Patchwork game results!

Patchwork day exhibition!

Our patchwork group had its last patchwork meeting of the year and we all made it!  Lots of chatting and eating and some sewing.

"Okay ladies!  Time to show your patchwork game project results!  Go get your stuff out of your bags!"

A couple ladies groaned.

"I'm going home!  Count me out."  (this was from Mrs. Furui.  And we were at HER house."

Hmm.  It seems that some people didn't find time to work on their projects.

This summer I had bought a couple of yards of cute snowman fabric (it glitters!)  I specifically chose the snowmen over Santa Claus because I foresaw that some ladies might not finish by Christmas... With snowmen they have at least until the end of February...  The fabric was cut into fat quarter size and the instructions were to make SOMETHING with it.  ANYTHING.   The deadline to aim for was this December meeting...

"You are part of the group.  Show us what you've DONE."

Our LCM has admired the fabric for a couple of months...  She didn't want to show her face (check earlier blog posts for what she looks like.)

"Oh well, you have provided a good opportunity for me to take a picture of the original fabric size.

Mrs. Furui was another one trying to hide behind her fabric.

"That's all I got done...  It's going to be a baby quilt for my grandchild."

Seeing as none of her sons are thinking of getting married yet, Mrs. Furui may have chosen a good project.  She probably has a couple of years to work on this...

 

Mrs. Yamaguchi made a towel and was doing the final quilting on a luncheon mat.  ALMOST finished.  (Isn't Mrs. Yamaguchi pretty?)

 Mrs. Okutomi was very gung-ho about this game... because.... she'd made the snowman tapestry LAST year!  So for our game she made the 3-dimensional Christmas tree!  She'd kept the fabrics and buttons and things from her last year's project and tied it all together THIS year.  Great idea!!

(Hmmph.  Mrs. Ochiai asked me to remove her close-up from my blog... So for those who saw her... now she's not here anymore!)

Mrs. Ochiai made a scenery quilt.  Actually she started working on hexagons and got way laid and as a quickie quilt she put this pretty scene together.  Better than that, LAST year Mrs. Ochiai had made the same scene in summer colors and so she just made the tapestry again in winter colors with the snowman border.  Another wonderful idea!

Mrs. Harada did the most work of any of us.  She made a crib size quilt for her soon-to-be-born grandchild.  (She looks too young to be a grandmother.  She IS too young to be a grandmother!)  Mrs. Harada's quilt is all hand pieced and hand quilted.  Can you make out all the circles that she quilted on the grid?  The quilting really makes the quilt!

And me?  I made a Christmas tree tapestry.  Let's see... needle turned applique, machine quilted. 

Well, that was sure fun!  (My thoughts.  I'm not sure our LCM and Mrs. Furui would agree.)

Christmas ornaments

Our household is getting back to normal.  And one more day of crosswalk duty and English etc. and then I'll start concentrating on Christmas and getting ready for the new year.

My tradition of making Christmas ornaments in my children's English classes have continued and this year I had my children sewing sequins and beads.  I had found some pre-cut felt Christmas ornaments earlier this season and so I pulled out my overflowing beads box and bought some sequins.  Now this shouldn't be hard should it?

Actually...  the kids found the mechanics of holding a needle, hanging on to their thread, keeping track of the front and back of their ornament quite a challenge.  Monday I was trying to help five 3rd and 4th girls at one time.

"Sensei!  My thread came off!

"Sensei!  There's a knot in this!"

"Sensei!  I messed this all up!"

I had pulled out the needle threader (thank goodness for that invention!  The kids had a great time threading their needles with it.) and while I untangled threads and snipped flub-ups, S-L-O-W-L-Y the kids sewed beads onto their ornaments.

But... what with a bit of singing by candlelight, and the reading of the Christmas story (in Japanese...  there are more important things than English) there wasn't a whole lot of time for sewing.

"Sensei!  Can I take home beads to sew at home?"

Great idea!  I have more beads and sequins than I'll ever need so everyone took some home.  I'm afraid I was too busy repairing sewing mistakes to take any pictures of that class.  Sorry.












And last night my two 6th grade boys tried their hands at beading...  Hmmm.  Not a great amount of difference between the 3rd and 4th grade girls and the 6th grade boys.  They went home with beads too.

Oh, and while I've got these boys here, I thought I'd show the bag that K-kun made in school.  The 6th graders have home economics at school and all the kids make a bag.  K-kun said that this was a kit that he ordered through the school.  Cool looking fabric isn't it!  Samurai motif and household crests!

Togetherness

Tetsu and I like to do things together.

Guess who came home with a fever and has gone off to bed.  Hopefully I am perking enough to play nurse for a couple of days...  Tetsu was a good one while I was laid up this weekend.

This is taking togetherness a bit too far...

Lazing about

Good morning.

I'm lazing around the house.  AND I DON'T REALLY HAVE TIME TO!

A bug has brought me down.  I think it is bug... It might be my quilting.  Is that possible?  I spent quite a long time up in the sewing room on Thursday machine quilting. And I was so intensely involved that I didn't have any heat on in the freezing room.  And nearly three hours later I had a neck ache.

Now I rarely get stiff shoulders though people ask me often if with all my quilting and knitting and blogging I might not suffer from back aches etc.  Nope.  Not me!

BUT... on Thursday... Yes... I have stiff shoulders... or a neck ache...  I went to the pool hoping to work the kinks out.

By Friday I was worse!  But I absolutely HAD to get to the kindergarten Christmas rehearsal practice so I wrapped my neck up tightly and went and did my part.  The kindergarten teachers were horrified that I might be feeling low at the Christmas program!  Four years ago I missed it entirely because of the flu and they STILL remind me of that year.  I hurried home after the rehearsal and went to bed.

But by evening, I was feeling sick to my stomach and Tetsu found me leaning over the bathroom throne.  He dragged me to Urgent care where the diagnosis was...  Maybe a virus?  Maybe the flu?  Maybe a cold in the neck from the icy window over our bed?  Maybe the result of injury to the neck?  I came home with lots of medicine and went back to bed.

Saturday I was better and I DID make it to the Christmas program (wearing one of the dreaded surgical masks I've pooh-poohed about so much.  I had to buy a mask at the hospital door the night before just to be allowed  IN the hospital!)  But it was back to bed afterwards, and I skipped church yesterday too.

I'm now better but not great.  And I don't know if I'm under the weather now because of a virus, the flu, a cold in the neck, neck injury or maybe because the medicine is too strong.  Sigh.  How we take for granted our health when things are going along fine.  I guess I'll make another jaunt to the neighborhood doctor and get his opinion.

(I'm hoping it is a virus.  Heaven forbid my quilting has anything to do with this!!!)

Christmas program

We have had a lot of Christmas activity the past few days.  The kindergarten has had its Christmas program and I've gone to two rehearsals and then to the program yesterday.  My part is minimal in all this... but I do lead each of the four classes in an English song.  And I do strum my guitar a bit (which none of the other teachers can do).  So although I may be on stage a whole 4 minutes, I have to be there.

The Christmas program begins with a worship service... I guess I show similar pictures every year but here I go again.  I took these pictures during the first rehearsal...  At Saturday's program the room is PACKED with parents and grandparents!  There's no way I have been able to squeeze in there to take pictures!

The mother's choir (not dressed for the occasion) sing by pen light as the children file in.  Look at all the babies slung in front and back papoose packs.

The oldest class of 5 and 6 year old's file in holding candle holders and they light each candle from the next and then sit down.  They've got a pretty good system with the lit candle held straight and the next lighter bending to receive the flame.  The kindergarten has done this for over 20 years and there's never been an accident yet, but I'm always happy when the Christmas worship service is over with.

The younger children file in after all the candles are lit.  These are the three, four and five year old's.  They carry pen lights and look forward to the day when they are old enough to hold real candles.

And here is the whole group with the principal lighting the advent wreath.  A lovely ceremony.
 

I hope I've blurred out this picture enough.  The oldest class puts on a fantastic Christmas pageant with singing and costumes.  (One year, nearly 20 years ago, the mothers spent the whole year making costumes for the Christmas program.)

The Christmas program was a success and I'm sure many happy memories remain for all the children and their families.  And this is so important too because most Japanese children have absolutely no idea what Christmas is all about.  Bethlehem?  Shepherds?  Wisemen?  Don't know any of it.  And most Japanese children have never heard that Jesus was even born. I watched the pageant and thought,

"Yeah!  Another 30 some children who will grow up with the true Christmas seed planted in their souls!"
 

Barking up a storm

Choco has had some excitement this week.  On Monday I was leaving for crosswalk duty and found Choco running around the yard.  We'd been back from our morning walk for about an hour and Tetsu had attached her to the heavy wire "rope".  But Choco is a strong dog and the wire was old (well, at least a year old) so she managed to break it. That day Choco was allowed in the house until I bought a new wire rope.

And then on Wednesday I was just getting in the car to go to the kindergarten when I heard a rustling in the forest.  I couldn't see an animal but I could see the underbrush moving around.

 "That's odd.  If there is another stray cat out there Choco would be barking up a storm."

No barking.  I went to look.  NO CHOCO!  This time she had slipped her choke collar (I don't know how many times I've asked Tetsu to remove the choke collar!) and was having a jaunt in the woods.

"CHOCO!!!"

Good dog.  She came back right away.  It makes me shudder to think I might have left for the day with Choco loose for about 6 hours...

Then yesterday Choco was barking again and when I went out to look I found her tangled up in her wire rope and the beach umbrella we have for her to get shade.  Hmmm.  Tetsu has got the wire rope too long.  And in this cold Choco definitely doesn't need shade.  I set her free and removed the umbrella.

And right now Choco is out there barking up a storm again at people out for their morning walks.  The no-bark collar has not been effective...

Choco needs lessons from my friend, Mrs. Tashiro's dog.  This is Teto.

Teto was given a Santa outfit from someone and he is quite pleased to sit quietly and be photographed and praised.  There's a Christmas card picture for you!

I one time felt sorry for Choco out in the cold and made a fleece shirt for her. It was in shreds within minutes.  Choco is not a dog to wear clothes!  So she is outside freezing and barking and Teto is inside playing Santa.

Ho-ho-ho!

A Christmas card!

Our first Christmas card arrived yesterday!  From June!  And such a cute one too!  Kitties and bears!  June's card will be the first card to go up in our entryway.  I wonder if there will be more...  Year by year, with e-mail, fewer and fewer Christmas cards seem to be sent...  And in Japan, we send out New Year's cards, so nobody gets a Christmas card from me either.   (And I really need to spend some time working on our New Year's cards...  Maybe this week?)

 

And also from June was a fun fat quarter of kitty fabric!  Thank you June! June has sent me so many wonderful fabrics in the past.  I made a fantastic I SPY Kitty Quilt for my mother a couple of years ago, and all the kitty fabric was sent to me by June!  Let's see...  shall I start working on another kitty quilt?  I still have quite a lot of the fabric left...

 

I have barely finished knitting Tetsu's vest and I've bought more yarn and started CROCHETING!  The other day I admired a vest that some acquaintance at the pool was wearing and she offered to GIVE it to me!  Oh my... I don't really know her that well... I declined her kind offer but said I'd be interested in the pattern if she had it and a couple of days later she brought me the pattern.  She seemed so eager to help me out that I bought yarn and have decided I'll crochet up the vest, maybe for my mother-in-law...  My mother-in-law has her likes and dislikes and this may not fit her fancy so...  if not, I'll have another vest!  (And I'm already in line for the purple vest if it doesn't suit Tetsu's fancy too!)

It is cozier to knit in a warm room than to go upstairs to a freezing sewing room and quilt...  Even with the small electric heater the sewing room is never really warm...Well, I promised Patora and Toi that I'd come and quilt with them today...so that's where I'm headed next.