Trip to Morioka

Okay... I am back up and around.  Maybe at 70% energy level...

My cold wasn't the only reason that I haven't posted in awhile.  Tetsu and Choco and I took off for a three day trip to Morioka, about a 6 hour drive north of us.  We've been planning to go to Morioka for ages (it is Tetsu's hometown and where I spent my first three years in Japan) but 6 hours one way on the highways, too much work, weather considerations always waylaid our plans.  It has been two years since we went back (some of you blog readers may remember our last trip) and we decided to make it a TWO nights, three day trip rather than just overnight.  We had hoped to get a couple of Tetsu's friends involved for his 60th birthday celebration, but that didn't work out.  Still we had a great time.  BUT IT WAS COLD!!! and that's where I caught my cold...

We left Nikko around 5:00am on Friday morning (I took a day off from crosswalk duty) and headed north.  The sun met us over the landscape.

As the morning brightened we found a rainbow in the sky...  When we had visited Morioka two years ago we had been sent off by a rainbow too!  This area must get a lot of rainbows.

After 6 hours of driving (all Tetsu's job... I don't really like driving all that much) we reached Morioka.

Our first stop was at the cemetery which may seem odd to non-Japanese but is probably the norm for Japanese.  Grave visiting should be done at least twice a year and we haven't been doing our duties...  Visiting the grave was the main reason for our visit to Morika this year.  Tetsu and Choco and I weeded the little plot and washed the gravestone.

The tiny Christian cemetery is behind the city crematorium and looks out over the city.

This is Tetsu and my personal grave site which we had to acquire not long after our first daughter passed away 30 years ago. Tetsu and I were still in our twenties so the little grave and stone is certainly not very grand.  The Bible verse on it says:

The Lord is my strength and my song 

And he has become my salvation.

Exodus 15:2

On the stone below there is our family name.  I STILL can't write my last name and you can see why!  We were surprised to see that the grave stone had moved a bit from its foundation.  Probably just because of age, or maybe because of weeds crowding around.  Maybe because of earthquakes.  Tetsu pulled the "name" stone away and we could see down under where the ashes urn was placed.  No, I did not want to bring out the urn and look at it.  Tetsu pushed the stone back in place.

 Choco and I aren't smiling so much as squinting because the sun was in our eyes.

This trip we decided to take Choco with us even though she isn't very good at riding in a car.  Usually she paws at us and prances back and forth in the back (or the front if we let her).  This time we brought along Choco's kennel and though it took up a lot of space in our car, she rode quietly there all through the trip.  The expressway has Service Areas and Parking Areas with food and shopping, and we found a dog run that Choco enjoyed immensely.  During our trip Choco could "participate" in our conversations and feel like part of the family.  So much better than being tied out in the yard or left at a pet hotel!  At night after a potty run Choco slept inside the car in the kennel with blankets.  I think Choco enjoyed our trip a lot!

Oh dear...  Too many pictures.  More tomorrow.

Sickly

Cough, cough...
Hack, hack...
I've caught a cold...
But I'll be back.

McKenna quilt kits

I finished making a top for another McKenna quilt.  (That's not really true as I have to put some purple ribbon fabric on the border... but no time to do that today.)

You have seen this quilt before because one of my patchwork friends made the same quilt last week.  As our group had two of the same kits (an error on the McKenna shipping process) I purchased the second kit and have put it together for... I don't know.  Maybe the hospital, maybe for my own wall this Christmas.

I realized that I've actually made  A LOT of McKenna quilts this year.  That's thanks to Liz in Canada who sent me a wonderful stash that she had and wasn't making.  They have been fun to make and they are so beautiful when finished.  I've also helped friends make some of the McKenna quilts... at least 8 people and I thought I'd write a bit about doing McKenna quilts in this post.

I consider McKenna quilt kits; which are quite costly; a quilter's collage rather than a quilt.  They don't really take much sewing knowledge or skill when putting them together.  (A bit of patience though...)  Thanks to my blogging friends I've been gifted with quite a few McKenna kits and I've bought a couple for myself and I've also been given just a pattern.  I have a feeling that McKenna quilts have evolved through time...  I don't know if this is true but here is how it comes across to me.

1)  There are the McKenna quilt kit patterns.  Those aren't too expensive.  They have the whole picture printed on paper and then each separate collage piece (for example a flower will have a stem piece, a leaf piece, petal pieces and a center) will be reversed printed on another instruction paper.  This is so that you can trace the pattern onto fusible paper (which you have to buy separate and is a necessity) and then iron on to your own fabric.

The McKenna kit instructions are very detailed and you can figure out fairly easily which pieces use the same colors. You have to mark each piece with a letter-number code so that you can put it all together later.  However, it is a lot of work to choose enough fabrics for the whole collage (McKenna uses A LOT of colors) and with some colors you only need a inch or two of fabric so unless you have a grand stash, you're going to be buying a lot of cuts of fabric that may never get used again.

2)  Then there are the McKenna Ryan quilt kits.  I assume that originally these were kits sent out with the same instructions as in the patterns but McKenna added her OWN choices for fabric so that the quilter can make the exact same quilt as on the pattern package.  Here again, you've got to trace all the pieces onto the fusible paper and their code numbers and cut them all out, but the cuts of fabric that McKenna sends in the quilt kits are VERY generous!  I almost thought I could make two quilt collages with the included fabric (provided I wanted to do all that tracing again).  Of course the fabric included in the kits (and the fabrics are gorgeous) are quite costly.  (But worth it!!)

3)  And lastly there are the pre-cut McKenna quilt kit patterns.  Somewhere along the line someone must have decided they could die-cut all those itsy-bitsy pieces (yes itsy-bitsy!) and send them to the quilter with the original instructions and then the quilter would only have to FIND which piece was which on the instruction sheet (there is coded sheet included...It takes a bit of figuring but it is not that confusing).  Snip, snip, snip and the pre-cut pieces can be collaged by number.  Really sort of a paint-by-number in fabric mentality.  Do it in the right order and everyone has the same thing in the end!

Again, the fabrics in the McKenna kits take your breath away and if you've got patience you can hardly go wrong.  (But don't forget to mark those code numbers.  And do your collaging with the windows closed.  You don't want everything to blow away!)  Definitely working with a friend makes the whole process one big game.  Like putting a puzzle together. Of course the pre-cut quilt kits are the most expensive.

What is left is the free-motion quilting.  Unfortunately this does take skill.  And a free-motion quilting foot on your sewing machine.  It looks like an impossible task but remember, one gets better with practice!  By the end of the quilt you'll be a pro!  All of my friends who are beginning machine quilters and have tried it have said it wasn't as hard as they thought it would be.  It just takes a bit of courage to START!  (You are thinking, "Oh my gosh.  This is so beautiful!  And if I try to sew it all down I may RUIN this gorgeous, expensive work of fabric art!")  IT CAN BE DONE!

So those are my thoughts on McKenna quilts.  I got an e-mail this morning saying that there is a new series called  Snow Buds.  SOOOO cute!!!  No, no, no Tanya, you still have some undone quilts left in your cupboards.

Flight

On an early morning walk I spotted a crow commuting to his place of work (the manure plant across the field) and a jet liner soaring far above.

 Even a manure plant can be attractive in the crisp morning air.

Maybe without the manure plant the scenery is more beautiful...
 

Sand? Cat litter?

What is this?

I found it outside the sweet shop owner's house. 

It is rice!

The sweet shop owner often sets out beer crates and a piece of ply board with some brown paper spread over it and will dry her rice or sometimes her beans.  Japanese sweets are made of mochi (sticky) rice and washing it and then drying it in the sun gives it a "sweeter" flavor.  Same with beans I guess.  The beans are later simmered with sugar in a kettle-like arrangement set over kindling.  Yum!  Authentic Japanese sweets made the old fashioned way!

The sweet shop owner's cat is tied up next to the beer crates and I don't know how it was trained not to jump up on the ply board and wade through the rice (or worse!  Drying rice looks a lot like cat litter!)  But smart kitty that she is, she surrenders her seat next to the rice and sits on the car hood instead.  Good kitty!

Bethlehem's Star

My patchwork friends who come to my house on Fridays have started a Bethlehem's Star quilt for Christmas.  We have been talking about making this for over a year and finally have finished other projects.  The ladies have done roller strip piecing and machine quilting and now they were willing to try diamond shape piecing.

I had forgotten that the little shift on ruler placement on the strips results in a lot of headaches!  An Irish Chain machine pieced quilt is pretty straightforward, but when it comes to cutting on a 45 degree angle and matching seams, things get more complicated. My friends are waiting to put together the large component diamond shapes that they made last week and I thought that beforehand I'd take the opportunity to make my own diamond shapes and review how this quilt is made.

ARGGHH!  It is made with great difficulty!! 

I made my diamond shapes but they DID NOT turn out perfectly!  Whether I messed up in cutting or in sewing I don't know but try as I might I could not get the diamonds to fit the template I'd made.  (And I hate to be pessimistic but if I, a thirty year quilter, can't get the diamonds to fit I have a feeling my patchwork friends of 5 years are going to have some difficulties too!)  I tore apart and resewed.  I made new diamonds.  I cut edges off.  In the end I went to Mrs. Furui and she reminded me of all the trouble we had originally had making this quilt.  (We'd both made it many, many years ago.)  Her advice?

"Put it together as is and hope for the best when quilting."

So I did.

Well, I'm not at the quilting stage yet, but though the star points are a little off, the border pulled everything in line.  The flaws are not as evident as they originally were.  And hopefully the quilting will hide the mistakes even more.

Now can I teach this to my friends?  We have those inset seams you know... 

Paying bills

Our roof has been painted and my workman was paid this morning.  He called the other day to say he would be over to pick up his fee as estimated.  Tetsu handed me money yesterday to give to the workman today.

I don't think this is the way we pay for things in the States.  As I recall, whenever anyone has to be paid in America; from the piano teacher to the gardener to the person asking for donations; my family writes a check.  But did you know that there is not a checking system in Japan?  The custom of writing checks has never been adopted in Japan and more often than not cash is the only way to go.  In recent years paying by credit card has become the norm but still paying with cash is most common.

For example, when I first came to Japan and worked in a Christian Center, I was surprised to be handed an envelope containing my month's salary in it.  That seemed like a lot of money to hold in my hands and I looked over my shoulder as I hurried to deposit the cash in my bank account.

When Tetsu and I got married, he would just come home with an envelope of money at the end of the month and I was supposed to handle how it was used during the four weeks.  I'd divy Tetsu's salary up into different envelopes and label "Tithing" or "Vet Budget" and "Weekly Food Allowance" envelopes for the month.  Even now, though Tetsu's salary is paid directly to the bank, whenever we need money for a major purchase he will use the ATM to take out an amount of cash.

My American family finds this analog way of banking very primitive and wonder how modern Japan can still be paying with cash all the time, but on the other hand, digital money is also widespread in Japan.  I can go into a convenience store and shop with only my cell phone in hand, and bus and trains can be boarded with a flash of a card still in the depths of a card case.  These days all of our utility bills are paid directly through the bank so in some ways, I find my American sister-in-law still writing checks at the end of the month a very analog way of doing things.

For many years Tetsu worked at a loan company and he handled large quantities of money.  His way of counting money was fascinating to me though any Japanese bank clerk still counts cash in this way.  Tetsu somehow flips a bundle of cash over in his hand and with a slight twist will fan the bills out under his thumb.  Rapidly, with two fingers from his other hand, he can slip through all the bills in the bundle and count the bills.  And finally (though I don't know why) there is a "snap" when all the bills are counted

Tetsu has tried to show my American family how he counts money but he couldn't do it with US bills!  The reason being that Japanese money is ALWAYS fresh from the mint where as US bills are very tired and dog eared and don't have any crispness to them.  When paying for anything in Japan, the polite way to pay is paying with crisp new bills.  My English students usually pay me cash with fresh bills; when I go to a wedding or a funeral and give a gift of money then fresh bills are the only polite way to go. 

When Tetsu was counting the money to pay the roofer I asked him to slow down a bit and let me camera/video him.  He said he is very out of practice these days (he no longer works much with money).  Let's see if the video uploads properly...  (It did, though there doesn't seem to be any sound.) 

Two-hundred and forty thousand yen to have our roof repaired, painted and sealed.  (About $2400.)  Is that a lot for roofing?  I don't know but it is a lot of money to be having in the house.  It has been paid, so my wallet is thin and light again!