A new hat!

I got a belated Mother's Day gift from Takumi yesterday!  Sorry, I have to model it so lots of ME pictures today.  I made Tetsu take my picture when we went out on a walk this morning.

I was so surprised to open a package with a wonderful wide brim hat inside!  Takumi had told me that something was coming for me but he didn't say what.  I was spinning around and dancing in my new hat!  What a great choice!

It looks okay with a t-shirt and jeans doesn't it?  And I can imagine it with a flowery summer dress too!

"Take a good picture of me."

"Hmmm.  That one's no good...  I don't know how to use your camera.  Well!  In that one you look strange.  You have an odd expression on your face."

"That's my normal expression!  Tetsu, the photographer is supposed to flatter up the model and make her feel pretty.  All I hear from you is how strange I look!"

Oh well.  Takumi can see the real me in his hat choice!

Friday's projects

I love Fridays.  Somehow I managed to get my schedule worked out so there is no teaching on Fridays.  No women's classes, no children, no kindergarten nor pre-school.  Once a month I go off to Mrs. Furui's and do quilty things with those friends, once a month Mrs. N and R-san come to my house and I "teach" them patchwork.  The other two Fridays I can do as I like.  Sew, go shopping, read a book, sit at the computer.

Today Mrs. N and R-san are coming and I'm trying to recall what projects they are working on.  We skipped last month.  Let's see...  Mrs. N has a hand pieced quilt going and she's ready to put in some lattice.  I need to do some figuring so that we can get her blocks on point.  I haven't done that in awhile.  Mrs. N also has a Happy Village going and I don't remember if she's already started quilting that or not.  I bought some tulle the other day for some of the ladies who meet at Mrs. Furui's.  Mrs. N can use some of that if she needs it... or we'll get some binding on her village if she's finished.

R-san just finished a bed cover for her granddaughter but she hadn't put a label on it that last time I saw her.  That may be her project today if she hasn't already made one...

Both ladies have been doing some machine quilting on their Around The World quilts.  Instead of tying these off we decided to practice machine quilting in some of the squares...  I made a quilt too and it is my job to think of a quilting motif and then teach it to them.

For our first session of quilting we put in this simple loop motif in the squares...  Quilt in two sides, go all the way around the squares with the same fabric (they join at the corners) and come back to beginning to go around the remaining two sides. 

This month I got lazy... and decided we should just make a back and forth stitch in the whole square and go on to the next one. 

At the corners this means a grid is formed by overlapping stitches but that's kind of cool too.  One of these days we're going to have to try feathers...

And another machine quilting project is Leah Day's Building Blocks project.  This has been slow going and not very fulfilling just because we piece our blocks one month and then don't get back to quilting them for another month...  So far we have 9 blocks made and it has taken us quite a few months to get this far.  I don't think we are going to do the whole project.  That's 42 blocks!  I'll have to ask my friends how far they want to go with this...

I need to go get things set up!
 

Vel on the mend

I had to take Vel in to the vet's last night, making it there barely before they closed their doors.  Vel is home and looking good right now but so many emotions went through me in a few short hours.

Vel is 16 or 17 years old (a stray arriving at my front door when he was a young kitty but not a kitten).  The past few days he as been smelling bad (that should have told me something) and he has been off his food.  Tetsu and I thought about giving him a bath but at his advanced age I was afraid that would be too much of a shock to his system.  And we've talked about the good long life he has had and how he is ready to leave us.  An unspoken agreement that he will not be taken to the vets for tests and medications.  We've done that route too with an old dog on heart medicine and diapers for years and then not being able to say enough is enough and stopping medications.  With one of our cats too, it was back and forth for IVs and energy boosters but it seemed to just drag things out.

So that was how things stood at 6:30 pm last night.  I sat down next to Vel to give him a pet and he lifted his leg and the most awful smell arose from him!  Something there is festering!  I put him in a cat box and was off to the vets before I could even explain what was wrong to Tetsu who was in the kitchen filling the dishwasher.

At the vets it was a simple diagnosis of a scratch or cut that had just gotten worse and worse until the whole area was infected.  With lancing and antibiotics and packing in of medications and this Elizabeth collar Vel was declared well enough to come back home.

"When are you going to the States this year?  In July?  Oh, that's still a long way off, he'll be fine by then."

I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't thought Vel would be around this summer...

And the vet mildly admonished me for just assuming that old age is the cause of all ailments.

"If an animal seems unwell don't wait to bring it in."

I berate myself for not noticing Vel's injury earlier... for not taking him to the vet when I noticed the smell... for just hoping he'd pass on peacefully in his sleep.

This morning Vel ate heartily and seems resigned to the collar.  Poor boy...  He has to go back to the vet again today and that probably won't be pleasant.  I'm amazed at how much his ancient system can take!

Baby quilt finished

Another project that got marked off my list was the baby quilt that I was making for Mrs. Y's niece.  Mrs. Y participated by arranging the color strips and by coloring in the label to be put on the back of the quilt. 

In a way, this quilt was "commissioned" because though I offered to make the quilt, Mrs. Y insists on paying for the materials so that it can be from her.  That's fine, as I don't know her niece all that well, but then again I don't mind giving the quilt as a gift (from me) either.  In the back of my mind I had sort of thought that Mrs. Y might want to piece one or two squares... or get in on the binding sewing so that we could say it was a joint effort but that didn't happen.

To make this Mrs. Y's quilt I guess I will accept payment for a yard and a half of batting but other than that everything else was leftover stuff from my stash...

This label needs to have the baby's name written in and the parents are still deciding...  And the birth date, which I know, and the name of...?  Mrs. Y?  Me?  Both our names?

 I know that usually the quilt label has the name of the person who made the quilt, but as it is Mrs. Y's gift, should I refrain from recording mine?

I never gave a label this much thought. 

McKenna in a day

I had a full sewing day yesterday and I spent all of it doing another McKenna art quilt.  It is amazing to me how nicely these turn out (of course I haven't quilted it yet and that's always a bit nerve wracking...)

In the morning I got out the pattern that a blog friend had sent and I traced the pattern onto Heat and Bond paper.  From there I went through my stash and picked out fabrics.  This is the first time I've used my own fabrics with McKenna.  I have been blessed to be gifted with some of her kits and I've made quite a few of those with her gorgeous fabric choices.  I KNOW that if I can make a quilt with one of her kits then all I have to do is the same process with my own fabrics... but still...

"Do I have the right green?  Will the purple be too strong?"

After lunch I started fusing and cutting out and laying on of pieces.  And in the evening I put on the border... which was entirely a different flavor of fabric from the sample photo but still it worked out nicely.

I'm not bragging here, but I think people who are hesitant to do McKenna patterns should note that this took ONE DAY from opening the package to getting it up on the design wall for photographing.  That's not bad and though I wouldn't claim the patterns are simple, they are definitely doable.

If I can find any more green batik in my stash I may do this pattern again...  I think my brother would like it and wouldn't he be surprised to get a quilt (albeit small) from me.

Weekend morning

Tetsu and I love our weekends.  I'm sort of steering Tetsu to thinking about retiring pretty soon.

"Wouldn't you like our weekends to be everyday?"

It probably isn't going to happen for awhile longer...  He worries too much about the cost of living off of his retirement pension...

"We could live dangerously.  By faith!  You'd have a lot less stress in your life."

But then again...  Part of the reason a day off is nice is because it is a day OFF.

This past month when Tetsu has a day off and the weather is nice we eat our breakfast out on the patio and then Tetsu will read the newspaper in the hammock for awhile.  For some unknown reason we find it easier to get up early in the mornings on weekends.  Just when normal people are sleeping in!

5:15 am.

"Get up!  Get up!  The sky looks like it is going to be beautiful!  Pull out your camera and let's go for a walk."

Actually, Tetsu's the gung-ho morning person...

This was the morning right after the typhoon last week.  It is probably the same picture that I took earlier this month but you'll notice that the rice has been planted now.

 Ah...  This rice field hadn't yet though.  They must stagger their planting days for a balanced harvest.

 We liked this corner of the forest advancing into the rice field.

 And some animal took a midnight stroll across the farmer's field. 

 The dirt looks so rich and healthy.  Hmmm.  I see leaf lettuce planted there between something else...  I don't know what the something else is.

Can you spot the stalk of asparagus on the left?  The one on the right turned into a bush before it could be eaten.  The farmer is in the background trying to decide what should be planted where.  He often suggests that Tetsu take a postage size portion of his land and plant it with what Tetsu's likes.  It could be preparation for a retirement hobby... 

 A great way to start a weekend.

Dinnertime

Another week of vegetables were delivered to me. 

It is somewhat of a challenge to figure out how to cook them all.  Some of them I have no idea about at all, nothing listed in my Betty Crocker cookbook, some of the challenge is just getting through all these vegetables in a week's time.  Which lets you know that my household has not been vegetable based all these years.  It's not like a truck of vegetables is being delivered to my door, just a portable Styrofoam box with 6 or 7 in season vegetables in it.  But still, at the end of the week I find a couple left in the box.  (Hmm.  This week I still have two turnips...  Maybe turnip miso soup tonight?)

In this week's box were rucola, leaf lettuce, broccoli, shimeji mushrooms, turnips and fuki.  FUKI?  What do I do with fuki?  The scientific name is petasites japonicus and I guess that's why it is not in Betty Crocker...  It grows practically wild in my part of Japan during this season

Okay...  Forget the fuki for awhile. What is the recipe for this week?..  Mushroom and Rucola salad.

• Fry minced garlic in olive oil and add shimeji mushrooms and flavor with salt and pepper and a bit of chili powder.
• Add chopped rucola and sprinkle with lemon juice.  Serve.

Well, I made a variation and didn't call it Rucuola salad...  The greens seemed awfully bitter and Tetsu isn't one for bitterness, so I just added the rucola to the fry pan and cooked it down a bit.  It was pretty good if I called it a side dish.

And then to do something about the fuki.  While I was teaching English to two sisters, the mother who was waiting in my living room got on her iPhone and found a fuki recipe for me to follow and she wrote it down for me (in English!)

Preparing Fuki

• Sprinkle salt over fuki stalks and rub them against the cutting board.  (It is considered a type of rinsing away of the acrid peeling.)
• Boil in water for 2 minutes.
• Plunge fuki in cold water and let cool.
• Peel off the skins.

Cooking Fuki

• Cut fuki into short lengths.
• Put into a pan and cover fuki with water.
• Add 1 tablespoon mirin (a sweet rice wine), 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1.5 to 2 tablespoons soy sauce.  Simmer until liquid is gone.
• Add katsuobushi (dried bonita flakes).

My fuki was wonderful!  Tetsu was amazed that I'd made it myself.  Hmmm, yum!

And this was the dinner I served that night...  I took the picture after we'd started eating.

"Wait!  Put down those chopsticks!  I need to take a picture!"

There is takuwan (pickled radish) on the left, and a shabu-shabu sesame pork salad (quickly simmer thin slices of pork in broth and cool immediately.  Cover all with creamy sesame dressing.)  The brown stalks there are the fuki and the rucola side dish is on the right.  And we had kimchee too for dinner.

By the way, someone asked me about the Whole 30 and if I had found it difficult.  I put that in past tense because I don't consider myself on the Whole 30 anymore.  In October I went STRICT Whole 30 diet meaning I didn't even use soy products (hard to do in Japan) and read labels for added sugar and wheat products which just about cuts out EVERYTHING but fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and eggs.  Seasonings were curry and salt and pepper.  No dairy products.  Snacking was nuts and sweet potatoes.  That month was hard.  But the results showed in lower cholesterol and weight loss.

Since then I've slowly added back soy in abundance (tofu, natto, miso, soysauce, soymilk).  And occasionally will have rice.  I no longer read labels so the added sugar is coming in through store bought seasonings, obento-boxes, eating out.  I still avoid sugar so no desserts nor snacking except for those nuts (I'm going to become a squirrel when I grow up.)  I will occasionally splurge for a yogurt these days but I'm making my own soy yogurt now.  I stay far away from wheat products still though...  And my cholesterol continues to decrease, and my weight which probably isn't real great.  The other day someone commented on how much weight I'd lost and how it was especially noticeable now that winter sweaters and long underwear have been shed.

"Yeah...  Sort of like those Pomeranian dogs after a bath...  You realize there's nothing there under all that fur!"

Does that sound like a compliment?  Maybe I'd better eat a bit more...