Wrapping up July!

We are in the heat and humidity of summer and wondering how the days will go through August.  Every year we say "This year the summer is the worst." and it is a regular greeting between friends these days.  We all end our conversations with "Stay well and be careful of heat stroke."  

There is not much energy for anything!

Tetsu and I did escape for a couple days to the highlands of Nasu, a resort-onsen area about an hour away from us.  As we'd both celebrated birthdays this month, there was a discount for each of us and Tetsu snapped it up right away.  It definitely was cooler and we enjoyed the hot baths and mountains of food!

The onsen was called New Maple and the onsen is especially popular in the autumn when the surrounding mountains are a riot of golds and oranges and red.  The green was still very refreshing and I'd love to go back in the fall.

We played ping-pong for an hour after checking in... something I haven't done since my high school days.  As you can imagine the goal was to keep the ball in a rally for more than 10 swipes across the net.

We were given yukata (cotton kimono) or Japanese style pajamas to wear around the hotel while we were there, and though it seems a bit strange for me to go wandering in public in basically pajamas, that's the custom and so I enjoyed the comfortableness of it.

Our room was purely Japanese style.  So glad I can now get on and off the floor again without any hip troubles.

Dinner and breakfast was buffet style with 10s of different dishes to try.  I ate more in these two days than I usually do in a week!

The scenery was wonderful, with clouds being born from the surrounding mountains.  Even the outdoor bath had this beautiful scenerys to look out on framed by bamboo screens for privacy.

As you can see, I used some of my time sketching.

On our way home from the onsen, we stopped at an outlet mall in Nasu and Tetsu bought me a pretty T-shirt, so that got in my sketchbook took.  And here is my T-shirt with tassels!

Back home, we battle the heat by going to the pool though in this season, in the middle of  summer vacation, there are too many families and too many people in general for me to do any swimming.  The facilities where we go have an outdoor pool that is only open for a month and Tetsu and I like to go outside and bob along under the trees.  The outdoor pool has less people in it because Japanese (women especially) don't like to get tan and so most people prefer to use the indoor pool.  The outdoor pool isn't big enough to swim laps though so I have a reprieve from doing any real exercise during the summer.

M-san came over with her finished strip quilt.  She has been working hard practicing her machine quilting skills!  I had a jelly roll of strips that I wasn't really too fond of and M-san asked if she could use it.  The simplest quilt pattern I could find was on the ON WILLIAMS STREET website and M-san got started making that.  I hadn't planned to make this quilt but when I was bemoaning all the 2 1/2 inch squares I have been collecting in a bin that I hadn't found a use for, I decided to make my own version of the quilt without the strips.  I quilted in white as I felt the quilt was already pretty busy, but M-san chose to quilt in black thread and her beautiful quilting really stands out wonderfully!

My quilt is already up on the wall and I thought this was a cute photo of the two of us with our two quilts!

Taiga-kun is getting big.  Still spitting up...

I don't know why Luka was wrapped in a blanket.  I think it is just as hot in Indiana these days as it is in Japan...

Today, is Julieta-san's birthday!  Happy Birthday Julieta!  And I think I missed blogging that it was Tetsu's birthday too this month and Leiya's!  July is really a celebratory month for our family!

Most of our days are spent in front of the TV...  I'm hand quilting something small while Tetsu enjoys the Olympics.  I'm grateful for the Olympics though not a big fan of watching them myself, mainly because it keeps Tetsu out of the heat for most of the day!

Enjoy your summer and be careful not to get heat stroke those of you in the Northern Hemisphere.  Those friends in the Southern Hemisphere, please send us some cool breezes!

Early July

We are in the final days of the rainy season and are enjoying the relatively cooler days before the real oppressive heat is upon us.  I have three more days of crosswalk guard duty before summer vacation begins and except for two days last week, the mornings have been pleasant.  This year the rainy season began late and maybe it is lingering....

The only big news around here is that Tetsu and I celebrated our 44th wedding anniversery.  We decided to go out for lunch at a somewhat trendy restaurant that specializes in vegetables.  It is not quite a vegetarian restaurant but one could sure go that direction which I did.  

I had Bagna cauda, a dish with a garlic and anchovy sauce and probably 20 different morsels of vegetables cooked one way or another.  It was fantastic!  There was also a salad bar so I really got my daily portion of vegetables this day!

I got semi dressed up for our anniversery lunch but Tetsu was in his usual summer attire of t-shirts, baseball cap and shorts.  

I can't complain... I got a great lunch out of it!

Though I don't have a photo to show of my battle with my computer, that took up a lot of my time this week!  Sigh...  Alas, though I thought my computer woes were over last month when my friend spent two days helping me out, the computer started acting up again this weekend and I threw myself on the mercy of my friend AGAIN!!!  I took the computer back to his house and even left for the next two days while he and his son tossed around ideas about why the computer was not functioning normally and what could be done.  The next day my computer was delivered back to me saying that it had been reset to the original version and was working normally again.

That was FANTASTIC and so far everything is back to normal HOWEVER...  Because the computer was reset, I'd lost the browser I'd installed and all the tabs that I'd normally used.  It took some brainpower for me to get those all back again...  I had to reinstall a couple software that I use regularly, another mind-boggling activity for me, and then had to go back and verify myself on the websites where I have subscriptions.  THAT didn't work so well, especially the SKILLSHARE website that I use daily so I contacted their support team and asked for help.  Let me enthuse about how helpful SKILLSHARE was about getting my account back up and running!!!  They reached out with personal service and were professional and kind about my problems (of course due to my own mix-up about passwords and mail addresses).  I have been so happy using the SKILLSHARE tutorials for my drawing journey and their kind assistance gave them a gold star in my book!

I didn't have such great reviews of my home bank in the States however because I could no longer get back into my bank account because the reset computer no longer could be confirmed in their files I guess, and I had to get Leiya to come to my aid with that problem...  But that too has been solved.  YEAH!  I hope I can forget about this computer from now on...  

One of the last drawings from a drawing class on loose sketching before my computer crashed on me...  No, I haven't been to the beach lately...

Another loose drawing, this time of the cicada that I fin on the trees and grasses around my house.  I really like the loose sketches of some of the artists that I follow but I can't tell if mine are artistic or just scribbly...

Not a whole lot of photos from Leiya but here is a photo of Taiga who is now smiling more and can hold his head up and enjoy the world!

And here is a refreshing view of the countryside outside our bedroom window.  We get some glorious sunsets!

  

The first week of July

There's not much sewing going on around here... it is just too hot and humid!  M-san was planning to come over to iron some of my fabric for me (she seems to like organizing my stash) but I vetoed that idea as the upstairs sewing room is just sweltering and it would be insane to stand over an ironing board!!!  Instead, I showed her how to make a Toothbrush Mat with some of my strings.

We have needed a new mat in our entryway (we need new mats by the bed too) but nothing took my fancy.  I remembered Leiya trying to make a Toothbrush mat many years ago but I don't think she ever finished that project.  After checking out tutorials on Youtube, I thought about cutting up fabric to start my own mat and then realized I had overflowing bins of strings and odd width strips.  As an EXPERIMENT, let's see what I can do with various widths of strips and instead of a toothbrush needle, just a plain large safety pin.  It worked and while I finished up a floor mat, M-san made a small hot pad for the table.

I found that knit fabric worked just as well (maybe better) than regular cotton fabric and so I cut up a yard of knit fabric (the dark blue) that someone had given me and that I haven't been able to find a use for until now.  Tetsu gave his opinion on the size we needed and this is the result.  John thinks the new mat is wonderful.

My friend and cat mentor, Mrs. N, took me out to a birthday lunch at a great little cafe in my town.  

I have been there before and it is special because of the Decolatte that the owner makes.

I'm rather surprised that my country town has this nice trendy cafe and I love all the Decolatte creations that I have watched the owner make.

We have a bounty of blueberries this year!!  Two years ago we had them by the buckets but last year almost none...  This year again, seems to be the year for blueberries!  Unfortunately, we've let the bushes grow too tall and Tetsu has to use a ladder to pick them.

Tetsu also spends a lot of time outdoors using the weed-whacker.  I really fear that he'll get heat stroke so I'm constantly nagging him to come indoors or I make a lot of disgruntled sounds when he goes outside at all.  It seems that I'm either complaining about the cold in winter or the heat in summer... but I think the heat is worse.

As for painting, I got out my markers again for this painting...

And this one was done with a cut-up gift card of all things!

Julieta got dressed up for a pirate's event in Long Beach.  Isn't her costume great!

Leiya's family went traveling last week...

... but they were back home in time for the Fourth of July! 

I hope you all had a great time celebrating the Fourth! 

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!