Irons

I'm still knitting. Tetsu's vest is almost finished.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Ide (the knitting wizard!) brought over her iron to show me. Mrs. Ide has studied knitting (at a school!). She knows all these tricks and tips for making something extra nice. The one tip she says over and over again is

"Blocking the knitted piece is the most important part of knitting."

Now I don't understand that. I spend weeks knitting parts, put them all together, sew in the dangling yarn ends and give the whole thing a few tugs before wearing. A couple years later I may send it to the dry cleaners. But Mrs. Ide says that's all wrong. It is important to steam iron each piece before connecting them, it is important to steam seams open, it is important to steam set the ribbing. Once steam set, you never have to do it again... Ever!

Okay... I tried steaming Tetsu's vest... with my cute little pink plastic iron. It seems to spit steam AFTER I set it back in its cradle. And I don't see much difference even after I steam iron my knitted pieces (sorry Mrs. Ide). Is my iron bad or is it me?

Mrs. Ide's iron is one that she bought 35 years ago for a couple hundred dollars (for an iron 35 years ago that's pretty expensive!) She bought it for the specific purpose of using it on her knitted pieces. (She has another iron for patchwork and regular clothes ironing. It has no temperature adjustment, it has no buttons. It is just very heavy and steams (but you are NEVER are supposed to touch the iron to knitted pieces! Just the steam.) I thought the brand name was interesting. Bamboo Co. LTD.

Mrs. Ide demonstrated her steaming technique on another friend's Work In Progress and I must say that her iron does a better job of steaming than mine.

Anyway, I will finish Tetsu's vest this week AND STEAM IT!

Sky high

Somewhere on the other side of the mountains is an electric power plant and high tension wires extend from it going across the fields and over the farms and forests.

Yesterday when I was driving home from somewhere I looked up and saw little dots within the wires.

Crows? No... Too far up and too far away to be able to see crows.

Those... are... people up there! I stopped the car and took some pictures. I wonder if they noticed me down on the ground appreciating their hard work. How would you like to have a job like that? I'm glad other people can do it!

Stuff, stuff, stuff

A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to be a "minimalist". I got that term from the book, Simplify, that I downloaded on my Kindle. Years and years ago (before blogging) I was a big follower of Flylady and my house looked pretty good. I had routines and decluttering zones and shopping lists. I religiously threw away 11 pieces of junk daily (it could even be a bread package tab... just so I'd hit 11.)

But once I started blogging I got away from visiting the Flylady website daily and my house has crumbled... or maybe better said, jumbled. Stuff, stuff, stuff.

One major problem is that I don't know where the dump is in our town. Taking things to the dump has always been Tetsu's job and HE only gets there once every 4 or 5 years.

Another problem is that there are no thrift shops in Japan. There are recycle shops where the shop offers a piddling for the few things you bring in but more often than not the shop tells you that you don't have anything that anyone would want (that's why I'm bringing it to the recycle shop!) and send you home with your box. It hardly seems worth the trouble.

And thirdly, garbage is set out in a community trash area... not in front of the house, so if you put your trash out on the wrong day then you get an angry block head (that's Block-head as in neighborhood block, not blockhead...) confronting you. What with paper going out on one day, burnables going out on another, cans and glass on another day and plastics on still another day, I am confused about when to throw away the old picture frame (wooden) that has metal tabs on the back (dangerous) and glass on the front (glass). And I am at my wits end about what to do with an old TV and computer printer and old carpets! So there they sit littering my bedroom.

I've asked Tetsu to go to the dump. He said it costs money to take things to the dump. WELL??? Does he want to start his own dump in our bedroom (and storage room and back kitchen cupboard?)

The other day Tetsu invited me to come to his convalescent home's bazaar. Bazaars are great places for people to get rid of their UNUSED stuff. It has to be unused though... Pretty dishes that were given as a wedding present (wedding presents are given to the guests at weddings), towels that your mother-in-law bought but you don't like... Those sort of things. I went to the bazaar and bought a bag of rice and a sturdy serving tray. Also a pair of bead earrings that a group made. I ate some fried noodles and fried chicken and had good time.

BUT!!! That night Tetsu came home with a box!

"Left-over stuff from the bazaar. I just bought it all for a few thousand yen as a donation to the convalescent home."

Bear chopstick holders. A bowl without a lid. Pretty plastic dishes. A wooden trivet. Candles holders, hand towels, a cow cup, a single portion size pot. A set of white dessert dishes.

So much for being a minimalist. I frowned at all of the stuff poking out of the box.

"So, what are we going to do with all this?"

"The ladies in the office predicted that you wouldn't be happy about all this stuff. They said, "Oh, your wife is going to be angry at you!" I'll put it in the back closet."

The office ladies know me better than Tetsu does. I guess the box will stay in the back closet until another bazaar someday.

Family news

Yesterday I had my dose of family time.

First I called my mother to wish her a happy Thanksgiving. In years past my mother would call once week and we would talk for an hour on the phone (and the phone rates were high in those days!!) But these days she no longer calls and I know the conversations I'll have with her will go around in a circle without much news. On my side of the world, no children to talk about so I don't have much to tell her either. I know if I bring up the topic of cats that she will be horrified that I have so many (AGAIN! Maybe two or three times during the phone call) and I know that she will ask a number of times when I am coming again and then will be disappointed when I tell her I won't visit until summer. She misses me. We had a nice 10 minute chat and signed off with her telling me that she would go directly and tell my brother and Marcy that I had called.

A few minutes later I decided to go ahead and call my brother and Marcy myself and wish them a happy Thanksgiving too. Grandma (my mother) was over there already enjoying a turkey sandwich ( she only lives on the other side of the walkway) but Marcy said she hadn't mentioned talking to me. Well, that was what she went over there for! Such is the forgetfulness of old age, but my mother still can walk across the walkway and still enjoy a turkey sandwich!

A bit longer of a chat with Marcy asking her to do a couple of favors for me, commiserating with her about the lack of news from either of my children. Though Takumi only lives an hour away, he doesn't come by much. I tried to beg off her sending Christmas presents to Japan this year ... it costs way too much and there is nothing we really need nor want. I too find it hard to buy presents for Kiana (16) and Colin (13). We talked about 20 minutes. Kiana is driving now... My brother works too hard... Normal family news.

After hanging up with Marcy I found Leiya on the computer. She was at a friend's house for Thanksgiving weekend but Marcy had just called and suggested she fly out to California for Christmas. That would be nice Christmas present for our whole family. Leiya with her grandma and uncle's family, and maybe Takumi would even turn up.

And after chatting with Leiya my doorbell rang and our good friend Toshi Suga was standing at the front door with home made pumpkin pie in hand wishing me a happy Thanksgiving! (The Suga family was featured in those Thanksgiving pictures from a couple of days ago.) After reading about my lonely Thanksgiving, they took pity on me and brought me pumpkin pie and sweet sake for my cold.

All in all I felt very loved and cared for yesterday. And that's what Thanksgiving is all about!

Trees

Mrs. Furui mailed me a pattern for next year's bazaar quilt. Though she only lives 30 minutes from me, I haven't been able to get over to her part of town and with the Bargello done I wanted some sewing at my fingertips. The last I'd heard our group was going to go for house patterns. And then someone suggested trees. And from what was in the envelope I guess trees won! Not really. THIS month everyone will be making trees. NEXT month we'll be making houses. We've got a lot of time. Who knows how our village will grow!

So these are my trees for this month.

And I'm back with no sewing at my fingertips...

UNTRUE!!! Tanya, finish knitting the vest! Get some hand quilting done! Put together the Star quilt and the Alabama Beauty! You've got LOTS to do!

My Thanksgiving family

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American blogging friends and family! I heard that Leiya is spending the day with a college friend's family and I have no idea about how Takumi spends Thanksgiving. I don't think he knows how to roast a turkey.

My family has always been a small one. My father, mother, brother and myself. My mother was an only child so no relatives on her side of the family. My father had a disagreement with his only sister so I never met that side of the family. No cousins, no aunts or uncles; grandparents living in the Midwest while we lived in California.

When I was about 5, our family became good friends with a Japanese-American family and most holidays and weekends were spent with them. The fathers played chess together. The mothers went shopping together. We children played ditch and read comic books together. The other family's grandfather and my grandfather (when he was visiting) would converse in Japanese and make us Thanksgiving dinner. Rolled eel sushi... Chicken livers and water chestnuts... Pineapple and soy sauce spare ribs... And turkey. It wasn't a typical Thanksgiving dinner but I thought we were eating what everyone ate!

Until Tetsu and I moved to Nikko, our family too didn't do much to celebrate Thanksgiving. (Well, Tetsu hardly knows what the celebration is!) For one, my oven is not large enough to roast a turkey. Turkey? Where is there a turkey?! Japanese have absolutely no idea what a turkey is... not in the wild nor in the supermarket. My poor children were missing the American tradition of Thanksgiving with family!

However, as history tends to repeat itself, our Japanese-American bi-cultural family became good friends with another Japanese-American bi-cultural family, the Yamadas. The fathers did judo together. The mothers ate chocolate together. The children played video games and read comic books together. And for many, many years we celebrated Thanksgiving at Marlene's house along with other friends with US affiliations. Marlene had the big American oven and she ordered a turkey from some specialist store. One friend, who often made business trips to the States would think ahead and bring back cans of black olives and cranberry sauce. Yum! And the rest of us would pot-luck in pumpkin pies, green bean casseroles and salads.

Marlene and Kohei live in Hong Kong these days... Sigh. No more Thanksgiving dinners around here anymore... More than missing the dinners though, I miss Marlene and all the people that gravitated to the Yamada's house.

Happy Thanksgiving Marlene! I'm thinking of you!

(Oh dear... I'm posting pictures of people (and children!) without asking... But since this is from 11 years ago, do you think they'll forgive me? Tetsu isn't as gray as he is these days. And Leiya in the yellow looks nothing like she does now. Can you even spot grumpy Takumi in the one picture? He's wearing purple.) My good friends and family!

"Inside a Rainbow" finished!

I am still battling my cold (it has been a week! I'm fed up!) and don't go out much and don't get much done. Yesterday was a holiday in Japan which meant I could sew or knit as much as I liked.

And the result was......

I FINISHED THE "INSIDE A RAINBOW" BARGELLO!

I had some trouble with quilting the borders on this. Early this year I had done full feathers (meaning feathered on both sides of the vine) on the Alphabet Soup. I was very happy with the result and knew I wanted to do feathers in the border on this quilt too. But once I got started I couldn't find a rhythm and ended up getting lost... I also didn't leave enough room on the far side for a full feather... Okay... Just sew what you can... and I did. And I think it came out very well. For feathers I've decided that the more you add, the better it goes. A lot of the crookedness gets quilted out on the second sweep...

The "Inside a Rainbow" will be going to some church friends who run a foster home called Rainbow House.

"Tanya, we have that large wall in the entry and since we call ourselves Rainbow House, would you consider making a rainbow quilt for the space? If you ever have any free time or the inclination to do so, we sure would appreciate it."

I didn't know how to make a rainbow shaped quilt. My friends left the whole pattern open and have never mentioned the request again. That left me free to play with the batik fabric I have but I wasn't very successful in making a rainbow shape using the Bargello method. When I started quilting this (after a couple months pinned to my wall) I drew in arcs with a chalk pencil and quilted anyway my heart took me. I suppose I was still striving for a rainbow shape...

Actually with all the color movement, you can't really see the quilting details but maybe in the right light...? I'm considering keeping this quilt around the house until Christmas because I'd really like to show it to my patchwork friends at December's meeting. A bit of pride showing its head there...