A Wonderful Blooper

Mrs. N and R-san came for their patchwork lesson on Friday.  Let's see... they are working on machine quilting their prayer quilts...  They have that Leah Day table runner to put together.  Which project are we going to work on?  NEITHER!  Since I last saw them, they have ordered (through me) Christmas kits and as the kits had arrived we set aside the other projects and started something new.  True quilters who get side tracked so easily!

That's not to say that Mrs. N hasn't been hard at work finishing one of her other projects.  She got her binding on her Fabrics from Long Ago quilt and is graciously allowing her husband to use it on his bed.   She did a wonderful job with this quilt and was so happy to use up the dregs of her scrap box.

One blooper, for which I am responsible, was a major blow to yours truly but didn't seem to bother Mrs. N much...  For which I am so grateful.

We had laid the blocks out on the floor.  This step was hampered some by the fact that my room is small and not everything gets laid out perfectly... some overlapping etc.  And cats of course who walk over blocks and supervise or decide that it might be a good time to take up block skating.  But we had worked at Mrs. N's house too and laid things out nicely...  Of course laying out, packing up, waiting a couple of weeks, laying out again... that all added to the confusion.  (I'm trying to justify here...)  Finally, with me handing blocks and sashing and corners to Mrs. N the flimsy was made.  And the next time around we were ready to baste AND.....

Something is wrong here......  ...  ...  .......

It was too late to go back and try to add more fabric.  How did we ever miss that corner!

"That's okay.  I'm planning to put a big cat applique on this quilt anyway.  That will be the perfect place for it!"

Thanks to Mrs. N's positive outlook, my heart started beating again...  Sigh.  And I call myself a patchwork teacher.

I think this incident can be labeled as my biggest patchwork mess-up.  Anybody have any stories that will make me feel better?  Nope?  This one was pretty bad...  But for all that Mrs. N made it into a wonderful quilt!

As for the Christmas kits, both Mrs. N and R-san ordered the Twinkle kit from Pasthyme Patterns.  (I had made a similar quilt in red last year... this year it is in blue).  We got all the fabric cut and most of the rows sewn.

One of the block supervisors considering practicing his block skating again.

Chrysanthemums

My close neighbors, who live on the other side of the forest, are part-time farmers.  For awhile after he retired, the husband used an old row of pig sties to raise rabbits but he has even retired from that enterprise and now he raises vegetables and flowers.  His wife was never very happy about the rabbit raising (as it meant that someone had to be on the farm mornings and evenings for care and feeding) but she is absolutely thrilled with the flower farming (vegetables are coming out of her ears... thus I receive the overflow).

"Come see my flowers!  Aren't they beauties?!"

Mr. Y grows small chrysanthemums which are raised in abundance in Japan for arranging around a Buddhist altar.  And as everyone has an altar in their home, there is a year round need for chrysanthemums. 

By the way, chrysanthemums are never included in a lover's bouquet.  I remember when I was a college student and spending 8 months in Japan on an overseas program with a group of college friends.  There was a girlfriend-boyfriend couple in the group and the boy bought his girlfriend a bouquet of lovely, inexpensive chrysanthemums.  The Japanese students who had taken us under their wings just howled with laughter! 

"Those are for funerals!  Or at the very least for showing respect to dead ancestors!  You don't bring chrysanthemums to your girlfriend!"

"A flower is a flower." was the boy's dry reply.

Mrs. Y is very proud of her husband's flowers and she makes up small bundles to sell at the vegetable stand in the neighborhood.  She sent Tetsu and me home with two bundles for Tetsu's mother's Buddhist altar (which normally have artificial flowers adorning it).

Choco, while not interested in Mrs. Y's flowers, loves Mrs. Y who is Choco's summer home-stay mother!
 

Halloween flowers and card

I decided to get into the Halloween spirit by getting rid of the leggy overgrown spring flowers we had on the porch and planting something new.  In honor of Halloween I chose some strange looking flowers...

So now I have two planters... three really as I had bought too many flowers and they wouldn't all fit into my two planned pots.

I liked these spiky things though I don't know what they are called.

So my front porch was looking nice, BUT last evening when I brought Choco into the house she overturned this pot, rack and all and I had to replant everything.  Choco is so hyper and she barrels into the house whapping things along the way.  I hope these flowers will survive the trauma...

I also spent some time making an October fabric card for my mother.  This wasn't one of my more successful ones just because I tried to get fancy...  Here we have a haunted house.  That's pretty good.  But I had tried to leave a pocket behind the fabric and insert a ghost...  Supposedly if the bat flying around at the bottom was pulled...

 ...then a ghost would appear at the top of the card.  This was sort of my own invention...  I sandwiched an extra piece of cardboard between the layers of the pocket and draped the yarn connecting the ghost and the bat over it.  Thus, when the yarn was pulled the ghost was levered up and through the pocket opening.  However, since the ghost isn't slippery (this might have worked all in heavy paper) he gets stuck at the top...and has to be levitated manually.  I doubt that my mother is going to be able to figure all that out...  Maybe Marcy will help her?  Otherwise the ghost will forever be hidden inside the card.

I think I'll go back to making non-trick cards.  And I'm not planting any more flowers either.

Mini quilts (and Yuma-kun's music)

Thank you for your compliments yesterday.  I feel very good about finishing that tablecloth.  Tetsu too was impressed and suggested I leave the cloth on the table for a bit... Just so that we can enjoy it instead of putting it away again for years.  If I could just keep the cats off...  and be willing to sacrifice it to spills...
 
 Now I am ready to enter the knitting season in the evenings!

I finished a couple of machine quilting projects for my friends.  I pushed the McKenna kits on these non-quilters/non-handcrafty people knowing full well that the only way my friends would attempt them is if I did the quilting for them.  I think they had a lot of fun and the results are certainly satisfying.  It means that I don't make any progress on my own quilting project (I have a donation quilt to finish up hopefully this month) but I really don't mind.  What's the good of knowing how to machine quilt if I'm not using the skill for the enjoyment of others?

So three more mini-quilts were finished this week. 

The two bird quilts are from kits that a blog friend sent me.

The poppy quilt was from a pattern that another blog friend sent me and the fabrics were from my own stash of batiks.  McKenna fabric kits are selections to drool over but I think we did a fair job using what was in my stash box...

I will hand the poppy quilt back to my friend and let her sew her own binding on.  She is pretty good with a sewing machine, just not a quilting foot.

********

A couple people asked about Yuma-kun's band music...  I'm not so certain of my composers but I recognized the theme from Jurassic Park by John Williams and also Star Wars.  A jazzy version of Pomp and Circumstance was also performed and there was a medley of Joe Hisashi, with music from My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and The Path of Wind.  (Very popular Japanese animation movies).
 

Lace tablecloth

"No matter the occasion, no matter whether the china is peasant pottery or finest Wedgewood, there is a crocheted cloth to complete the setting, and to bring you a pleased feeling of satisfaction because your own lovely handwork gives the setting its true distinction."

Copyright, 1938,  The Spool Company, Printed in U.S.A.  Third Edition.

Seventy-seven years.  I'm making assumptions but I put down the crochet needle last night and told myself that a seventy-seven year Work In Progress had been finished.

The pattern booklet says it was published in 1938.  I don't know when my grandmother bought her book (for 10 cents!) nor if she started her project immediately or not.  I only know that all the motifs were made and more than half of them were waiting to be added to the half-finished tablecloth.  I started the project at the end of the summer and it has taken me two months to crochet the fillers and add four or five more rows.  (And do more filling!)  The pattern ended with 352 motifs made into rows of 16x22.  There was still a bagful of motifs and besides the cloth didn't cover my rather small dining room table so I went back to connecting more rows and enlarged the cloth to 432 motifs in rows of 18x24.  I guess that was what my grandmother had planned all along as I've now run out of motifs and the cloth is now large enough.

"Your grandma would be happy that you finished her project."

Yes, she probably would be.  I know I would (will) be very upset when the day comes along when I've left a half finished quilt stuffed in a box.

"Ah~ah~.  All that time put in and I didn't get it finished...  What a waste."

BUT!!!  Thanks to a determined grand-daughter (me) my grandmother's tablecloth has been completed, mended (in some places the threads had broken), starched and ironed.  And crochet has never been my strong point so I'm rather proud of myself!

I laid the cloth on the table.  It fits (barely).  It looks great!  Despite what the pattern book claims, it does not give my dining room that much distinction as I don't have any Wedgewood nor peasant pottery...  Just Japanese pottery and I'm afraid Japanese pottery doesn't much go with a hand crocheted tablecloth...

I have already covered up the crocheted cloth with my blue plastic tablecloth...  I don't want the cats sitting on it.  I'll whip off the blue cloth to brag to a couple students tomorrow and then Grandma's tablecloth will go in the closet again until Leiya finds a use for it someday.

A band concert

After a fun morning, Tetsu and I commented to each other that thanks to Yuma-kun we are getting a taste of what being a grandparent is like in Japan.  Yuma-kun called me on Thursday to say that he wasn't coming for English (sewing) as he was under a lot of pressure for his upcoming brass band concert.

"Do I have to come to English today?"

"You're the one calling the shots.  By all means, practice for your concert and do a good job."

"Are you coming?"

"I didn't know I was invited."

"Yeah.  My concert starts at 11:00."

I told Tetsu that I considered it a compliment that Yuma-kun invites me to these things and that I wanted to go and Tetsu was willing to join me.  We really didn't know what to expect.  All I'd heard was that the brass band was performing.

Yuma-kun's jr. high school is a smallish one, on the edge of Nikko City.  When we arrived, Tetsu and I were given a small rally card and told that we could wander around the school grounds as we liked collecting rally stamps as we went...  We headed to Yuma-kun's concert first which I was delighted to find was being held in a woody part of the school grounds.

At the entrance to the woods... a walking path...

...which led to the woodland stage!

My adopted "grandson".

Unfortunately I forgot to put the SB card into my camera so there I was with no way to take pictures!!!  I was so happy that Tetsu now has his own camera and he had a great time taking over a hundred pictures of Yuma-kun, all the band members and the lovely scenery.

My favorite trumpeter had a solo intro to one of the pieces.  I was so proud!

I love the way the greenery is reflected in that big tuba.  On the ground around the stage there were mosquito coils being burned and I noticed quite a lot of bug spray bottles here and there around the music stands.  The bugs weren't actually too bad.

Yuma-kun's band teacher is quite young...  From the stories Yuma-kun tells me about how strict she is I expected someone old and scary.

The last time I had attended Yuma-kun's band concert it had been held inside the gymnasium.  Today with the music accompanied by birds, the atmosphere was just wonderful.

Wouldn't that be fun to have your instruments placed between the trees and have the crunchy leaves and twigs beneath your feet?  I loved it!

The benches in this clearing were damp blocks of stone and quite a few tree stumps brought in for the occasion.  Loads of parents and other students gathered for the morning performance (another performance in the afternoon.)

All the band members were wearing their matching T-shirts with the band logo on them.

A shot of me and Yuma-kun's grandmother between the trees.

I had to corral Yuma-kun to take this photo with me.  But he is a good sport about letting me fuss over him.  I'm so glad I got to see him perform again and I think he was especially happy that Tetsu attended this time and took so many photos.  

After the concert, Tetsu and I wandered around the school.  The wooden sign on the main building.  "Nikko City Ochiai Jr. High School".

We collected rally stamps...  at the roasted sweet potato corner we were given piping hot roasted potatoes served in origami folded wraps.

At another stamp corner we were served hot pork and vegetable stew.

In the gymnasium there was a herb tea corner with home made cookies.

And a tea ceremony corner where we were served a small bean paste sweet and frothy bitter green tea.  Note the jr. high girl bowing deeply as she served one of her classmates...  the boys didn't seem to know how to drink the very bitter tea.  As part of the ceremony the person partaking has certain actions to do also... (instructions posted on the wall).

The school seems to have three or four pizza ovens out in the back and the fathers in the PTA were busy baking mini-pizzas that the students had made. 

PIZZAS!

The fire department was also out and were giving people the thrill of their lives going up in the ladder.

Yuma-kun ran by a couple of times while Tetsu and I enjoyed his school.  Mostly he complained about how much work he had to do.  But he looked very happy and school life seems to suit him.

Photo-op missed

I've been lax with my picture taking recently.  Yesterday I spent all day sewing and didn't get one photo...Too much intense bonding time with the sewing machine! 

Once a month or so on Fridays, my patchwork group gathers at Mrs. Furui's.  Yesterday I arrived at Mrs. Furui's around 9:30.  That's pretty early!  Mrs. Furui and I have been planning a Christmas quilt which somehow evolved into two identical Christmas quilts (one for the hospital, one for the kindergarten) and we STARTED yesterday morning.  Point zero.  Pull out the fabrics...  Decide where to use each fabric.  Start cutting.  Sew.

No one else made an appearance in the morning and Mrs. Furui and I worked until 1:30 when we finally stopped for lunch.

"Where is everyone else today?  Mrs. H called and said she can't make it but everyone else?  I guess everyone just likes chatting with Mrs. H and if she doesn't come..."

I did use the lunch break as an opportunity to photograph Mrs. Furui's progress on her Double Wedding Ring.  She has one more row of motifs to hand quilt and then all she needs to do is sew on the binding.  Of course the wedding was LAST weekend and so Mrs. Furui didn't make her deadline... but anyway, she hopes to finish the quilt and give it to her niece at the end of the month so I have a feeling I'm not going to get another chance to photograph this.

Isn't the hand quilting beautiful!  I love the little whirl there in the small space between the rings.  Sigh...  Seeing this makes me want to make a Double Wedding Ring quilt now...

Back to sewing and in the afternoon a couple friends finally showed up bringing their applique blocks to work on.  (Ah-hem.  I have finished MY block!)  Mrs. Furui and I continued cutting and sewing.  By 5:30 we had two Christmas flimsies minus their borders finished!  But as it was 5:30 it was getting too dark to photograph and that's my excuse for not having any pictures.  NEXT patchwork meeting we'll get the borders on (they are made... just not attached) and hopefully get to a basting stage.  THEN I'll have photos!

In the evening Tetsu came home with five fancy cakes.  Five!  5 is the good luck number in Japan, or rather it is considered aesthetically pleasing whereas 4 is considered bad luck, so things are sold in sets of 5.  That is besides the point...  Why Tetsu bought 5 cakes is the question.  The cakes were in celebration for our first daughter's birthday who would have been 32 yesterday.  I don't know how we got into the habit of celebrating each year.  She lived only two months but both Tetsu and I remember her birthday and Tetsu always brings home cakes.  Plural.  I enjoyed the matcha and chestnut mousse there in the front but that's probably all I'm going to partake of... Maybe that was Tetsu's plan all along.  He knows I don't eat many sweets so he will have the other four for himself!