Making a Kimono Scarf, Wherein Peevish Nearly Reprises the George H. W. Bush Vomiting Incident

Just when I was starting to envision a cushy post-Japan career as an overpaid State Department consultant, offering humble pearls of wisdom on international relations, reality arrived in the shape of a mushroom. Alas, it wasn't the cookie variety with a chocolate cap. It also wasn't a shiitake, but more on that later.

We went to Mineko's house today to transform kimono remnants into scarves.  The scarf at left is an example of the style I made. I can't show you mine because I still have three more seams to sew. By hand, so it might take me a few months.

Here's another example. We used black kimono fabric for the body of the scarf and then added swatches of colorful fabric. Artistic and Fearless were more ambitious.  (This is nothing new.)  Their scarves have about two dozen colorful squares running lengthwise.

Mineko folds furoshiki

Mineko treated us to a tea ceremony in the tatami room on the second floor of her house before we got started on those scarves. She had arranged four cushions on the floor and one stool. She invited me to sit on the stool. I was more relieved than embarrassed since kneeling on one of those cushions for longer than thirty seconds is sheer agony.

Artistic and Fearless assembling their masterpieces

While Misa and Yuko helped us with our scarves, Mineko bustled around her kitchen preparing an elaborate and educational lunch. This is when I learned that there are at least seven varieties of mushroom in Japan besides shiitake.

A bit of backstory: Mineko and I somehow touched on the topic of food preferences during last week's trip to Nikko. When I mentioned that Artistic is a vegetarian and that Fearless and I dislike mushrooms, Mineko asked, "Shiitake?" I assumed she meant "including Shiitake?" and said yes.

It seemed like a fairly reasonable assumption so I was surprised to open the foil packet on my plate and find a chunk of salmon covered with slender pale mushrooms. I surreptitiously scraped them off and hid them inside the re-folded foil while ignoring the silent laughter of Artistic to my immediate right and avoiding eye contact with Fearless across the table. Just when I was starting to congratulate myself on dodging a bullet, Mineko let loose a Gatling gun volley in the form of what looked like a macaroni-and-cheese casserole but, upon cutting, turned out to be a tofu-onion-mushroom medley topped with melted cheese. 

She served me three sizable squares of the casserole. I made quick work of the cheese and not so quick work of about half a square. When Mineko pointed out that I had not finished my casserole, the dish she had gone to such pains to make, I cast a desperate glance around the table and saw that Misa was the only other guest who had not licked her plate clean. Misa has undergone abdominal surgery and has the appetite of a sparrow. She also has about fifteen years on me, but I was willing to claim kindred elderhood to escape finishing my casserole. "Your appetite shrinks when you get older. Look at Misa's plate."

Yes, I am seriously ashamed of myself. That's why I'm not plugging in my sewing machine to finish my kimono scarf. Stitching by hand is my self-imposed penance for bad behavior.

Guess What You're Getting for Christmas This Year

Back in the dog days of August, I dragged myself up seventy-four concrete steps to Kanako's house on Edwina Hill. Our husbands had both been deployed for two months by then, Weather Explorer had deserted me a few weeks earlier, and College Boy had been glued to his computer since early June. Reading aloud to the cats was my only remaining verbal outlet but lately they were more enamored with cicadas than the sound of my voice. I value my alone time but enough was enough. I was overdue for some human interaction.

Although my lungs started giving out somewhere between step 56 and step 57, I continued to inch my way upward like a cartoon character crawling across a desert. The thought that Tomoki -- one of the most adorable four-year olds on this side of the world -- was waiting to show me his toys motivated me. That, and sheer nosiness. I wondered how a young Japanese woman married to an American military officer decorated a house with the same floorplan as mine.

We spent a lovely afternoon playing with Tomoki, looking at Kanako's wedding pictures, luring two-year old Momoko out of the closet she hid in when she woke from her nap and spotted a scary gaijin in her dining room, and sipping tea and taking little (for me) bites of a scrumptious cake Kanako purchased especially for the occasion.

Kanako pointed out a a stool she had made by covering a large tea box with fabric in a class she took at the base community center. Not all that long ago, maybe a decade, you could walk into any house in the United States and know within a minute that they were a military family once stationed in Japan by their hibachi coffee table, their step tansu, and their fabric-covered tea box. We've already given away the coffee table we bought the first time we lived here, we're still half-heartedly searching for the perfect tansu since we need more furniture like a hole in the head, and Watanabe-san presented us with a small tea box last Christmas Eve covered in bunny-patterned fabric to commemorate the Year of the Rabbit.

Watanabe-san's Tea Box

Kanako asked if I would like to take the tea box class with her. She said the sensei had heard of my fondness for fabric and wished to meet me.

Well, gee, those tea boxes make nice containers and right about now I could use some new hiding places for all the yarn and fabric that keeps knocking on my door.  What the heck, I'll give it a whirl.  Surely it can't be any harder than piecing together a quilt square, right?  After all, Kanako has done it once and is game to do it again.  And it turns out Artistic and Fearless want to try their hands at this craft as well.  With the sensei on my right and Artistic on my left, I might be able to pull this off.

E-mails have been flying back and forth between sensei and her pupils for two weeks. What size tea box did we wish to cover? Hmm. What are our options?  5, 10, and 20 kilograms. Um, what is a kilogram? How much fabric do we need to buy? Can we use kimono fabric?

It dawned on sensei that we might require a little more guidance than her average pupil. She offered to accompany us to the fabric store on her day off work. Considering each of us is paying a measly fifteen hundred yen to take the class (about $20 as of an hour ago but it might be $25 by tomorrow morning the way the exchange rates are moving these days), the trip to the fabric store was certainly "above and beyond."

I opted for Year of the Dragon fabric, Artistic favored chrysanthemums, and Fearless deliberated at such length before choosing a tastefully conservative cranberry print that I had time to narrow down fabric choices for my next six tea boxes. Assuming I master covering the first one, of course, but I am an eternal optimist.

Fearless prepares to pay for her supplies

Oh, and in case you're wondering how a young Japanese woman married to an American military officer decorates a house with the same floorplan as mine: with about a third as much Japanese furniture as an American-born military spouse.

Peeking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

There are families in the Tohoku region of Japan who for several generations have earned their livings making traditional doll clothing. They lost everything in the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake. The tsunami washed all their supplies out to sea.

Hearing of their sad plight, my friend boxed up all her best obis and kimono. The boxes were crammed into a van and delivered to the doll company families near Fukushima.

She said she had many kimono and obis and scraps of kimono fabric that were not good enough to be included in her humanitarian shipment. She wondered if Fearless and I would be at all interested in taking them off her hands.

She didn't have to twist any arms.  But you already knew that, didn't you?

This morning we met for breakfast at Ble Dore. After we crammed as much fresh bread into our mouths as human beings can ingest in ninety minutes, we repaired to the parking lot to transfer the sixteen 30+ pound bags from her car to mine. But we could only squeeze ten of those gigantic bags into my trunk and back seat, so she followed us back to Yokosuka where Fearless fetched her van and we completed the transfer on a parking lot roof.

It was all a bit clandestine as she didn't want any elderly Japanese ladies to catch her passing her "smelly old kimono fabric" to foreigners.

Tomorrow night Fearless and I are going to sort through those sixteen bags and decide what to do with our plunder. Some of it will undoubtedly go to the spouse club thrift shop to raise money for local charities and we'll auction off something or other to the Seventh Fleet spouses to benefit the Relay for Life this weekend, but it sure would be swell if we could figure out a way to auction off some of it to directly benefit the earthquake/tsunami victims. The base regulations are rather rigid (ie, ridiculous) in that regard.

So far the Ancient Mariner and I have lugged four of those bags from the car to the house. I taken a quick peek for triage purposes: obis in the living room, fabric scraps in the family room, kimono in the dining room. Here is what I found at the top of one of those bags:

Smelly old kimono fabric indeed.

Americans and Japanese Unite for Charity Quilting Bee

Big Bird invited some of her friends to make a quilt for a family victimized by the March 11 tsunami. Big Bird has a lot of experience when it comes to organizing charity quilting bees. When she and her husband were stationed in Okinawa a few years ago, Big Bird and her friends (left) made twenty-two quilts that were sent to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for distribution to the wounded warriors there.

Today eight ladies - four Japanese quilters, two American quilters, Weather Explorer, and Bossy - cut fabric scraps into strips and sewed them onto squares of muslin.  Big Bird says we'll need about 120 of those squares to make our quilt.  We didn't meet that goal today since one of the seamstresses spent more time threading her sewing machine and winding bobbins than actually sewing, but we're well on our way. 

Big Bird zipped through a complete square at intervals so quick and regular Henry Ford must have been smiling in his grave. Ouizer is also a snappy seamstress when she isn't breaking out in song, invariably a peppy pop tune from the 1960s. A seasoned Catholic nun would never in a million years put Ouizer and Bossy within twenty feet of each other.

Weather Explorer, manning the ironing board, got quite a workout returning mis-sewn squares to Bossy who spent half the day picking out stitches while helping Ouizer remember the lyrics to "Build Me Up, Buttercup" and the other half of the day plotting embezzlement.  She wanted to smuggle half the donated fabric home in her tote bag.

Hiroki (not pictured) was the photographer for this group shot.  Standing:  Bossy, Weather, Reiko.  Seated: Hisayo, Big Bird, Ouizer, and Miki.  That perky blue ascot around Bossy's neck is a nifty tubular towel filled with ice.  She found it at the 100 Yen store and it did the trick in making her feel cool on a scorchingly hot day.  She needs to get more of these.

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?

Inside the Recycled Kimono Sale

I had no intention of buying even one tiny scrap of fabric at last week's version of the semi-annual recycled kimono sale in the Yokohama Community Center. This was my fourth recycled kimono sale and I already have more obis and kimono, not to mention random fabric, than I will ever put to good use. To entertain myself while my friends elbowed their way to the obi bins and snatched display kimono off the walls, I pulled out my camera so you, too, could experience the delightful frenzy of sale day.

Betty made a beeline for the 100-Yen bin

Weather prepares to snatch an obi from an unsuspecting elderly Japanese lady

The intact kimono are grouped by type

Then my eyes started to wander around the room.  The two racks of children's kimono and yukata were screaming my name.  Every little girl needs a kimono in her make-believe chest, right?  How many great-nieces under the age of ten do I have?  How tall are they? 

Let's just say I made a good start on my Christmas shopping.  And I can finish this project in plenty of time to meet the international mail deadline since the next recycled kimono sale is October 18.  Mark your calendars, Yokosuka peeps.

We introduced four Japanese ladies to the wonders of the sale this time around which made it especially fun.  As you can see, no one went home empty-handed.  Now what in the world am I going to do with this hunk of muslin I picked up for 50 yen?

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

Recycled Kimono Sale

This is the view from the thirteenth row of the line to enter the recycled kimono sale last week.

The rope barring entry was removed at 10:00 am on the dot.  The first 25 rows stampeded into the sale and proceeded to shove obis, kimono, and scraps of kimono fabric into clear plastic trash bags. 

I had no intention of buying anything.  I was there simply because 19 other American women needed someone to guide them from the west exit of Yokohama station to the Kenmin Community Center where the semi-annual sale is held.

Fifteen minutes later, but it felt like two hours, I exited the sale with a bag full of fabric scraps, ornate cords, and obis.  I shelled out 6,600 yen for my treasures which equated to roughly $75 that day but, the way the exchange rate is going, could be $1,000 tomorrow.  I spent yen I earned gabbing with Dr. T rather than yen for which I exchanged dollars at an ATM machine, so I am pretty sure I made a sound financial investment.  This assumes, of course, I think of a practical use for all the colorful obis and Japanese fabric overflowing the shelves in my closet.

Those 19 other ladies were happy campers when we headed back to Yokosuka.  I was quite delirious too but it had nothing to do with the contents of my bag.  This outing marked the first time I managed to pull off a particularly Japanese feat:  joining two groups of people coming from different directions in the same train car with fifteen seconds to spare.  Some ladies who live in Zushi followed my directions perfectly and hopped on the last train car when the train paused for one minute in Kanazawa-hakkei.  Glug, glug.  That's the sound of me drowning in self-satisfaction.

Exploring Recycled Kimono and Obis

Twice a year, in the spring and fall, the community center near Yokohama station hosts a recycled kimono sale. Used kimono and obis are dirt cheap, and old kimono deemed unfit for resale are cut into strips and sold as fabric for craft projects.

If you want to get the attention of a certain category of Navy spouse, just stand in the center of a commissary parking lot and yell, "Kimono! Obi! Fabric!" Add "Dirt cheap!" and they'll follow you anywhere. Like a herd of stampeding buffalo so be sure to stay on your toes.

The sale begins at 10:00 am but we were standing in line by 8:45 to get entry numbers. Only the first 100 customers are allowed to enter the sale room when the doors open. As the sale progresses, smaller groups are admitted every fifteen minutes.

After landing numbers in the upper twenties, we had time for coffee before reassembling in our original order. We were as giddy as a troop of Girl Scouts on their first trip to Disney World.

Katie demonstrated the various properties of her Amazing Tote Bag for the ladies behind her while I showed a pair of sneaky ladies who were trying to edge in ahead of me the quickest route to the back of the line. They were trying to pull the old "I will chat with my good friend who is standing in front of you and then just slip through the door behind her" trick but I made my point by tapping on a shoulder and flicking my thumb toward the back of the room. If they had not immediately scurried back to their proper places in line, I was prepared to try my throat-slitting pantomime.

My role in this expedition was simply to get my companions to the community center and show them the ropes once we arrived. I was certainly not interested in buying any kimono or obis - I still haven't figured out what to do with the stuff I bought two years ago - but standing around watching other people fondle textiles is not my idea of fun so before long I was pawing through fabric scraps and stuffing the more delectable finds into my trash bag.

Still, I left Yokohama only $18 poorer and that's certainly less than any of my pals can say.

Jinx Hits the Jackpot in Nippori Textile Town

Margaret, who also goes by the name Jinx Explorer since rain follows her around like Pigpen's dust cloud, is one of the few people I know here other than Jen F who not only owns a sewing machine but knows how to thread the bobbin. So how could she have lived in Japan for almost three years without visiting the fabric district in Tokyo?

Jinx is moving to Pensacola next month, the sand is cascading through her hourglass like that scene in The Wizard of Oz (except, of course, Margaret's not the Wicked Witch so scratch that mental image), and her dance card is quite full. Easter Monday was our only possibility so I just re-scheduled my hair appointment, grabbed my William Morris umbrella (good thing, too) which reminds me of the Junkins and the fun day we spent together at the Detroit Institute of Art and the Motown Museum (another good thing), and then Jinx and I caught the 8:47 train for Nippori.

(Yokosuka Residents: This is why I've been wearing a ballcap since Friday and won't be leaving the house again except in the case of a dire emergency until I rendezvous with Kumi on Wednesday. Sometimes love means deferring a hair appointment for nine (9) days.)



"I'm looking for Totoro fabric for Diane and Kathleen Jr, and some sort of cord to hold pennants I want to string across my back yard for parties," I said in my best imitation of my mother's "make a list and stick to it" voice.

Four hours later my eyes were semi-permanently crossed from peering at seven thousand bolts of fabric featuring Japanese cartoon characters. In vain. Margaret, meanwhile, was lugging bolts over to the cutting table like a regular shuttlecock. I was feeling rather disconsolate by the time we ducked into the outlet store next door to the main Tomato shop. "Gosh, is this stuff really only 100 yen per meter?"

Margaret's going to make curtains and cover her chair cushions when she gets to Pensacola (after she finds a house, of course). I'm going to make tablecloths for the eight round party tables (how hard can it be to make a tablecloth?) and re-cover the dining room chairs (in my next life).

We swung by the fabric art craft store in Asakusabashi on our way back to the base. Margaret bought a bunch of kits and frames. She favors cats, Japanese scenes, and the color purple. She says I can be her personal shopper in Japan next year. That's a good thing since I suspect Diane and Kathleen Jr plan to fire me.

Blanketing Kamakura with the Quilters

The fact that I haven't added a single stitch to my little Setsubun square since last month's quilting lesson at Hisayo's house was easy to ignore when the Japanese quilters offered to lead Weather Girl, Artistic Explorer, and me to the new Swany's fabric store in Kamakura. Weather Girl hasn't exactly spent the past six weeks hunched over a sewing machine either and, after my failed attempt to take Jen F to Swany's last fall, I won't get a good night's sleep until I find that shop. And if that's not sufficient rationalization, every group needs a buffoon.

What we Americans originally assumed would be a simple $2 train ride, six-block stroll, and pleasant hour or so caressing bolts of fabric was transformed by the Japanese quilters into one of the most fabulous of many fabulous days I have spent here. Hiroko, Hisayo, and Kayoko decided we would visit some temples, climb a mountain, hike three+ miles, and break bread together before winding up our day at Swany's.

When the family gathers for Matt's graduation in June, I hope to re-create this adventure - minus the Swany's in deference to Ancient Mariner, an only child who had to abandon his dream of playing catcher for the New York Yankees because his mother kept dragging him to fabric stores when he ought to have been perfecting his throw to second base. Here are a few highlights for those of you who can't join us in June.

Jufukuji Temple was our first stop. Generally regarded as the first Zen temple in Kamakura, Jufukuji ranks a mere third on the list of the Five Great Zen Temples in Kamakura because it did not originally follow a purely Zen tenet. Masako Hojo, the wife of the first Kamakura Shogun, Yoritomo Minamoto, built this temple to propitiate his soul when he died in 1199. This was about 300 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies. Masako was perhaps a nostalgic woman as she decided to erect the temple on the site where her father-in-law had once lived.

Masako invited Eisai Myoan to be the temple's founding priest. Eisai is famous for introducing both Zen Buddhism and green tea to Japan after making two trips to China. He probably leaped at the chance to get out of Kyoto when Masako's invitation arrived because his teachings had made him unpopular with the reigning Tendai sect. Zen Buddhism went on to attract a large number of followers among the samurai, including Masako's brothers who served as regents until her children were old enough to take over as Shoguns.

The green tea contribution might have been overlooked if Eisai had not recommended it as a hangover cure for Sanetomo Minamoto, Misako's second son and the Third Kamakura Shogun. Eisai later wrote "Healing Sickness with Green Tea", a two-volume essay considered valuable in terms of medical care and as an example of ancient writing. Two volumes! And you thought I was verbose . . .



A patient person might have waited for those ladies to move before taking a picture of the temple's impressive entrance. At the end of the day, therefore, a patient person would not have a physical memory of the people we later discovered are members of a - you're going to love this, Kate - Haiku Club that meets once a month to visit various locations and compose poetry inspired by those settings.

Maybe the Haiku Club decided to visit Jufukuji because Takahama Kyoshi, a famous haiku poet, is buried in the cemetery behind the temple. One of Takahama's poems was an apt epigram for my day.

Spring breeze !
On the hill I firmly stand
With the great resolve.




Lured on by a flowering tree, Artistic Explorer ignored the barrier erected across the path. "The sign says 'Please Come In'," I quipped to no one in particular and just happened to spot spontaneous grins flashing across a few haiku poets' faces. I have noticed that Japanese people seem inordinately fond of sarcasm which might explain why I am so happy here.



"Bossy, look! Is that a red camellia blossom on the wall over there? That will surely inspire one of these poets." "No, it is key. The words "Sweet Factory" are printed on the red ribbon. This is a key to a candy store. This is what I consider an auspiciously good omen."



We think this is where Masako's ashes are buried (above).

The caves (above) where the ashes of priests and other dignitaries like sculptors and poets are buried are called yagura.

The cemetery was surprisingly ecumenical (see cross, above).

We didn't go all the way to the top of the cemetery but this picture (above) will give you an idea of the terrain behind the temple. Walking up and down steep steps like that every day could be a reason why obesity is not the epidemic in Japan it is in America.

Coming back down the hill from the cemetery, Hiroko, Hisayo, and Kayoko stopped dead in their tracks to point out a pair of squirrels. If I had thought to take a picture of their faces at that moment, I swear you might have mistaken them for three little children seeing an elephant, giraffe, or gorilla for the first time.

It's refreshing to spend time with people who pause to appreciate the little things in life that I too often overlook.

Next: The last time ever I hope you will catch me wearing Japanese pants and a particular sweater.

We Awl Had a Ball at Ikebana

Once a year the Ikebana crowd tackles a traditional Japanese craft. Two years ago it was indigo dyeing. I still get compliments whenever I wear my tie-dyed scarf (although, come to think of it, the complimenters might simply be less impressed with my creativity than happy not to have to look at my crepey neck).

Thursday, after the Shrine Maiden dance, we stretched fabric over sawdust-coated balls, dabbed glue into crevices, and jammed the edges of the fabric into those grooves with an awl. We finished our kimekomi "goten mari" ("ball of the palace") by gluing gold thread over the seams. Ta-da!

Using the awl was my favorite part, although squirting the glue into the little aluminum sushi dish was a close second. As luck would have it, I actually have an awl in my utensil drawer. It's surely an antique since Mike's dad was the original owner (he probably used it for punching holes in saddle cinches and other cowboy chores). At any rate, that awl has been causing quite a ruckus for the past 18 hours, rattling around in that drawer and hollering, "Hey! Let me out! I want to jab some fabric into cracks!"

This is a tempting proposition. I like my Ikebana kimekomi but I think I would be even happier if I could cover balls with fabric I chose myself. Perhaps I should pick up some balls and glue and cord when I lead the Oakleaf Explorers to Yuzawaya, the flagship craft store in Kamata, next week.

I am hoping this picture will steer me to the right sort of glue.

There's no such thing as too many decorative balls, right? They'd look nice on, say, a Christmas tree, or displayed in a bowl, or maybe you have an even better idea you can send my way. One thing I know for certain is that your chances of getting a kimekomi for Christmas are a heck of a lot better than your chances for finding a pair of hand-knit socks when you rip off the gift wrap come December but that's a story for another day.

Fumie (pictured here holding my finished ball) got the plum assignment of helping the four ladies at my table make kimekomi. I wheedled her e-mail address in case I need help when I try this craft at home but now I'm thinking I ought to just stock up on lots of supplies and ask her to teach a kimekomi class at my house for my less mobile friends. Not a Kimekomi Party per se, of course, since I've sworn off theme parties.

Here is a peek at my sandwich bento lunch. I ate the whole thing, even the one in the middle featuring chopped vegetables and smoked salmon swimming in mayonnaise. The dessert was a cream-filled cake in the shape of a fish. I was not the only person at my table who played with my food.