and taking Skillshare classes and posting on Instagram.  You can find me there but I don't post photos of people (myself included) nor give many details about my life.  I'm at Instagram taniwa07.  

So now that that explanation is out of the way...  What I've been doing is...

... sewing.  This flimsy is up on my wall and I'd like to get to the quilting this week.  While I was in Indiana, I was looking at the quilting books and patterns in JoAnne's and came across a pattern called Misted Pines.  It looked like a beautiful pattern but it wasn't a kit so trying to gather enough fabrics for the quilt seemed a daunting task.  I put the pattern back on the wall.  A few minutes later, Leiya walked by the wall and grabbed the same pattern saying, "Look at this!  Isn't this beautiful!  I bet you could make this!"  (It was labeled as Intermediate/Advanced).  I said I thought I probably could but to gather enough fabrics (12!) in different yardages would just give me headaches but Leiya asked me to do it and together we pulled the majority of fabrics that seemed to work from JoAnne's shelves and I figured I could use stuff from my stash when I got home.  Back in Japan I got to work but absolutely didn't realize how big this "Throw" quilt was going to be...  And it did use a lot of fabric, and I did mess up on the cutting a couple of times so I can see why this is an advanced level quilt.  But I've made it this far!!!

M-san made a cute mug-rug with the scraps I gave her.

We had a couple days of visitors last week and I recorded our time with them in my bullet journal.

We took them to the Oya rock quarry and enjoyed an hour in the depths of the quarry.  (Remember... the same one I was in when the Great Tohoku Earthquake struck 12 years ago.)

Down in the quarry.

Up out of the quarry.

Tetsu works hard in our garden and we have coffee there or practice Duolingo, or read the newspaper (Tetsu), or sketch (me) or nap (Tetsu).

Keep smiling.  We are.

 

Back in Japan

I realize I haven't said anything about being in Japan after my month and a half stay in the States, so I'll have to cover a few weeks here...

I arrived back in Japan on March 19th and Tetsu met me at the airport...  actually not looking so good.  I was concerned about his health while I had been gone but he assured me on that point and then let the ball drop that Chip, our sick kitty had passed away.  Though I hadn't really expected Chip to last the whole time I'd been in the States, the last Tetsu had told me a couple of days before was that Chip was holding her own.  

"Oh no.  Yesterday?  Today?"

"Now."

Chip had collapsed a day or so previously and Tetsu had been keeping watch over her for two days...  He had expected her to pass before he left to make the three hour trip to the airport but Chip was still hanging in there barely conscious...  In the end, Tetsu made the decision that instead of leaving Chip to pass on her own, he brought her with him in a toweled box but a few minutes before arriving at the airport Chip breathed her last...

So, it was with a heavy heart that we returned to the car in the airport parking structure to give Chip a few teary head pats before we started for home...  Thus was my welcome back to Japan.

Chip was 16 years old and though she has lived with many of our other cats and dogs, she has always been aloof and unfriendly with the other animals in our house.  She absolutely adored Tetsu and the past six months he has found it difficult to even sit down without her claiming a spot on his lap or his chest or wherever.  She was always the most beautiful kitty and we assured her she still was even as illness caused her face to become misshapen...  Of course she is buried nearby Mi-chan and Patora whom we've lost in the past couple of years...  We are down to a two cat family now when there was a time we had seven felines padding around the house.  We surely do miss Chip.

The day after my return to Japan, John came back to us slim and frisky!  And he has taken to cutely sticking his head over the mattress to see if Tetsu is awake every morning.  The month and a half away from home has made him appreciate us!

I had meetings to attend and doctor appointments to go to, but in between all of those I got to work on yet another quilt for Leiya.  We had made one last trip to JoAnne's before I left Indiana and she chose these muted fabrics for this quilt.  She has two friends who are going to have babies and that was why I was making these for her to begin with and I did finish two quilts while I was at her house.  

However, she liked the one so much that she decided she wanted to keep it and that was why I was given the task of making this quilt again for her friend.  

The nice thing about being back with my GOOD sewing machine, is that I have no problem doing freehand machine quilting and though Leiya chose a heavy silky fabric for the backing, my machine was able to work through even that.  This pattern is called Hidden Shoofly by Planted Seed Designs.  Now to get this sent back to the States...

The month that Tetsu was alone in Japan, he decided to take apart the cat house that we have had up for nearly 15 years and which took up the whole glass door and bench area in our back yard.  The cat house had been made when two of our cats couldn't get along with each other and in the summer, rather than be stuck in a broiling upstairs room we moved them to the screened in cooler cat house.  The past couple of years though, the cats have reconciled and so we were no longer using Tetsu's original creation.  With it gone, we have a lot more room in the yard and we get a lot more sun in the back room.  Bravo to Tetsu for the big deconstruction job!

Spring break started a couple of days after I returned to Japan and once I got all the important meetings and doctors appointments and quilts to be made out of the way, I came down with a cold.  Actually Tetsu got it first, he gave it to me and though he was perking after three days, I've been under the weather for nearly 10.  We're not really sure if it was just a cold, or influenza or the dreaded Covid or a heavy case of hay fever...  This was my no effort sketch of that time...

But I'm back at the pool swimming again, so all is well.

The elementary school had their entrance ceremony on Wednesday and the cherry trees around the playground were in full bloom.

We went to a local park yesterday with Marlene and Kohei and their daughter, Erika and enjoyed a picnic lunch under the trees...  A bit on the cold side still.

So that's how my month has been going.  Photos from Indiana keep coming in.

Leiya and family enjoyed viewing the total eclipse from their front yard.

Leiya said it was an amazing experience!

I wonder if Luka will remember it when he is older...

Taiga-kun is looking more like himself and less like Luka these days.