Being friendly?

I tend to make friends fairly easily. I try to greet most anyone that I meet on the street or in their yards. I say hello to humans and animals alike. And I try to call the dogs and cats by name.

Last month a new family moved into our neighborhood. The humans are not so visible but I noticed that they have a dog and at least one cat who sits in the window. The dog has a dog house and on the wall across from the doghouse was a plaque that said "Ryo".

Every morning I go past the house on my way to crosswalk duty.

"Good morning Ryo. How are you doing?"

"Hi Ryo. Looking good this morning!"

Ryo doesn't say anything to me. He just stares as I go by.

The other day I met Ryo and his owner in the forest.

"Hello. Nice day for a walk isn't it?" Ryo's owner smiled and nodded.

"Ryo's very nice and quiet isn't he?" Ryo's owner stared at me much like Ryo does and went on with her walk.

"Hmm. Not particularly sociable but she seems like a nice neighbor."

Yesterday I met Ryo and his owner again and greeted them.

"Hi. So nice to meet you. I have cats and dogs too. How old is Ryo?" the owner stuttered and stammered.

"Excuse me. Maybe I've made a mistake. I thought you were our new neighbors with the dog named Ryo."

"Ryo is my son. The dog's name is Kuro..."

I did a lot of apologizing and sputtering. I wonder what the real Ryo has thought when I go by every morning and loudly call out my greetings...

He needs to put his plaque in another place.

Bara-bara knitting

Possible answers to yesterday's Japanese test were;

"Tetsu said Choco will have to be cold this winter because she bara-bara-ed her dog bed."

"Tanya's knitting is now bara-bara because Mi managed to drag it into the cat cage."

"During the night, Mi found the dog food and it was bara-bara all over the floor."

Lori and Scottish Lass get A+ for their test scores! Scottish Lass even answered in Japanese!!!

The knitting in the one picture is an attempt at understanding English knitting directions. Usually I use Japanese knitting books which are a lot easier to understand (because they are written with graphs rather than abbreviations and marks.) I had found bag of new cotton yarn at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago and I decided to play around and make something for myself. Of course coming upon the half-knitted vest inside Mi's cat cage with most of it off the needles and unravelled, did nothing for my progress. This is going in a basket (far away from Mi) and I will start on Tetsu's vest because the ordered yarn came in yesterday.

Japanese language test

Today there is a Japanese language test. There are three questions. Please give an example to each picture using the word bara-bara.

1)

2) 3)

For review go to the Japanese lesson on October 20, 2009.

Many answers are acceptable.

Blog archives!

My computer has been quiet lately. No freezing. No blog disappearing. I seem to have lost anonymous comments coming into my e-mail box but basically things have calmed down a bit.

While things are good I've been working on another blog book at Blurb's Booksmart but I'm afraid I post more than I edit so I am falling far behind with no catching up in sight. I should just go away on a blogging retreat and spend a week making a couple blog books.

Callie was busily trying to figure out good ways to save our blogs and she came up with a couple websites but so far I like Blurb the best. Besides I can't understand any instructions on how to save blogs (from the websites or from Callie) so I'm sticking with what I know. Thank you anyway Callie.

However, Computer Whiz, Mrs. Ochiai, took pity on me and downloaded all my blog archives and made me a DVD of past blog posts. She has explained the process to me too but I'm afraid I don't understand her any more than I understand websites so I'm still in the dark about how this is done. SUPPOSEDLY I can finish a month of posts, click on that month's blog archive, right click and SAVE ALL on my desktop and then add them to this DVD at regular intervals.

I have yet to see HOW the actual process is done and haven't tried it myself but thanks to Mrs. Ochiai I have my blog history from October 2006 to October 2009 on a disk! And a copy to boot! And look at those cool CD labels!!!

Mini-Round Robin

Last Thursday I met with my patchwork friends and we got back on track with our various projects. One group endeavor which hasn't been working out so well is our Mini-Round Robin.

This is my fault because I saw some wonderful results of a Mini-Round Robin on someone's blog last year and thought that this would be a fun "game" for the ladies in our group to do. There were eight of us and Mrs. Furui and I worked out the instructions for a Mini-Round Robin. And then we started with a schedule. But we didn't give any specifics for telling people

"I would like to have a quilt that depicts spring." or

"I really love stars." or

"Make mine in orange and yellows."

No theme and so our Round Robin goes on haphazardly...

"What on earth is the continuity between this black square and the Victorian florals?"

We also made a vague schedule of passing the blocks every month OR SO. Or so is right! Life interferes (and that is completely understandable) so whenever our group DOES get together we spend some time trying to figure out where blocks have gone.

"Does so-and-so still have a block?"

"How many blocks does so-and-so HAVE?"

Yes, sometimes 4 blocks get passed at a time (and remember there are only eight of us.)

This month I've got a block again (haven't seen a block since May!) and I get to do applique on it. I have spent three days looking at it and there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING that is holding this quilt together! I'm thinking about leaves (so many of them littering the streets these days) and have started cutting out scraps. Applique tends to take claim to the whole quilt so I feel like whatever I decide upon is going to make or break this quilt...

After my post about next year's bazaar BOM quilt and now the Mini-Round Robin, do any of you question my patchwork group's organizing abilities? I'm probably not going to do a Round Robin again for a long time...

Irohazaka

This picture was in the newspaper the other day and I wanted to share it with you. This is called Irohazaka, a series of twists and turns up the side of the mountain not too far from us. At the top of the mountain is a wonderful scenic lake, hiking courses and ski areas. We get up to the lake area a couple of times a year.

Nowadays there is a one way road going up the mountain (probably this one) and another one way road going back down the mountain and everything is well-graded with guard rails etc. Not so in days of past and my mother still talks of our visit to Japan 40 years ago when the tour buses drove both up AND down this one road. Big buses trying to maneuver the curves, buses that had to back up to let other buses around, tour guides with their whistles that directed the drivers as to when to stop (in order not to fall off the cliffs), passengers with height phobias having heart palpitations at the view of the overhang and cliffs (and cars) below. If you look at the second picture you can see the man made piles holding the road to the cliff. I always wonder how sturdy those are... Earthquakes you know...

I don't find this drive so daunting except for the number of cars that are still going up and down the mountain at this time of year to enjoy the autumn scenery. If you look closely at the first picture you can see ALL the hundreds of cars backed up on the road waiting to arrive at the mountain top. Hard on the brakes and the clutch pedals.

Speaking of brakes, there was one year when our family (plus dog) went up for a day at the lake and as we came down the mountain and reached level ground, smoke started pouring from the front of the car. Tetsu stopped that car fast, ordered us all out of the car and pulling the dog with us we all backed far away from the car in case it decided to explode. It didn't and a quick check found that Tetsu had been riding the brakes so much during the trip down that the rubber was burning! We were backed up to a mountainside and there was a little stream of water coming from the cracks and so the four of us started collecting water in soft drink cans and dog bowls to splash over the burning tires. I also remember someone stopping, not to ask if they could help, but to ask what kind of fantastic spring water we had found and wondering if they should collect water to take home too... Uh. I wouldn't recommend it. Tetsu has never lived down his brake riding.

The only other memory I have of Irohazaka is not really mine. When Takumi was in high school he had a motorcycle (another story. He wasn't supposed to have a motorcycle). One weekend he proudly announced that he and his friends had ridden up and down Irohazaka that day on their motorcycles. I was SO glad he told me that after the fact! All those curves and turns.! A motorcyclist's dream! Tetsu felt we could hardly expect our motorcycle riding son to NOT go up Irohazaka when it is only 30 minutes away from us. I'm glad he lived to tell us.

(Pictures from the Internet.)

Paper piecing finished

Yesterday I presented my paper piecing quilt to Mrs. Nakazawa to thank her for all she's done for me. So now I can show what all those little paper pieces were about that were strewn around the sewing room last week.

This is a pattern I found on Paper Panache a few years ago and I just had to purchase it! I quickly made up one quilt (it is quite small) for myself and have it up on my wall. This can also be made with a small dog sitting in the chair rather than the kitty but this was a better representation of my sitting corner. There is always a cat in my sewing/watching TV chair.

For Mrs. Nakazawa I made an little orange cat in honor of her Mick even though Mick prefers sitting on the TV rather than in the arm chair... Anyway, I wanted to hurry and get this done for them.

My choice of background quilting wasn't so great because as usual I'm not too confident of my quilting skills but anyway I machine quilted hearts all over the background. I'm rather pleased with the border quilting and wish I had done it in a color thread that would have stood out more but that's the way it is with quilting. Afraid I'll make a mess of something so use a color that will hide mistakes and when the quilting does come out nicely then wish it was more visible. Ah well... This was a design of my own and I played around on the white board awhile before attempting the border. Can you even see what I was trying for? Paw prints! If I ever make this quilt again I'll be bolder in my thread choice for this pattern... it's kind of cute.

So my paper piecing is done for awhile. On to other things!