Days of late June

The Japanese Weather Bureau announced that the rainy season has arrived in Japan.  And today the temperature is heading towards higher digits!  This means heat AND humidity!  Summer is my least favorite season and for some reason it seems worse in Japan...  Mosquitos are rampant and even mites in the house so we will have to fumigate some of the rooms pretty soon.  This is a yearly chore.  Tetsu had a run in with a caterpillar and his whole back broke out in hives which led to a trip to the dermatologist!

Yesterday Tetsu and I changed the screens in a couple of our windows, and both of us complained of how much harder this chore is because of all the kneeling and crawling around on the ground.  

With teamwork we now are protected somewhat from the dratted mosquitos and we can throw the windows open to let in a breeze.  (But pretty soon we're going to have to CLOSE the windows to let the air-conditioning work.)

I hurriedly got through my sewing projects before the heat got too bad as I probably won't be able to spend much time in the sewing room over the next couple of months.  It will be just too hot!  But I finished the quilting border motif quilt that I had decided to make while mentoring M-san on hers.  M-san is making this quilt with jelly-roll strips (as the On Williams Street website suggested) while I decided to see if I could make a dent in my 2 1/2 inch squares bin. 

This is what some of the border motifs are like...  The On Williams Street tutorial offered 10 motifs and M-san and I decided this would be a good way to practice our free-hand machine quilting.

And this is the finished quilt.  M-san has her jelly-roll flimsy made and basted and she will begin the machine quilting this week.

Other things have been keeping her busy such as THIS quilt which is her version of the Hidden Shoofly quilt pattern that I have now made numerous times.  M-san is calling this quilt her 9 Stars quilt.  Actually, the fabric choice for this quilt has a story.  While I was in Indiana, Leiya asked me to make her two quilts that she could give to two friends who were having babies.  At JoAnnes, Leiya picked out the fabric and she wanted me to make one light version and one dark version of the same pattern, thus this dark grey, black fabric.  I got all the pieces cut and laid out when Leiya said "Wait!  Do you know what that black fabric reminds me of now that it's laid out?  A snake skin..."  Hmm.  Well, now that she mentions it.  At the very least, it didn't look very much like a baby quilt!  We went back to JoAnnes and Leiya picked out some different fabric, I made two quilts light colored quilts while in Indiana, and I brought back the already cut black fabric to Japan.  What am I going to do with it except make this one pattern?  When I laughingly told M-san the story, she hesitantly asked if she might make the Hidden Shoofly quilt with the black fabric, and she even offered it back to Leiya if she wanted it.  "No.  Of course it will be YOUR quilt if you really don't mind the snake skin fabric."  M-san finally got it all together and hand quilted it and she and her parents declare it very CHIC and not snake skinish at all.  Everybody's happy!

And while I'm talking about Hidden Shoofly quilts, Leiya was able to visit one of her friends who lives in Ohio and deliver the quilt in person.  This is Yanna and she and Leiya were roommates in college and the two girls took over my blog and wrote posts for a week all those years ago (when I was having knee surgery.  I hardly remember that!!)

One more quilt story and photos...

While Leiya was in Ohio, she (and Tony and Luka and Taiga) went to visit a high school friend and her parents at the parents' "house".  Actually I think the parents are in the process of building a house and in the meantime they are living in a barn.  Leiya was raving about their beautiful barn accommodations and said "I want to live in a barn!"  Again, many years ago, a blog friend had gifted me with a set of McKenna Ryan's quilt kits with patterns and fabrics included.  Chickens!  The fabrics were SO beautiful and the chickens SO colorful and I loved the finished quilt!  BUT....  Japanese don't particularly like chickens very much so I knew I wasn't going to be able to give the beautiful quilt to any Japanese friends.  I remembered that the parents of Leiya's good friend, who had taken her under their wing, had a large dairy farm and also raised chickens! I sent the quilt to them and they seemed very appreciative.  

This week Leiya visited them in their barn home and she sent me this photo.  Isn't that beautiful there?!  And look at the wonderful chicken lamp that they have!  I'm so tickled that my quilt fits their lifestyle so perfectly!

Leiya and family at the barn house.

Enough about quilts.

I was at the elementary school for meetings last week and arrived just as the children were in the middle of their school cleaning time (probably about 20 minutes each day).  

My friends and I have been playing with pressed flowers from one friend's garden.

We finally get John into good shape again and then Toi's health starts acting up so he's been to the vet and will have to go again this week.  Toi, the orange cat, is 16 and while he's a big cat, when he loses his appetite I start to worry.  Cleo with the notched ear (left from a fight with Toi) is our striped tabby.  For years these two felines have been mortal enemies but now that they are both old (Cleo is 19) and they only have each other for complany, they have let bygones be bygones.

We had a beautiful sunset last week.  The greens really are that green around here!  That's what the rainy season will do for us so not all is to be dreaded!

 

Heading into the rainy season

The days go by with not much to show for them...  We are heading into the rainy season which I actually don't mind so much and it is a good time to catch my breath before the dreaded humidity of summer...

As I often report, Tetsu and I spend our Saturday mornings in our yard first over breakfast, then with newspaper or my Kindle, both of us doing Duolingo and sometimes I try a little sketching while I'm there.  Saturdays are the only day of the week when I cook a real breakfast with eggs and sausage and hashed browns and toast.  The other mornings it's just granola for us so Saturdays seem special. 

The yard also gets used by Tetsu during the day for a bit of relaxing time after he's been weeding.  It is actually a pretty secluded spot though rumor is that there is going to be construction behind us in the near future...  

I finished the major art project with Valerie Sjodin in her A Beautiful Word A Beautiful Word course. 

 We chose a word and researched quotations and Bible verses and then did a lot of brainstorming to decided how it could be visually represented. 

The project was in booklet form which meant 12 pages (I added another) of artwork and for me, this was the first time for me to work with acrylic paints.  

I was so pleased with the result and I'd love to do this again though it does require a large commitment.

You will be pleased to know that I haven't completely given up quilting.  I had given M-san a jelly roll of fabric and she still had some strips left over so I found an easy strip tutorial on the Internet.  I actually hadn't been planning to make this quilt but realized I'd been moaning and groaning about how many scraps that I had that I should really do something with them and so I sewed 2 1/2 in squares I'd already cut into long strips and with some added white got all of it into a flimsy.  M-san is contemplating the quilting that she is going to do (free hand border motifs) and I decided to quilt in the many squares first before adding free-hand border motifs to the white parts.  Hopefully you'll understand when I show the finished quilt but for now, this is what is under the machine needle.

Poor John had a traumatic week last week.  He has been in pain for something and though at first we thought it was neck pain, I did have an idea that his teeth might be hurting him as he wasn't excited about eating (he is usually a bit eater and can be controlled by food!)  I took him to the vets and made an appointment to have his teeth cleaned, meaning that he'd probably have to have a tooth extraction because his teeth get very bad.  Three days later John's face had swollen up horribly and another trip to the vet resulted in emergency teeth extraction.  5 teeth!!!  Three years ago he lost 4 teeth so he's not got a lot left... Though John had to spend a week in the hospital, his face it normal again and he is eating happily.  You can imagine that my wallet isn't very happy but as I am still working I'm not giving it another thought.  John is a handful (still, but cute in his own way) and he is part of our family.

In my own way I had a traumatic experience because my computer suddenly stopped working last week.  I asked my knowledgeable friend and he came to the rescue and worked on it for hours over three days.  I've been afraid to turn my computer on because it kept crashing, but I've been writing on this blog for the past 30 minutes and I'm still okay...  I hope I can breath a sigh of relief... And many thanks to my friend!

We got to visit with our potter friend from Morioka as he was having an exhibit in the town near us.  We have so many of his pieces now and they make our meals feel elegant!  This time we bought a Japanese teapot for green tea and we are determined to add more tea to our daily lives.  The two square dishes under the pot are from this same friend.

And speaking of pottery, I have ANOTHER potter friend whom I haven't seen in 40 years and who lives in another part of Japan.  He got in touch with me suddenly and sent me a couple of HIS pieces and I took one to Leiya.  Leiya loved it and when I let my old friend know, he sent me more this week!  Now how am I going to get these pieces to Indiana without them breaking...  

That's the report from my side of the world!

May is full of smiles!

Already into the latter part of May and I'm only getting around to blogging.  I have numerous projects going on and I seem to be drawn to those before I sit down at my computer...

First off, I finished the Misted Pines quilt that I had been making!  Yeah!  The quilt is sure a beauty with the gradations of color and I'm pretty happy with the fabrics I chose to use though this would have been easier if I'd just had a pallette of colors in a kit or something.  I have seen this quilt longarm quilted with a woodsy pantograph pattern but as I've never done overall quilting on a large quilt I stuck to just machine quilting within all the blocks.  As I mentioned in the last post, my quilt shifted as I was doing the quilting and I had a number of pleats in the backing so I did spend one day ripping a corner out and redoing the quilting and I had to go in with hand repair (tacking down folds) on a few of the smaller pleats.  I'd definitely do a better job of basting the next time I try this!  

This quilt will eventually go to Leiya but I'll enjoy it on my wall for a few months.  We had talked about making two narrow panels so that each of us could have a strip of this quilt but definitely the quilt width is what accentuates the flow of colors.  This would be so beautiful in a queen or king sized quilt!

As usual I've been drawing and painting and May has given me lots of flowers to try my hand at.

We visited a garden of lupines one day.

Our own yard had a cluster of Japanese iris blooming.

The rice is growing throughout the countryside and there are patches of green carpet everywhere.  This is how the fields are flooded.

Whenever the weather is nice on Saturdays, Tetsu and I make it a habit to eat breakfast outside.

A had an absolutely wonderful time with 6 of my friends.  One friend lives in the central part of Japan and for the past 10 years or so we would meet up with her when all of us would go traveling for a couple of days.  Before Covid, every year the seven of us would travel and we've been to the northern prefecture of the main island of Japan, to the very southern part of Japan, we've visited dams and onsen and snowy Japanese gardens.  We've flown over Fuji-san and ridden on resort trains, and soared over mountains in cable cars.  What fun memories we have made!  Alas, because of Covid we haven't been able to go traveling for the past 4 years but while we chatted this week (5 hours!) we made plans to step out together again towards the end of this year.

This was our delicious Japanese lunch.  Can you imagine cooking all of that?  (Can you imagine washing up all the little dishes!)

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Leiya keeps our gmail box flooded with baby pictures.  Looking at grandchildren photos is a wonderful way to start the day!  Taiga-kun is sitting up (sort of) now.

When Tony holds him he still looks pretty small...

I thought this was hilarious!  Talk about multi-tasking!  Leiya took Luka and Taiga to visit Daddy at his office and here is Tony doing something on his computer, WHILE holding a baby, WHILE getting some exercise in!

And here is Luka in Daddy's big shoes!

And a project that has been taking up a lot of my time is a booklet I'm making with Valerie Sjodin in her online class A Beautiful Word.  For 2024, I chose the word SMILE to be my word of the year and so I've jumped in with that and am trying to put together art pages that represent it.   This is my front and back cover. 

The inside pages (that may need a bit more...)

Another inside set of pages with an insert...

And the insert opens up to this.

I've got four more pages to go...  My imagination is running thin.

And I leave you with an beautiful photo my friend sent me taken from her condominium on the 14 floor.  Early morning clouds drifiting between the streets and buildings.

The beginning of May

Japan is warming up nicely and we have had some wonderful clear days these past few weeks.  It is warmer than usual which makes us wonder about how the summer ahead will be, but it seems a shame to worry about the future and not enjoy the present.  That must be true of all things and not just the weather.

Last week was Golden Week with quite a few days off from work and school.  The farmers use this week to prepare their fields and for planting rice.  Right behind our house there are a couple of rice fields that have already been flooded and soon there will be tractors setting the rice plants into the deep water.   

Did you ever think about why some fields stay flooded while the next field over has vegetables planted in soil?  I learned a few years ago that the process of flooding the rice fields (which probably have a combination of soils in them) and immediately tilling them, results in layers of soil, the heavy bottom layer settles into the porous earth which keeps the water from draining away.  

In the middle of Golden Week is Boys' Day and when driving to town, we noticed the lovely carp kites flying over the fields and farmhouses.  Sorry, I couldn't get a good picture while we were out but I did come home to try and paint the Koinobori.  Koi means carp, and nobori means climbing, so the Koinobori are flown in hopes that the children in the household will grow up to be strong and able to overcome difficulties just as carp are able to swim up raging streams.

The good weather allows Tetsu to spend time in his garden and he has planted some vegetables in the back in hopes that we can enjoy Tetsu-grown produce.  Tetsu is not much for fertilizing nor for spraying to keep bugs away, and he admitted that he bought a couple of plants that he had no idea what they were.  He isn't counting on too successful a vegetable garden but it keeps him happy.  

We also don't have access to water where he has cultivated his garden and so he stands at the edge with a hose and sprays what he can haphazardly.  Some years he has good luck with cucumbers and green peppers so we shall see... 

Tetsu's garden is nice for Saturday morning breakfasts outside...

And for visiting with friends...  (Marlene and Kohei came over one afternoon.)

Keeping the coffee morning memories alive in my bullet journal.

Speaking of memories...  Every couple of years (it seems like only the years that I get to the States) I write a few blog posts and then decide I want to keep the memories and photos in book form (because how often do we go back and read our old blog posts?)  Years and years ago I found a website called Blog2Print and I have made 5 or 6 blog books that we just love.  

They are more than albums because they have all those written blog thoughts and actually the photos are large and very clear.  Though blog books have been a bit pricey (I tried to order when there was a discount going on) they have been worth the cost and this last blogbook has brought us a lot of joy already.  SADLY the website announced that they are closing so I don't know what I'm going to do from here on if I want to put blog posts to paper.  Does anyone else know of a good blog to book website?

I have finished sewing the Misted Mountains quilt and now am sewing on the binding.  I'll be able to show the finished quilt at the next blog post.  I had quite a few problems with the quilting however.  I decided to pin baste the quilt and either I didn't do a good enough job, or I didn't use enough pins.  At any rate, the quilt shifted as I quilted and I found as I got towards the edges that there were PLEATS in my backing!!!!!  Grrr!!!!  For heaven's sake!  Haven't I been quilting long enough to avoid problems like this?!  I should have spray basted this quilt as I do find that spray basting really holds the layers together more firmly...  But I didn't and so I had pleats.  I decided to leave them in...  This is going to be Leiya's quilt, she's not going to care.  Alas, I care (though I do preach to avoid perfectionism).  I took out a quarter of the quilting I'd already done, readjusted the pins and tried again.  

Better.  Not great.  The only thing in my favor was the very busy backing that I was using so I resorted to repair...  Most of the pleats are mainly visible because of the shadows they cast so I opted for sewing down the pleated area hoping to minimize the shadows.

It will have to do.  Next time I'll use spray baste.

I had to go to the local elementary school to teach traffic safety to the children a couple of weeks ago.  It was a rainy day so we all gathered in the gymnasium and the police officer who came to speak set up signals and a canvas crosswalk for the kids to practice.  Yes, we teach children to hold their hands high when they use a crosswalk and I remember when I first came to Japan seeing children and little old ladies bolting across the streets with their hands held high as if they thought they were putting a protective shield around them while cars screeched to a halt.  In theory, holding one's hand high lets the drivers know that you are not just standing around at a corner and that you'd really like them to stop, and also the high hand (and in the case of our school crosswalk, the yellow flags) will hopefully make the person more visible to the drivers.  That's also the reason for yellow hats and yellow backpack covers.  (As an aside, we crosswalk guards do NOT wear yellow...  just deep blue, hard to see uniforms.  The theory THERE is that being dressed like police officers will make the drivers think twice about ignoring the yellow flags and yellow backpacks and yellow hats and raised hands.)

The other day as I typed in my traffic safety log recounting my hour at the school, Tetsu peered over my shoulder and pointed out some grammatical errors I'd made and then corrected some of my awkward sentences.  I don't ask him to help me often because in the past, more often than not I'd get offended as he rewrote things and laughed at the characters I'd chosen.  He found quite a lot to correct on this day too and I thought again of how much humor I must add to the people at the City Hall who have to read my log each month!

I leave you today with another photo of the beautiful countryside I live in.