to say it is wet would be an understatement. The rain started on monday, and rain is forecast every day for the next week. I guess rainy season has started. I get the feeling from the blogs I read that the east coast is hot, the west coast is cold and here we are wet.
While my husband was shopping around the internet for various routes for me to fly to the west coast (vancouver or seattle) I rejected (previously flown by me) routes through China, Korea and Taiwan. Watching the news, I am feeling relieved that we will be flying through the chaos that is Narita/Tokyo instead of AMERICAN BEEF REJECTING KOREA, EARTHQUAKE STRUCK CHINA, and 12 HOUR LAYOVER TAIPEI. The internet has made international communication so much easier, but it is just getting more and more difficult, expensive and dangerous to travel. I will get to experience being photographed and fingerprinted when I return to Japan…. even though I have been granted permanent residency and have lived here for over 22 years, I will be treated as any other foreigner entering Japan.
Fine young oldest son is home with a fever and will be absent from school. He was hoping for 3 years of perfect attendance, and wants to go despite the fever and backache………Fine young youngest son got some cream from the doctor yesterday for a rash on his face, he says it’s not ringworm but something else and gave him some steroid cream to clear it up.
oh. you are all wondering where the crafts are. Afterall, this is a crafting blog. Well, I am hard at work, enjoying every stitch, quilting. I thought I would finish up a quilt to enter in the fair, it turns out that I am not “nearly finished” with it as I had thought, but barely into starting…. so with some determination and not yet unbearably hot weather, I am spending a lot of couch time QUILTING.
I have posted before about this quilt, with the sashiko curves…..
and the squares.
I am in a bit of a dilema now as to whether or not I should push on and finish it up before August or just put it away until next winter. There is also the problem of bringing it all the way to America and then finding a future owner………. I am not bringing it back to Japan, because I will have plenty of other things (fabric!!!!!!!!!!!) to fill my suitcases. I sure would like to see it hanging at the fair though!!!
In other news, the school rice field has been planted. It is actually four patches, divided by narrow levies/walls. By simple moving a few rocks between the fields, the farmer can control how much water remains in or flows out of the field. The planting of the rice coincides with rainy season…with the rain we are having today and the forecast this week, it will be a good week for rice
to grow!!!!!!!
yah. I had so much fun making that other bag that I have started another. It’s all just garter stitch so it knits up quite easily. Something to take my mind off of all the mindful stuff and just hang out in the mindless for awhile. I am making it a bit smaller than the other one, and plan on lining it with the old worn out kimono that is light and pretty.
so, i have been thinking on what to do with the white squares on the quilt. The sashiko runs through the printed squares, and I have already gone around the white squares with simple pink stitching. I decided to do a few pink swirly flowers…. then I counted the white squares… 90 of them…I don’t know if I will do them all or just the outside ones. For fun, i did some little doodles….. i guess I will just keep filling in as the quilt spreaks to me . At this point I think it is really underembellished… however the humidity has hit and I don’t know how long I will continue to be inspired to play with it.
