I Think She Might Be Related to Howdy Doody

The director of our ill-fated Steel Magnolias production-that-never-was left a Peko-chan doll in my doorstep just before she moved to San Diego. She found it at a local thrift shop, part of a chain called Book Off. I think I need to spend more time browsing local thrift shops.

When we lived in Bethesda, we invested in a tall curio cabinet to display family memorabilia like the Ancient Mariner's bronzed baby shoes, his mother's music box, and my grandmother's childhood book collection. These days that cabinet is crammed with Peko-chan dolls, figurines, spoons, plates, books, and necklaces. I'm almost at the point of being embarrassed by the amount of Peko-chan items I've amassed in the past five years.

But not quite.

Mata-ne to Weather Explorer

Today Weather Explorer left Japan for her husband's new duty station in Tennessee.

She's been a willing and cheerful accomplice in most of my adventures and escapades for the past year and half, and my Rock of Gibralter -- make that Mount Fuji -- since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. We've had some fun times.  To put it mildly.



Uraga Ferry

The past three weeks have been packed with farewell activities. The day after our first Charity Quilting Bee, Hisayo and Chigusa took us on a hike in Uraga, the hilly Yokosuka neighborhood where they live. We visited a shrine on the east side of a small bay and then rode a ferry to the sister shrine on the other side.

Hisayo bought us pretty little prayer pouches at the east shrine. At the west shrine we selected polished stones and inserted them in our pouches.

Prayer tablet at Kano Higashi (East)

Hisayo pointed out two symbols on a marble plinth at the entrance to the east shrine. The two symbols -- "Wishes Fulfilled" -- are also painted on the tablets visitors can purchase. We bought one of those tablets, wrote a prayer on the back, and hung it on a hook outside the shrine. If I have this right, our prayer will remain on that hill overlooking Tokyo Bay until the new year when all the prayers are burned in a special ceremony.

More Quilt Ideas Worth Borrowing

Big Bird belongs to a quilting guild based in Jacksonville, Florida. Two of her quilts are group efforts.

The white rectangles in the quilt shown above contain handwritten messages from guild members. Big Bird chose a flamingo-patterned border to further remind her of her Florida quilting pals.

After the guild members swapped floral blocks, they each created a quilt like the one shown above. Doesn't it remind you of looking through a window at a garden? It inspires me but I'm not yet sure whether I'm inspired to spend more time learning how to quilt or designing a garden. Just in case it's the former, I think I ought to mosey out to a fabric store and invest in a few more meters of flowered fabric.

"Fandango"

"Fandango" was made out of scraps of fabric left over from Big Bird's previous quilts. It reminds me of a bookcase from Dr. Seuss's perspective.

The post-it note Big Bird used to mark the magazine page showing a picture of "Fandango" is shaped like a molar.  Big Bird is married to a Navy dentist.  I have yet to see any cute post-it notes for the emergency medicine crowd.