A Snippy Dragon, a Semi-Braided Wreath, and a Melancholy Mother

We finished our kimekomi dragons yesterday. Fearless offered her house and I offered to help with the food. She was making her yummy curry soup and thought a Pampered Chef braid in the shape of a wreath or candy cane would make a nice entree. "Consider it done!" said I, failing to mention that I had never before attempted to braid refrigerated dinner rolls.

The finished product looked about as professional as the Blonde Wonder's hair the time she asked me to fashion it into a French braid. Few things are as simple as they look in books.

Peevish earns an A for effort and a D for execution

Matsuzaki-san emitted a little groan of pleasure as she swallowed her first bite and most of us went back for seconds. I'll give this recipe another try when I am feeling very patient.

We spent eight hours completing our dragons. I skipped off to the beauty parlor for two hours in mid-afternoon, hoping the teacher would present me with a finished dragon upon my return. That didn't happen but at least I got to use my little scissors to snip fabric this time around. That's why I'm calling my dragon Snippy. You probably thought it was for an entirely different reason.

My Japanese book club ladies are coming tomorrow to chat about a book set in World War II. Then the Ancient Mariner and I are going to fill three suitcases with Christmas and wedding presents and a fourth suitcase with clothes and toiletries. We are heading to Dallas bright and early Thursday morning to find a Mother of the Groom dress before we witness the union of James and Emily on Sunday evening.

This is an exciting, bittersweet time. The little desk I am sitting at as I write this is covered with initials carved by English school children fifty or so years ago. I bought this desk for James when he was ten years old. Down near my left knee, there's a more recent inscription: James wuz here.

Yes, he wuz. But not for nearly long enough.

Gearing Up for the Year of the Dragon: Peevish Takes Another Stab at Kimekomi

Fearless and I were treated to a swell time by Matsuzaki last week. She asked her friend, who teaches kimekomi in Tokyo, to show us how to make dragons for our upcoming special birthday year. The Year of the Dragon will be even more special for me than for Fearless because she'll be a mere forty-eight while I will celebrate the beginning of what the Japanese refer to as my "second life" when I turn sixty next July. Fearless is already tired of hearing me refer to myself as extra-special so she'll probably be ready to strangle me by the time the Year of the Dragon actually arrives.

I love the fact that turning sixty is cause for celebration here. If questioned about my age back home, I'd be mumbling behind my hand. Just my luck to get old a decade or so after America knocked Wisdom off its pedestal.

At any rate, we gathered at Matsuzaki's house in Kamakura. That in itself is worth a couple more posts but today I'll stick to kimekomi which, as most of you know by now, involves tucking small pieces of fabric into crevices carved into a small object filled with sawdust.

This is what our dragons are supposed to look like upon completion:

This is what I found inside the box of supplies the teacher distributed:

This is the teacher. She's using a sharp little spatula to smooth the crevices before filling them with glue. She doesn't speak a lick of English but Matsuzaki-san is an excellent translator.

Yuka-san and Matsuzaki-san

You might recall that Matsuzaki-san operated a shop until last June where she sold all sorts of items -- tote bags, skirts, table runners, jackets, book covers, etc. -- she fashioned from scraps of old obis and kimono. She has, in short, nimbler fingers than most. The teacher gave each of us a pair of tiny scissors for cutting the excess fabric after the crevices were stuffed, but Matsuzaki-san was the only one of us permitted to touch the scissors. I picked mine up at one point but the teacher told me in no uncertain terms to drop them. Remember how I said she doesn't speak a lick of English? Yet I knew exactly what she was telling me. It was all in the tone of voice, hauntingly reminiscent of Nicholas Cage declaiming, "Put The Bunny Down!"

Teacher snipping excess fabric

Jamming fabric into crevice after excess fabric is snipped

We covered the dragons' bodies today and will meet again soon to finish this project. Everyone else placed their fabric in the direction that was shown in the example but I glued mine in place upside down to look more like real dragon scales. Not that there is such a thing as a real dragon, of course.

This is what my dragon looked like at the end of the lesson:

So far, so good.

Ah So Moments

There is a cluster of gift shops and food concessions near the elevator that takes you to the base of Kegon Falls. Ouiser, who had visited Kegon Falls several months ago, mentioned fish sticks as we were strolling in that direction. "What an odd thing for her to remember" flashed across my mind in the seconds remaining before we reached the market area.  Is there anything more mundane than fish sticks?  Why would I want to buy one?  Who over the age of eleven would want to eat one?

Oh! Or better yet Ah so!  Here's a food-on-a-stick we didn't spot at the Minnesota State Fair.

The youngest member of my family owns a hat like the man is wearing in the picture. That hat is one of the more frivolous purchases we've made in the past several years. I've rarely bought a hat that I didn't later regret. Maybe this one will be the exception. Maybe he can cover it in plastic and wear it as an umbrella.

There was a calendar conflict today that I spent way too much time resolving. The JAW ladies gathered at Tadodai House at the same time the Shonan ladies made holiday decorations out of broken blue-and-white pottery at the community center. I decided to attend the latter, a smaller group where absences are more noticed, but woke up sneezing and coughing. The little boy next door is sick today also and stayed home from school. We sat next to each other in the flu shot clinic the day before yesterday. Ah so. I sent my regrets to the Shonan ladies, felt sorry for myself for a few minutes, then spent the morning knitting Christmas gifts for unsuspecting relatives.

I had expected to be sharing a picture of a pottery wreath today. Fish sticks are probably more interesting. Things always have a way of turning out for the better.

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.

A Little Surge of Craftiness

Besides hydrangeas and books, I'm counting on the Knitwits and my new quilting pals to get me through this summer deployment.

Brittany is one of our newest and certainly our youngest Knitwit.  Betty introduced her to knitting this week while her mother worked on mastering crocheting at the other end of the table.  I'm trying to finish the socks I started last fall.  Socks are a lot easier to deal with this time of year than that heavy wool cardigan.  The last time I worked on the cardigan I felt like I was holding a 75-pound lamb on my lap.

Have I mentioned that Ouizer is helping Weather and I make t-shirt quilts?  Weather's creation features Rock and Roll Half Marathon t-shirts and I'm cutting up all the ratty t-shirts in the Ancient Mariner's drawer, the ones he should have retired ages ago.  It was meant to be a Father's Day surprise but I missed that deadline.  Christmas is looking possible.  

Ouiser shows us how to attach a border

This serger binds and cuts the edges.  It is an expensive, scary machine.

Don't slice off your fingers, Weather!

After our lesson this week we visited a local department store to select fabric for our borders. I bought plain red fabric for my borders and red-and-blue paisley fabric for no good reason other than I liked it. Weather's border fabric features fish and I'm starting to think I need a little piece of that too.

What I don't need, in case the Ancient Mariner is reading this, is a serger. They sound like jackhammers and would be just as dangerous in my hands.

Sashiko by Ishii

Ishii-san made the Sashiko vest she is wearing in this picture (left).  Sashiko is a running stitch technique traditionally used to reinforce or repair torn fabric but nowadays is also often used for decorative purposes.

Sashiko literally means "little stabs" which seems appropriate since I'm sure my fingers would look like pincushions if I attempted this or any other form of embroidery.

The white cotton thread on the traditional indigo blue cloth gives sashiko its distinctive appearance.  Sometimes red thread is used although I suspect the red color might be a novice seamstress's blood rather than dye.

According to Wikipedia, many Sashiko patterns derive from Chinese designs, but just as many were developed by the Japanese themselves. The artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) published the book New Forms for Design in 1824, and these designs have inspired many Sashiko patterns.

Ishii-san has given me two lovely examples of her work, a small wall hanging and a quilted square.  My challenge is to quilt or knit something equally remarkable for her in return so I'm going to take a break from writing to work on my "skills".

If you'd like to know more about Sashiko and see some examples, click here.

Kamakura-Bori: Don't Try This at Home

Every February the Ikebana ladies converge on Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura to learn a craft. Last year we made kimekomi balls, this year we took a stab (a carefully chosen word, that) at carving cherry blossoms on wooden plates. This carving craft is called Kamakura-bori and there are shops all along Kamakura's main streets where carved plates fetch lots of yen.  Those plates don't look anything like the one I made.

After receiving a blessing from the head priest, watching a shrine maiden dance, and tossing down a shot of sake, we confronted our tools (above). Carbon paper, a pencil stub, a pointy blade, a flat blade, and a disk of paulownia wood to which a paper cherry blossom pattern was taped. (The paulownia link is for the benefit of David Peck and my readers in the Netherlands).

A few of us brought supplies of our own. It's true that great minds think alike. A savvy lady at the table behind me sported fingerless gloves with thick padding between her thumb and forefinger. I brought a box of band-aids which - miracle of miracles - I did not have to open.

We traced the pattern onto the plate using the pencil stub and carbon paper.

We levered the pointy blade against our thumb to etch the pattern into the wood. The older teacher (there were two) stopped by to correct our technique. A little while later he wandered over to correct our technique again.

We then used the flat blade to carve out a trench along the lines of the pattern. The technique for holding the flat blade involved both hands to guard against inadvertently amputating a thumb. After correcting my technique several times, the older teacher was able to communicate "tsk, tsk" to me from across the room simply by wiggling his eyebrows.

This is the Kamakura-bori plate that my children are all praying will go to Aunt Cathy or Aunt Sandy come Christmastime. Those are the raffle tickets that brought me three lovely necklaces and a CD of Dragonball Z symphonic music. Any takers?

Ishii and my other friends invested an additional 6500 yen (roughly $80) to have their plates lacquered, a process that takes three months. This is how their finished plates will look.

Tune in tomorrow (or later today, depending on your location) to see how I intend to spend the money I saved by not having my plate lacquered.

Made in Japan

A few weeks ago Ishii taught me how to transform one of my craft kits into a Christmas gift for the Ancient Mariner. This was not half as difficult as I anticipated, mainly because Ishii subscribes to the finger method of smearing glue over the surface to be covered. My fingers are much easier to control than a brush.

She demonstrated her technique by constructing a box and covering it with washi paper. This is a New Year's gift for her mother.  I envy her her mother and her father, octagenarians both.  I enjoy hearing about their preparations and plans for the new year. 

Those inverted arches look tricky.  Good thing the kit I bought is less complicated.

Opening my kit, I am surprised to find enough supplies to make three boxes. Since we've already posted all our U.S.-bound gifts, the Ancient Mariner will be getting an abundance of boxes this year.

First I construct the boxes by folding the cardboard along the perforations. So far, so good. Then I smear slow-drying glue along each surface and apply black paper. Thanks to the slow-drying glue, I have time to correct most of my mistakes before carefully centering little squares of embossed paper along the sides and tops of the boxes.

This is what they looked like before I wiped off all the excess glue and tied a black bead through the top of each box. Then I filled them with sweets for my Sweetie.

My sister-in-law Cathy also received a homemade gift this year, an orange muffler in a pattern I've dubbed 'Belgian waffle' since one of her grandfathers emigrated to the United States from Belgium. She's half Irish but it will take me a few decades before I master four-leaf clovers.