Rainy Season

 One nice thing about rainy season here is that it is also the time for hydrangea.  The picture above shows one like those I remember from my childhood. The other ones here to the right and below are only ones I would associate with Japan. It seems that botanists here are always busy developing new colors and shapes for the blooms loved by the Japanese people.
So despite the rain showers there are flowers to brighten our days.

 My dad occasionally changed the color of the blooms on the bushes around my childhood home.  It took at least a year and involved putting different chemicals at the roots of the plant.  The only thing I remember was iron, but I don't remember what color that made the bloom.









Today I sent out a newsletter by email.  If you got it, please remember to reply by one of the methods I listed at the end.  If you didn't get one, maybe I don't have your current email address.  If you'd like to receive a copy, please let me know!

Meantime, try to keep dry!

I Can Never Say My Job's Finished

In the past two weeks especially, I have noticed that in early afternoon at the latest I am really feeling tired. This past week the weather has turned cold with the start of the rainy season. so add to the tiredness some aching joints in reaction to the weather.  Today I realized that perhaps part of the tiredness is due to the Spring Cleaning/Change Over that step by step  has been accomplished in about that same amount of time.  I had a famous two days at the beginning of the month where all of the Guest Home beds and a few additional futons were full.  I had gotten the main building changed over before that and after I did the annex.

The Change Over involved putting the winter duvets (actually called kakibuton here) into Space Bags after airing them and getting out the summer weight ones I put away last autumn. Also every bed here in the winter has an electric blanket under the bottom sheet. These are thankfully washable and so were collected washed and hung to dry.  They are the last thing that needs to be put away in some of the rooms. The mattresses for the most part were turned and the mattress pads were laundered as well. While I was at it I moved all the furniture in the rooms and vacuumed and dusted behind everything. 

Cleaning a couple of recently vacated rooms today I realized that my enemy, the ubiquitous mildew has been lurking undetected under the lids and behind the toilets in the unit baths! Yuck, I hate mildew! There's a handy spray cleaner here that is called Kabi Kira. (Kabi is the Japanese word for mildew, kira is Japanese for, well...killer.) So, something else to tend to in this round of cleaning.

Wa no Sue and Emiko

Since last autumn I have been working on a wall hanging inspired by a project set by my quilting Sensei. The rest of the class and presumably people from some of Sensei's other classes are completing a project that is close to the idea that was presented.  My project, as usual, has morphed and mutated into something with elements of the original idea with a lot of other stuff thrown in. The original project had momiji (maple) leaves around the edge and a house in the center.  The leaves were machine pieced with half triangles and squares.  and the houses were paper pieced.  When the house idea was introduced, Sensei turned to me and said, maybe you would like to make a church instead, Georgia san. And then there was the whole saga of the tree not being quite what it should have been which I discussed in a previous post. The scene looked a little empty when the church and the tree were done and Sensei and I discussed what else I could do.  That's when she showed me a Japanese quilt artists concept of Sunbonnet Sue if she had grown up in Japan. I decided that the scene needed a couple of little girls walking out from church.  The scale had to really be reduced from the example in the quilting magazine and the only way I could think of representing these figures was to do them in needle turn applique. The stuff I get myself into!

At Class this last week I finally finished my two little Japanese friends, one with her Bible under her arm and the other pointing out as if to say, "Let's go and tell our friends what we learned today!" One of my classmates, Emiko, decided she would name Sue's friend after herself!  And the piece became "Wa no Sue and Emiko." (the "Wa no" part means "of Japan," so Japanese Sue and Emiko)

As you can see, I am not yet finished.  The border of leaves is lacking two which I still need to make, and the sashing between them is not decided.  I like the idea of continuing the blue sky, but it may be a bit too much.  What do you think?

One More Chance

It's Saturday again and I have returned from the second of the two English Classes I was asked to help with.  Last week's class was just 'okay' due to my neck pain. I got through the lesson, but felt it lacked something.  This week I'm feeling so much better and was determined to make the class more interesting.  We practiced our key phrase, "Can you help me, please?" We talked about asking for different things like another color, bigger size, food, beverages.  The second half of the class I had everyone practice with a partner and the buzz generated by that activity had a very contented sound.  I asked them to practice greeting each other in English and in American style, Saying Hi instead of Hello and asking, "How are you?" but not expecting a truthful answer.  The class time was over, all two hours, and they were still talking happily in English and Japanese.