Count Your Blessings

I'm just mulling things over in my head again today. Wondering about things I want, things I think I need and things I decide I deserve.

I could make you a list of the things that I think I need. A new computer. A new digital camera. A new sewing machine. But what really is a necessity? I will need a new whatever when this one breaks down and I can foresee that if I suddenly had to do without then I would be in big trouble. But is this really a need? At least right now is it a need? It's more of a want.

I want a new computer in case this one breaks. It would be nice to have a faster more up to date one. But it's not a necessity yet.

I need a new camera. For the same above reasons. ...just in case. But the one I have is working still. It isn't a need yet is it?

A new sewing machine. (What? She's never mentioned this one before.) Well, I've been using the one I have for quite a while... Then yesterday I found a newer, better, stronger one. One I could drool over and would make my sewing so much more beautiful! Do I need it? No. Do I want it? Definitely yes! Here we come to the word deserve.

I don't like the word deserve. A couple years ago when I was visiting the States I heard it a lot. "You deserve it. Go ahead! Splurge! Eat it! Buy it! Do it!" But do I deserve any of the treats in life? There are a lot of people who have nothing and suffer through their days. Do they deserve any of that? The old hymn comes to mind, Count Your Blessings. God has blessed me beyond belief with material and immaterial things, yet I can talk myself into believing I deserve more. Using the word deserve makes me feel like my want will turn into my need and it is okay to satisfy the need. I feel it's okay to break my budget, my convictions, my self-control. "You've stayed on your diet for two days. You deserve the ice cream." "Go ahead you deserve it, you've scrimped and saved enough." "It's something you need and use. You deserve a new whatever."

All these nice toys will stay on my wish list. If one of my old ones breaks, you know I'll be knocking at the store door the minute it opens! But I have other commitments for my money that I need to fulfill for the next few years so I'm going to try to stay away from the deserve mentality for awhile. This may not seem very smart economically to some people. Buy when something is on sale not when you absolutely need it and can only get it at full price. But I don't have enough self-control to stay on that plan very long. I can talk myself into anything! I'm also not promising to not buy any of the toys on my wish list (don't hold me to any of this!) I'm not planning to be a martyr! I may even try to put aside a little Just-For-Me money. (In Japan we call this hesokuri.) And when it comes to the smaller things in life that give me enjoyment, FABRIC for one, then I intend to add a little here and there just to put a smile into my day!

Quilts-in-progress

A couple of in-progress quilts to show you from Friday when my quilting friends came to visit.

Kaoru-san came to do quilting by no love of her own. She is a church friend and English student and she really wanted to make a Bible quilt so after a few small projects she dove in and made her first Bible quilt. At first she'd have to take an aspirin before she came to my house to do quilting! Sewing gave her a headache! A few years have gone by now and I think this is the third wall quilt she's made. When she started she didn't own a needle or thread and she still doesn't have nor want a sewing machine. Kaoru-san was a little harder to convert than many friends who now love quilting but she's got the bug bad now!

Mrs. Shiozaki and her husband are both artists and they often have exhibitions of their other textile creations. She has taught me to do felting and she has a lovely sense of somber and quiet colors. I'm so bad. I sort of forced Mrs. Shiozaki into doing this quilt too. She had come to visit when I was working on my Autumn Blossom last January and since I had lots of scraps leftover I said "Sew up a block or two." Then she had two blocks and I pushed my scraps on her and suggested she continue and now she's got a bed sized quilt! Her daughter has already claimed this quilt because it is so colorful and outside the range of Mrs. Shiozaki's normal use of color. It will be fun to see what she chooses to do for the border and quilting.

As for me, I'm quilting two quilts right now. Bazaar and Wonky Word, so nothing to show for awhile. After Kaoru-san and Shiozaki-san left I put the sewing machine away and took down the flannel work board from the wall so Leiya's room is looking more like she can use it again. Only five more days till my sweet daughter is sleeping in this room again!

My sick camera

I am falling behind on blog reading and one reason is because our part of Japan has been deluged with rain and thunder storms. Years ago we lost an air conditioner when lightening traveled through the wires (I guess) so whenever there is a thunderstorm we all run to our selected corners. Choco cowers in the dog house til I rescue her, Cleo hides under the cushions in the living room and I dash to the computer and pull out the plug! I don't want to blow the computer!

Actually, I'm having a gadget problem without the lightning's help. My digital camera is acting up! This is serious! I no longer can live without my digital camera! I didn't drop it or anything. It just started making strange noises and flashing ERROR at me. Of course I changed the batteries, but no difference. I took it to the camera shop and they nonchalantly told me that it was broken (I know that) and I could send it in to be fixed and it would cost me a $150 for them to look at it. No guarantees that it could be fixed for that amount though. On top of that, it would need to be in the repair shop for a month or more! NO WAY! These days my digital is like my life-blood! For heaven's sake! If I didn't post pictures no one would wade through my long posts! (My kids have told me that before. "Too long, Mom. But we like the pictures.") Leiya is coming in this week and she hasn't been back in Japan for almost two years! I need this camera! Or some camera. I suggested that the camera shop might want to loan me a camera while they kept mine for a month but they thought this was a very humorous suggestion. In essence they are telling me to give up on the camera and buy a new one. What ever happened to the mantra "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"? Aren't we trying to cut down our outpouring of garbage? I've brought my clicking, flashing camera home with me and it is still taking pictures so it isn't on its death bed yet. I may end up shopping for a camera while Leiya is here because it is one of the things like a refrigerator, washing machine, car and computer that I can no longer live without! I'm sure you don't want to see many pictures like the one here that I've taken on my cell phone camera!

Cat woes

I love having my friends visit me and thanks to their visits and to the numerous ladies that come for English I have to keep my house looking fairly neat. This isn't that hard to do since there are no children at home anymore and Tetsu cleans up after himself pretty well. (If truth be told, he is a better housekeeper than I am!) The cats however do more than their share of getting things dirty and sometimes I wonder why we have them at all! (Not really.)

Today two of my friends came to visit and since we were doing patchwork in my sewing room, I had to get the upstairs presentable. Thanks to Flylady's philosphy of keeping things no more than 15 minutes away from being neat, I can quickly vaccumn downstairs and not have too many worries about what people see. But upstairs! Hmmm. Whose clothes are all over the bannister? All mine! Why are there piles of laundry on the floor? Because I folded them but didn't put them away! And the sewing room itself? That was more than 15 minutes clean up time!

What really boils me were those cats! They shed! I know that they can't help that but my vaccumn cleaner sure takes a beating and what the vacuumn can't get, I go back and forth with this sticky roller thing that is supposed to pick up threads and lint (by the way, run one of these over your cutting board and all the junk that gets caught in the cutting grooves comes out nicely!) Some cat has knocked over a pile of quilting crumbs and another has taken off with my pin cushion again...

The biggest cat problem though is embarrassing to admit. At least one of the dumb cats has a peeing problem and doesn't seem to mind making a puddle here and there. The frustrating thing is I don't know which cat!!! I've never caught the culprit but I can see and smell where he or she has been! I start cleaning the sewing room. But what's this smell? (as if I need to ask.) Not again! And where? I'm crawling around the room and checking the floor and window sills like a blood hound. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Ah ha! Proof. Not that it does me any good. The vacuumn gets thrown in the corner and out come the rags and buckets and animal repellent spray (a little late). I scrub and fuss and bellow at any cat that comes to watch me in action. Unfortunately even soapy water and rag cleaning does not take away all the smell. My friends are going to be here in 15 minutes! So I liberally spray with air freshener (quarter of a can?) and open all the windows and ban the cats from ever entering my sewing room again. (They don't listen and meander back in while I'm looking for incense to burn.)

Even while my friends were here I was spritzing the air whenever they left the room and the windows were open wide enough so that quilt blocks were being blown about.My friends were very polite to not mention the unmentionable but anyway I'm am upset with my cats.

For all that, the cats are so cute watching us cut and sew and then sleeping peacefully on a quilt that we've left unattended for a few moments. I can't stay angry at them for long. (But watch me tomorrow morning when I sniff out another "accident".)

Cat lovers. Advice, please, advice!

Old friends

Isn't it great to have quilting friends! I had a wonderful day today with Mrs. Furui and Mrs. Okutomi whom we only see once a year or so. The three of us started patchwork and quilting nearly 20 years ago when we all had kids in kindergarten, but Mrs. Okutomi moved away when our kids hit first grade. It's seems like just yesterday we were chatting about our rambunctious kids and how to raise them and now Mrs. Okutomi even has a grandchild! Besides talking about quilting, our conversation has shifted to situations dealing with our parents and our own health! Yuck! We all have to sew with little granny glasses these days! Although we all started doing patchwork about the same time, Mrs. Okutomi has gone on to specialize in machine patchwork and quilting and she has taught classes and has been featured in Japanese quilting magazines and even on TV. Since I knew she was coming to visit today, I asked her to bring some of her recent works so I have a few things to show you today.

Mrs. Okutomi and her husband love to travel so recently she has been making memory quilts of some of the different places in Japan that they've visited. She has mastered the technique of transfering photos onto fabric so in these two quilts she has transferred pictures, maps and even wrapping paper designs from souvenirs that they bought. She decorated the quilts with little trinkets that she found in gift shops.

This quilt which I love, is Mrs. Okutomi's original design of the Japanese castle in the city of Matsuyama where they lived for quite a few years. She made it from her stash of fabrics plus kimono fabric that she had been given and that had once belonged to her mother. The whole quilt is machine appliqued and quilted. I am inspired again!

A great day! Not much sewing done but lots of chatting!

My apron

Ah Wednesday... And late afternoon at that! Well, what can I show you except the apron that I had listed for my June goals. I made it from Mrs. Yano's leftover kimono fabric and some from Mrs. Ide and though it is nice, it is not as well made as it could have been. I really am a horrid seamstress. I forgot how to make a waistband so I slapped this one together. It's just an apron! I'm not going to enter it in a fashion show! And it has enough color to be cheerful! I'm glad I'm done with it though I have enough fabric to make another one if I set my mind to it. Not for awhile! The picture of me being silly was taken by one of my fourth graders who happened to come early just as I'd finished it up. He willingly snapped the picture and I clowned for him.

Ninomiya Day

Sunday morning was Ninomiya Day in our city which is a day that is designated as "Clean up Your Neighborhood Day". This is a common practice all over Japan but I think the name is different elsewhere. We have Ninomiya Day twice a year.

A notice was sent out to all the residences in the neighborhood that June 3rd was Ninomiya Day and each household was requested to send one member of the family, armed with rakes, shovels, scythes, grass cutters etc. to a meeting place at 7:00 in the morning and two hours would be spent in beautifying the neighborhood. Tetsu dutifully went at 7:00. I showed up about half an hour later (after my blog reading. Terrible me!) and we worked shoulder to shoulder with neighbors cleaning out gutters, raking leaves, picking up trash etc. We were each given two plastic bags and we searched for burnable trash and non-burnable trash in the empty lots and along the road. There was quite a pile when all of us were finished! Some of the men were climbing trees and cutting off overhanging branches, some people were basically doing garden work in their own gardens.

This sounds like a great idea and truly, the neighborhood gets spruced up and looks great, but there is a lot of grumbling going on too because inevitably there will be families who can't participate or who won't participate so there is a lot of finger pointing about so-and-so doesn't pull his load or so-and-so just stood around and watched. This is a problem with the group concept thinking in Japan. There are always, in any culture, different opinions about what should or should not be done or how it should be done. With some of the activities that we are asked to participate in a person goes and doesn't do much, but their presence assures everyone that the person has a cooperative spirit. It is sort of an ineffectual way of doing things. Younger people especially, no longer hold to the cooperative philosophy and the idea of independent thinking is very attractive. Sometimes I wonder how long the group effort can continue in modern Japan.

The neighborhood looks great though. Wish you could come and visit!