Knitting

Yesterday morning I taught English to a couple kindergarten mothers and one of the mothers, seeing Tetsu's half knitted in the chair asked how much more I have to do and when I was hoping to finish it. Oh, I should be able to get it done in another week if I get in some serious knitting time and do nothing else.

Well that's a laugh. There is NO serious knitting time scheduled and so I squeeze in a bit of knitting between lessons and when I am bleary-eyed and thinking of bed. At this rate I am NOT going to get this done by Christmas! After the mothers left I settled into a chair and since it was a rainy day, I spent the rest of the afternoon knitting. Well, maybe if I don't have to do any major adjustments I can pull this under the wire.

This year's vest pattern is fairly complicated but doesn't have cables or color changes. Tetsu prefers solid colors and simple patterns but he's probably not going to be able to tell if this was complicated or not. Straight knitting I find boring and besides, any irregularity in stitches shows up too easily. I'm not too good at setting a gauge either (nor at making armholes and necklines etc.) so I often get a piece almost completed and have to do some ripping to make a garment wearable. I'm keeping my fingers crossed with this one.

I guess I did show another vest that I was working on a couple of weeks ago and but that was a flop. I had found VERY CHEAP cotton yarn at the recycle shop and started working on an English knitting pattern. Cotton is too stretchy and even with a lot of TINK-ing (knit backwards=ripping) and elastic yarn, the armholes are too stretched out. I don't know what to do to remedy this any further so this project is sitting on the table looking forlorn.

The cotton vest looks better on the floor than on me.

Kindling

THANK YOU TETSU!!!

It is not even Christmas yet and I have already received my Christmas present. Actually, Tetsu asked me weeks ago (before the car situation) what I would like for Christmas. And I said...

"Hmmm..."

"You WANT something! That is the first time you have ever hesitated and not just told me 'nothing'! What do you want?"

Well, Tetsu had asked me a while back if I had ever heard of the Condor. It took me a long time to figure out he was talking about a KINDLE (Japanese pronunciation of R and L you know) and I said yes, I'd heard of it (because I had read Mary's blog and I do get notices from Amazon).

So when Tetsu asked what I wanted, that sort of floated in my head.

A Kindle (which is a digital book) would be a great way to get English books that are hard for me to purchase. Of course it is not as hard as it was 30 years ago when I'd have to send a letter to my mother and ask her to go buy me a book and have her send it which would take three weeks. We've come a long way, baby! and now I can order books online very easily. Occasionally Amazon Japan will tell me they can't get the book and then I go to Amazon. com and order from there. Ordering from America takes a week and the shipping costs are higher (Amazon Japan will ship free) but of course Amazon Japan English books cost more.

And of course when I'm in the States I usually load up on used books at a dollar a piece but recently I've had to pay overweight fees on my luggage (some of that is fabric related...) so maybe I'm not really saving money buying used books.

What I'm saying is that I'm trying to justify buying a Kindle.

Tetsu determined that HE didn't know how one buys a Kindle online but since I do, he forced me (willingly) to order one right away so that it would arrive in time for Christmas. According to his information Kindles are so popular that it might not arrive until late January.

SO... I ordered a Kindle!!!! And it arrived from the States in 4 days.... And I left it in the box for two days thinking I'd wait until Christmas. But I was again forced (willingly) to open the box because Tetsu wanted to see what a Kindle was and how it worked.

Yesterday morning I opened my Kindle box. OOooohh! So COOL! Very sleek, very professional looking! And I played around awhile and then pushed the right button and ordered a book that Nancy had written about on her blog a few months ago. And then I went off to a hamburger shop with Kindle in hand and spent about an hour reading!!!

You can tell I'm going to get less than usual done this season. And I was already behind! Does anybody want to recommend a book?

Sweet potatoes

I was at the kindergarten yesterday and found all the kids very excited because they were getting special snacks. Sweet potatoes! I have never understood the great joy in eating sweet potatoes but there is a Japanese tradition of craving sweet potatoes. The older generation will tell you how in their day the only food that was sweet at all were sweet potatoes and how kids these days are spoiled with all the chocolate and cookies and candy they can readily get.

"In my day, all we had were sweet potatoes! And we appreciated them!"

You can buy roasted sweet potatoes in the supermarket and they make the whole store smell heavenly. And in the winter I can occasionally hear a sweet potato seller wandering around the streets in his pickup truck with a potato roaster in the back. He calls out as he goes;

"Sweet~ potatoes~! Stone roasted sweet potatoes~!"

People stop him and for a few dollars he will sell a hot roasted sweet potato wrapped in newspaper that women and girls will carry away giggling. This is supposed to be a special treat for women. Men are not as interested in sweet potatoes. I know the reasoning behind it but I have my doubts.

Japanese men are not supposed to like sweets. Eating candy and cakes etc. are supposed to be below them. Macho men are supposed to be drinkers and not have a sweet tooth like women and children. A hot sweet potato in the pocket is supposed to be a great hand warmer and the menfolk will deign to nibble on one now and then but enjoy? No that is beneath them. See. A little hard to understand.

And the giggling? Well, sweet potatoes have a lot of fiber and so they produce gas.

"Tee-hee-hee! To think these refined ladies are craving after gas producing sweet potatoes!"

Here again, I don't really understand this thinking either but it is a common joke between sweet potato eaters.

Yesterday's sweet potatoes at the kindergarten were even more special because the children had planted the potato plants in the spring and helped dig them up last week. And one of the kindergarten staff was busy yesterday roasting sweet potatoes in a barrel in the kindergarten yard.

So all the children were very excited to get a hot slice of sweet potato and many were coming back for seconds and thirds.

I was given a great big sweet potato too and it was delicious! Tee-hee-hee!

New Year card

Yesterday I spent the day at Mrs. Ochiai's house. She was trying to teach me how to use Photoshop Elements 7 in Japanese. This is a challenge. Any computer software of any type is a challenge to me. And in Japanese? And I could go buy a book so that I don't have to remember everything Mrs. Ochiai is trying to get into my thick head, but that is more Japanese.

I was planning to make our yearly New Year card yesterday. We've done this for 24 years (since Takumi was born). For the first 20 years I just took a picture to the camera shop, paid a fee and they made the card for me. For the last 4 years I have done it myself.

HA! That's a lie! I have had Mrs. Ochiai do it for me and I printed it out myself. But this year I was going to get step-by-step instructions from Mrs. Ochiai and with two computers side by side I was going to mimic her every move and make a family Christmas card.

"I was going to..." means I didn't.

Just learning the different buttons (I've forgotten them all this morning!) took a lot of time. And then trying to make decisions like, do I want to fade out a picture or put a frame around it or use this font or that font etc. etc. took time. Mrs. Ochiai was patient. She made lunch and coffee. She made suggestions. She fixed things that I messed up.

I came home to try it alone last night. I want to put one picture of Tetsu and me and one picture of Takumi and Leiya on the card. And I want to include all the animals in our family. I am confused again. And I've found another reason why 1 dog and 6 cats are too many for one household. All their pictures won't fit on the card.

I wonder if my friends are going to hear from me this Christmas and New Years.

NEW

I have never understood the automobile industry in Japan. When I first came to Japan and probably even now, I noticed that there are no old cars on the streets. In Southern California there are cars that seem to be held together with rust and twine but in Japan all the cars look new. It is true that occasionally you will see a dent on a fender (and that used to be unheard of) but Japanese drive nice, well-running vehicles.

One reason is because of the sha-ken system. Sha means vehicle and ken means testing. By law all cars must be registered every two years. The car goes away for a day or two, the vehicle owner pays a horrendous fee (like a couple thousand dollars!) and the car comes back registered. Supposedly the mechanics have given the car an overhaul but that is of course extra and if the car is somewhat old then it may break down again in a couple months. I think that sha-ken must be done every year once the car is older than 12 so you can guess that most people would rather buy a NEW car than pay the exorbitant fee for just another year.

Of course, I know nothing about cars... and neither does Tetsu.

We sort of live on a shoestring and so in all the 30 years of marriage Tetsu has never bought a NEW car. We buy used cars that a dealer friend will deliver at our door and Tetsu never looks over a car, chooses between styles or even cares how the car looks or runs. We trust the dealer friend and whatever he says is available and can be used for another two years (the length of the sha-ken) then we buy. No haggling of prices, no options no accessories.

Last month Tetsu sighed and said one of our cars was up for sha-ken again. Is it worth it to pay all that money when already the back light is broken, there is a funny noise in the engine and the air conditioning is irratic? But even buying a used car is a big purchase for us. Tetsu contacted our dealer and asked him to look around for a used car again this year. And he told me that the car (the one I drive) was only registered until Saturday so he would take it in Saturday night.

Saturday evening Tetsu asked if I'd like to go with him to the dealership to return the car, pick up another one and stop off for Starbucks on the way back. I could care less about the car but yeah, a Starbucks might be nice so off we went.

And on the way Tetsu breaks the news that he is thinking about buying a NEW car! A NEW CAR?! The Watanabes have never owned a NEW car! I never thought in my life we'd own a NEW car. We are recycle shop, hand-me-down, used car people. A NEW car is a major luxury item. Is a NEW car even affordable for us? I don't think so.

It seems that the Japanese government is trying to get old cars off the street in order to cut the carbon dioxide emission percentage and for every car over 13 years old the government will give a major cash back if you buy a NEW one. (If you buy a hybrid car there is a double cash back but that is definitely out of our bounds). And Tetsu noticed all this in the morning newspaper. Of course our dealer friend had mentioned this months back but at the word NEW, Tetsu tuned the conversation out and the dealer, who has supplied us with cars for the past 20 years never really expected us to think of anything but another used car.

Of course I just thought I was along for a Starbucks and was a little put out by this turn of events. Has Tetsu thought this through? (Yeah, from earlier that morning...)

"Okay. But I'm driving your car then. You can have the NEW one. It would be too scary to be driving a NEW car."

"No. Tanya, I want you to drive the NEW car. Here. What color do you like?"

The dealer just sat back smiling saying it didn't matter to him which one of us drove the car but wasn't this a lovely lavender? Wow, this is getting to be way too affluent a conversation for me. Choose? We get to choose something?

Tetsu did think this over another night (he couldn't sleep Saturday night) and yesterday he signed papers on a NEW car. And I guess it really is going to be my car. And lavender to boot! I have a week to get used to the idea that we are going to be NEW car owners!

Houses of prayer

I was sort of on the run yesterday all day... Saturday but I spent time in two churches.

In the morning Tetsu and I went to our neighborhood church to help wax the floors. (We did our own floors last weekend, so we should be pros.) It is a tiny church but it sure took a long time to do the waxing! Push all the benches to the back. Wax once. Wait 45 minutes. (I hate to say this but Tetsu was too liberal with the wax and it wouldn't dry!) Wax again. Wait another 45 minutes. Push all the benches to the front and do the same thing again. And finally wax the hallway, upstairs and kitchen. I left at 11:00. Tetsu and the others waxed until 3:00.

From our little Protestant church I went to the large Catholic church in the next town over to attend a charity concert that Marlene was giving. That is a beautiful church made of stone and the altar is so striking.


I couldn't help looking at the pillars and thinking of doing some Celtic quilting again. (My mind wanders.) Isn't it interesting the differences in God's houses?

I finished making Yumetaro-san's prayer quilt and here it is ready for Tetsu and me to tie prayers into it. I guess Mi is helping. She sure became a quilter's kitty quickly. She sees a quilt and claims it for her own territory. I will deliver this to Yumetaro later today.

Off to do more praying this Sunday morning!

Christmas boots

Last week I asked one of the ladies that I teach to show us how she makes felt Christmas decorations. Yesterday she gave us a demonstration. YEAH! I think I just solved my English Christmas art project problem this year!

Every year for the last English lesson in December I make Christmas decorations with my English kids. I try to use English... Anyway it gives the kids a taste of Christmas traditions and hopefully they keep the decorations as mementos of English class. We have made angels and wreaths and stars and hearts etc. etc.

What to do this year? I'm running out of ideas!

Well, I haven't done this with the kids yet but I figured I'd show this in case anyone else wants to try it this Christmas.

You need a large "cheap" sponge and one sponge can be cut (by scissors) into 48 boots. (Yes 48!) Cut the sponge in half and mark 8 boot shapes on the top. Cut those apart and then cut the width of the sponge into three. (Got that? There are three boots in one width of sponge boot shape.)

Cut off the corners rounding the boots a little and sew a string through the bottom of the boot to the top.





Wrap each boot in felting wool (raw wool?) A piece around the toe and heel part,






a piece around the ankle part.








Using hot water (not boiling!) and a drop or two of dish washing liquid, play around with the "boot" for about 10 minutes, squeezing, patting, rolling, petting. If you are too vigorous the wool will move around too much and you'll get bald spots.

OR you can play around about three minutes and then make a new boot in a different color and when you get 48 half made felt boots throw them all in a laundry net and put them in the washing machine. How neat is that! That is my student's invention for making lots of boots at one time. (Not so fun for the kids but a real time saver if you are making lots of boots.)


After it looks like most of the wool fibers have intertwined themselves you just rinse well in cold water, squeeze dry and glue on trim and a ribbon.








That's a pretty simple art project and I was thinking if there was more time and if I supply sequins then the kids could decorate their boots a little more.