Peevish (sort of) Covers a Tea Box

It's fun to cover a tea box with fabric!

Asako didn't let me hold the glue gun when it came time to create that rosette or attach the cord, but I did get to cut my fabric and use a staple gun to affix batting and the fabric to the box. She let me sew two seams and Artistic taught me how to tie off my thread like a semi-pro. And I can take credit for two of the four mitered corners. (I am fairly certain "mitered" is the proper term.)

I was born in a Year of the Dragon and will be celebrating my fifth Dragon cycle in 2012, a special birthday which in Japan signifies the beginning of one's second life. That's what prompted me to choose fabric with a dragon pattern.

When Asako asked if she could have the largest piece of my leftover dragon fabric, I gave it to her begrudgingly. Fifteen uses for that fabric crossed my mind. We all know it will be a miracle if I ever get around to actually starting one of those projects let alone finishing it. Still.

The pained smile on my face when I handed over that remnant was probably obviously phony, especially compared with the genuine grin that lit up my face a second later when she told me she plans to use the fabric to cover a small tea box for my first grandchild who will arrive in the Year of the Dragon.

I really have to work on being a nicer person . . .

Quilting in the Rain

Intermittent torrential downpours were the only signs of Typhoon Songda today. It was a perfect day for skimming the manual that came with my sewing machine and rooting through the closet for all the supplies needed to whip together a quilt square for the tsunami relief exhibit.

An internet search for "easy 12-inch quilt blocks" netted ten possibilities. The one that looked easiest by far is called "Moon Over the Mountain" and reminds me of Mount Fuji. Using my new compass, I drew a careful circle. Using my best scissors, I managed to cut out the circle. My cutting skills have not improved one iota since my kindergarten years.

Since I hadn't taken the time to read through the instructions before tackling this project, the circle was pinned to the square before I realized I was supposed to attach it by hand, by the old-fashioned needle-and-thread method. This sent me scurrying back to the internet for detailed instructions.  The technique looked tedious so I set "Moon Over Mount Fuji" aside and moved on to the next pattern.

"Moon Over Mount Fuji": Day One

"Squares within Squares" was fairly simple. I used a sailor-patterned fabric for the center square and, regrettably, batting a lady in DC was giving away free a few years ago. The batting was lumpy and my semi-finished product looks more like a flat pillow than a quilt square. Yet it will do in a pinch. I've decided to postpone perfectionism until I have a few more squares under my belt.

"Sailors within Squares": will quilt further as time permits, probably not

"Woven Ribbons" was next on the docket. I managed to piece it together before the light gave out. Tomorrow or the next day I'll add batting and backing.  Or maybe the day after that. 

"Woven Ribbons" incorporating Shonan bandana

In the meantime, maybe I'll take a few minutes to peruse "The Magic of Quiltmaking: A Beginner's Guide" which I just now remembered buying at one of the quilt shows last fall. Too bad I didn't remember this sooner.  Or maybe I'll start researching those expensive high-intensity craft lights on the internet. If I'm going to stick with this new hobby, I need proper tools, right?

Nippori Textile Town: Second or Third Encore

A Christmas Tree Skirt...someday

Weather will be leaving Japan in just a few months and Artistic might, or might not, be right behind her. Neither had experienced Tokyo's fabric district. This was a situation begging to be fixed.

Last week we grabbed a couple of other textile fans and hopped an early train bound for Nippori. Shinagawa-san, our talented quilting friend, joined our party. She was surprised and delighted to learn that Tokyo boasts a fabric district. I just love those rare moments when I get to introduce my Japanese friends to some of the more delightful aspects of their native land.

What an American military spouse can't find a use for two meters of red-and-white striped fabric for $4?  Then again, ask me in two or three years what I've done with this fabric, and I'll probably have to dig through five big plastic bins to find it looking exactly as it does in this picture.

I spotted bolts of green corduroy and pale blue striped damask (I think it's damask) in the Tomato bargain store for 100 yen a meter. Why don't people use corduroy for tablecloths? I wondered and then promptly bought 12 meters of the stuff and all the damask, about ten meters, they had to offer. Sooner or later I'll find out why people never use corduroy for tablecloths I suppose.

So far all I've managed to learn is that 22 meters of fabric is very, very heavy. Fortunately we spotted a vacant locker in the Asakusabashi station on our brief detour to the paper district so I could check out the washi paper and craft supplies without feeling and looking like a camel.

Weather, "Ouiser", and Shinagawa-san at Sakurahorikiri craft shop

Enduring Memories: More Reflections on the Tokyo Quilt Show

The more I think about it, that quilt that captured the biggest chunk of my time, attention, and heart at the Tenth Annual Tokyo Quilt Show was not a baby quilt but a scrapbook quilt.

I've had lots of time to think about it, too, while culling through the hundreds of photographs my friends and I snapped at the Tokyo Dome that day. No one but me seems to have taken a picture of that quilt and, alas, I found the details so attractive and compelling that apparently I forgot to step back for a second and capture the entirety of the piece.

The best I show you in a single glance is roughly a quarter of the quilt.

Masako Wakayama calls her creation "My Quilt Journeys".  Right away we see she's been to Paris, New York, and India (those elephants on the left).  The messages on those muslin postcards are written in English.  Although I'd be hard-pressed to say exactly why, I have the sense the postcards are addressed to her children.



The colors Wakayama used are the same shades I used in the family room of our Rockbridge Avenue house in Norfolk. Maybe that's why the quilt caught my eye.


A second wave of nostalgia washed over me when I read "People travel to search for what they want and return home to find it."  I hope that turns out to be the case for me.  But wait!  Wakayama reminds me I want to visit Shanghai and Russia first.

This week my friends and I plan to visit Nippori Textile Town in Tokyo. Maybe I should stock up on more fabric with an eye toward creating a scrapbook quilt to help me remember my years in Japan.

The Ancient Mariner is handier with a needle and thread than I will ever be. Perhaps I can just design the quilt and convince him to do the actual work . . .

Use a Wire and Eat a Cream Puff . . . or Three

You might think I'm a crafty lady -- the type who whips up a few quilt squares before breakfast and spends her evenings bent over the stove, stirring wood pulp into paper for one-of-a-kind scrapbook pages littered with charming stamped designs and painstaking calligraphy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which is:  I can't even pronounce the name of the most popular craft store in this part of Japan, let alone do anything useful with most of its products.

Background
Ishii was practicing her English while helping me untangle a rat's nest of yarn a couple weeks back -- this was before I scored the wooden balls in Asakusabashi -- when my glance happened to fall on the kimekome ball I brought home from Tadodai House. ("Glance happened to fall" is my euphemism for what other English language "teachers" here call "lesson plans".)

"Where can I buy one of those two-headed knife tools to finish this second ball? Do they have them at Yuzawaya?" I thought it was a fairly simple question, really, but I'll be the first to admit my spoken sentences tend to be less complete than my written ones. Nouns, verbs, and punctuation marks appear in random order, assuming they appear at all.

Ishii reached across the yarn clump on her lap to pick up a little bundle of gold cord from the coffee table. "This is what you use to cover the seams," she replied. In careful and perfect English.

"I know THAT. But what about the knife tool? Yuzawaya?"

"No. This cord." She gave the little bundle of gold cord a gentle shake, like a patient young mother trying to interest a baby in a rattle or like my brother trying to bribe Mel with a doggie treat. Her face was tense with concentration.

We were down to nouns.

"Knife. Yoo-zah-why-yuh? Kamioooooooka?"

Her face muscles relaxed a bit. "Yoo-zah-why-yuh store?"  I nodded.

"Yes, I think they sell the knives at the Yuzawaya store in Kamiooka. I thought you wondered if you could 'use a wire' in place of the gold cord."

Placing equal stress on all syllables is particularly difficult for people prone to melodramatic inflection. Apparently.

The Field Trip

The Oakleaf knitters meet at my house most Monday mornings.  Cheryl coordinates both the Oakleaf knitters and the base knitting group.  I said, "Hey, Cheryl, let's take the knitters on a field trip to Yuzawaya in Kamiooka some Monday.  We can have lunch and try to find the cream puff shop."

About a dozen of us set off for Kamiooka last Monday morning.  About half were mainly interested in having lunch, five never turn down a chance to buy fabric and/or yarn, and one was looking for a knife tool she might someday use to apply fabric to kimekome balls.

All, it turned out, were interested in tracking down the cream puff shop.  They didn't care that I couldn't quite remember where the shop is located.  There's a lot to be said for friends who will follow you anywhere. 

Regrettably, I was too embarrassed to pull out my camera and snap a picture of the long line of gaijin women following me single-file around the perimeter of the Keikyu department store basement.  (The last time I saw such optimistic faces lined up like that was in the home movie my dad took as we filed down the stairs in age order on Christmas morning circa 1961.  It dawns on me that he must have been feeling a lot of pressure to please on that and other Christmas mornings.  Excuse me while I wallow in a puddle of belated empathy.)

How much pressure was I under?  Enough to ask three clerks for directions.  Yes, brothers and sis, you read that correctly:  I approached three perfect strangers and said "Beard Papa's?" in the most questioning and hopeful tone of voice I could muster.  (See 'melodramatic inflection', above.)  The third clerk actually understood English and was able to point us in the right direction.

Beard Papa's is located between the tobacco shop and department store entrance on the ground floor of the train station, just outside the turnstiles. So now you know and won't have to talk to strangers.

Beard Papa's offered five varieties of cream puff the day we visited:

1. Regular crust, custard filling.
2. Crust studded with brown sugar, custard filling.
3. Crunchy donut crust, custard filling.
4. Regular crust, chestnut filling.
5. Crust studded with brown sugar, chestnut filling.

Not sure I would like the chestnut filling, I settled for one each of the first three options, kicked myself for missing the pumpkin filling offered in October, and vowed to return in December to slake my flavor-of-the-month curiousity.

As I watched the clerks stuff cream puff after cream puff into boxes and sacks for my friends, the thought crossed my mind that Beard Papa's might want to offer me some sort of profit-sharing deal. This, alas, is what comes from cramming five and a half seasons of "The Sopranos" into eight weekends. Shame on me.

Lots of Japanese food service workers wear floor-length aprons. I hope they aren't planning to discard all those puff shell fragments on the tray in the right foreground. Thoughts like that make it hard for me to sleep at night.

(That clicking sound you hear is my sister desperately searching for bargain flights to Japan.)

Bags, Balls, Bunnies, and Subliminal Messages in Asakusabashi

Tokyo's Street of Dolls in Asakusabashi is a mere sixty-six minutes from Yokosuka. You can hop on a train just before 9:00 and waltz into the eight-story paper store just two or three minutes after the shop opens at 10:00. Why don't I go there more often?

The merchants are gearing up for the Year of the Rabbit so we saw lots of bunnies in the doll shop windows and a few sad tigers in the sales bins.  Sakura Horikiri, a three-story craft supply store hidden away on a side street across from the paper store, had bunnies hopping across washi paper in every color of the rainbow and kits for crafty people who want to hang bunnies on their walls or dangle them from their cell phones.  Reminding myself that I still haven't done anything with the washi paper and craft kits I bought the last two times I visited Sakura Horikiri, I bought just a few rolls of paper. 

Self-control?  Not hardly, but credit me with a bit of progress in the deferred gratification department.  Sakura Horikiri is bringing a few truckloads of craft supplies and paper to Yokosuka next week.  Why lug the stuff home on the train when a quick sprint across Route 16 is an option?

 As we were wandering up that little side street toward Sakura Horikiri, Mary Beth and Sue -- I am still working on appropriate nicknames -- started rummaging through a sales bin outside a little shop on the left. They spotted wooden kimekomi forms in the shape of tigers. Could there be balls inside?  Be still my heart.  I have searched high and low for wooden balls since February when the Ikebana ladies showed me how easy it is to cover these balls with fabric. Many stores offer styrofoam balls but they don't appeal to me, i.e., I'm pretty sure the end result would be a table covered with styrofoam crumbs.


Wooden kimekomi balls and holiday treat bags

We ventured into the shop and, lo and behold, spotted wooden balls. Four different sizes of wooden balls, to be exact! But if you are in the market for wooden balls, you might want to wait a week or so before you hop a plane or train to Tokyo. The shop will need that long to restock its shelves.


We hit the paper store on our way back to the subway. Gleefully clutching my wooden balls, I skipped down aisle after aisle of school supplies and paper products until a display of notebooks stopped me in my tracks.

Have you ever heard a notebook try to clear its throat? Trust me, it's not a pleasant sound. "Ahem! What's with the balls? Weren't you supposed to be finding Christmas trinkets for a couple of dozen great-nieces and -nephews today? The generation that's multiplying like rabbits?"

"What can I do? I've squandered most of my yen on wooden balls!" I wailed as Japanese shoppers cast wary (albeit excruciatingly polite) glances in the direction of the gaijin lady who seemed to be conversing with a notebook.

"Make this the Year of the Japanese Treats," advised the notebook. "And don't even think of reaching for the small treat bags.  You have enough yen left to buy the larger bags." Hai.