Diary of a Nobody

Well, I've been at this blogging business for a week now and I still have no comments, no followers, no feedback of any sort... Ho hum... I guess I'm too boring...  Oh, nobody loves what I'm doing here....  It sure is sucking up lots of time and I'm feeling a bit like I'm tossing my best efforts into a big black hole, though. Maybe I need to toot my horn a bit more, eh? But, I guess for now it is for my own pleasure. A lack of pressure is probably a good thing though, especially as I get the feel for my own personal style; contemplate why I actually decided to dust off my first effort of 2 ho hum posts written more than 2 years ago; and figure out how I want things to look.

I have thousands and thousands of photos sitting around in digital format and probably as many on old fashioned print form... I was really enjoying time on Flickr as Pine57 until Flickr did a major overhaul in their web design and caused me to flee. I just don't find it as user friendly as it was before, even though it is certainly flashier looking. But, I enjoyed the chit chat of finding others with similar interests via our photography and somehow the new design just isn't as appealing to me as before. So, I've been mulling over branching out a bit and adding more context to my photos by blogging.

I have many hobbies and passions. So, I'll introduce a few here to help myself with some future topics to delve into a bit deeper later on.

First off, I was born on a farm and remain a country girl at heart. I just don't like the big city and apparently the big city knows me for what I am!

Apologies to that shop as I did have to tweak the photo a bit to show the store's name as it truly is. My original photo had a bit of glare on it so it just wasn't as easy to read as it is now. But, no lie, this truly is a shop and brand in Japan! 

 

 

Instead of the fast pace of the city, I prefer to explore the quiet side of Japan. Shizuoka Prefecture is a great place for that as it is home to "quiet hills" as the name means in English and, of course, green tea.

 

 

I love the beautiful fine chinaware that is a part of everyday life in Japan. How about a cup of local green tea at home?

 

 

 

Or, maybe some English tea with a beautiful Noritake cup that mirrors flowers clipped from my own garden?

 

 

 

 

Yes, gardening is another of my pleasures. I started on this little backyard of rocks and rubble 25 years ago and now it has matured enough, with the survival of the fittest plants for this climate, to give me a lot of joy at certain times of the year. At other times of the year, like mid-winter, it is very drab and bleak looking...

 

 

Ok, maybe I exaggerated a bit! We don't get a snowy winter and my maple turns brilliant in December! But, once it's dropped it's leaves, which times quite badly against a Christmas tree, things do get a bit drab.

 

 

 

 

 

I fell in love with David Austin's English roses and planted several varieties. Some have done better in my region of Japan than others did (i.e. they quickly died off).

 

 

Ah, I just love my garden in May when so many things bloom!

 

I love nature, too!

 

I especially love irises in all their various forms. The violet-shaded Chinese orchids go so nice together with them, too!

 

 

June brings the hydrangeas in to bloom in the garden. The wonderful thing about them is that they are native to Japan so really need no special care at all to thrive. I actually have 3 more cuttings that I grew from this deep blue hydrangea.

 

 

I've also got this pinkish hydrangea too.

 

 

 

Well, if you looked closely at the size of my garden in one of the photos above, you'll see that maintaining it is a bit different than an American sized backyard.

 

I have no need for a big noisy lawn mower here! Just push this toy-like mower around and then get on hands and knees and trim the rest with scissors!

 

 

When I was much younger, living in a cramped Japanese apartment, and with small children, I dreamed of having my own home. On the wish list, besides the backyard that could supply beautiful flowers for arranging, I also envisioned having a cat, a sofa, and enough free time to do something homey like quilting. Lucky me, eventually I got it all!

 

 

 

Yes, home is where the heart is.

 

 

 

 

I've never gotten a dryer, though. But, I've lived so many years now without one that I don't miss it at all. Back in the day, I had to hang a lot of cloth diapers on the line no matter what the weather was though.

 

 

 

I am a self taught quilter. I took up the hobby in part to get back to my roots but also to add some homeyness to the sterile white walls in what was then my new home. We didn't have the money to indulge in works of art so I set about creating something to make our new house a home. You'll probably be seeing lots of my handmade quilts in my photos. I use them for accents and change them according to season. I've made way too many Halloween quilts and will write about them one of these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love decorating for the season. It started off as a way to teach my children about the culture I grew up in and then just sort of took off from there as they have long since grown and flown the coop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love decorating and creating the mood for Christmas too.

 

 

Looking at this, I'll bet you imagine that I have lots of nice presents under the tree. Nope, I don't think anyone in my family has remembered to give me a gift in at least the last 3 Christmases. Maybe it's been longer. Oh, it's just toooooo depressing to think about.... So, moving on....

 

 

I love nature, mountains, forests, backwoods, camping, hiking....

 

Set the mood...

 

 

And eventually, it happens that I get to go out, out, out, into the big beyond where few venture to go.

 

...And, the Mr. gets to enjoy playing with a campfire and cooking rice over the open flame of a charcoal fire!

...And, I get to sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee. Don't worry, I make one for him too!

 

 

 

So, my life here in Japan is lived between two cultures.

 

 I, also, collect a variety of knick-knacks, postcards, stamps... I grew up in a multi-generational home, with lots of family history, so most of the little vintage and antique things that I have here come from my childhood home. They have lots of emotional memories tied to them. But, I keep my eyes open to add a bit of this and that which strikes my fancy too.

 

 

Besides the beauty of nature, I love visiting Japanese temples and shrines. As my husband has said, the people who envisioned them and carried through with the idea were the "rocket scientists of their day".

I hope you enjoy getting to know me. Please, don't hesitate to leave me a comment or become a fan of my new blog!

 

 

Yoroshiku!

This old quilt becomes two

 

Last summer, I made a trip "home". My sister returned an old quilt to me then that I had purchased back in 1975 from the elderly ladies at the nursing home where our grandfather resided. She lives in an enormous old farm house and thankfully she rescued and stored many of the old things from our childhood home, which sat a few miles from where she lives now. I think I paid $5 for it at the time and it adorned my bed in my college dorm until I could afford a nicer spread. Yes, it was ugly! But it held the memories of those nice "old ladies" who were friends of my grandfather. It wasn't in this raggedy shape when I set off for Japan a few years after I purchased it and left it behind. However, it seems it found use with others in my extended family in the years after. In 1984, some 9 years after I bought it, I remember returning home for a visit and being upset with my now ex-brother-in-law when I discovered him using it on the floor bed of his old pick-up truck. That just seemed all around disrespectful to the work which had gone in to making it and to the use of my stored personal belongings in my parents home.

 

 

It certainly looked ready for the trash bag when my sister handed it to me and asked if I wanted to take it back to Japan with me. I am a quilter and spotted some interesting fabrics in it so took it with some reservations as I knew it would use up more than its fair share of space

in my precious suitcase allowance. Every airport inspector along the way seemed to have opened my suitcase afterward and scratched their heads about why anyone would bother to carry such a ratty looking thing 7,000 miles or so.

 

 

 

 

 

The backside wasn't in as bad shape as the front. However, some of the holes went all the way thru it.

 

 

After an attempt to see if I could just replace the really worn patches, I stepped back and decided it was still a really ugly quilt! But, as a quilter, I noticed that actually there had been a method to the madness as it was composed of 4-patch squares and some of them were actually kind of nice. The women who had created this quilt probably would have been born somewhere around 1875 to 1910, give or take. But, they also would have been suffering from Alzheimer's, cataracts, glaucoma, and so on. Some of them seemed to have had a better sense of color combinations than others did. I couldn't fault the stitching, as these blocks were very well matched up with nice even centers by machine stitching.

 

 As I started to take the quilt apart, I started to recognize fabrics. My memory started to jog as to why I had actually purchased the quilt in the first place! I loved my grandfather dearly and like "The Waltons", he lived with us on the family farm. After he moved into a nursing home, I visited him several times a week. My mother started to send along bags of old clothes with me for the women there to use for their crafts projects. Hey, there's one of Grandpa's everyday flannel shirts! Look, that pink and blue plaid was from one of Mother's favorite house dresses! Oh, that blue and gold stripe is from another one she always wore! My mother had been gone more than a dozen years and my grandfather nearly 30, but memories of them started to jump from the fabrics. No, not all of the fabrics within the quilt came from my home but I noticed and remembered several. The variations in the fabrics seemed to span decades of both good and bad design.

 

Salvaging the best blocks within a mostly light summery bluish tone, I set them as diamonds on newly purchased off-white cotton. I bordered them with fabric salvaged mostly from the back of the quilt where the blocks were larger and in better condition. I used remnants of polyester or other man-made fiber quilt batting. Then, I set to work quilting from a pattern I chose from a book on my shelf at home. Originally, the quilt had no batting and was tied with synthetic blue yarn.

 

 

Next:

 

I still had some interesting fabrics that were more autumn toned that I wanted to save. For example, the block below is one I made from piecing together the best bits of perhaps 3 different blocks. The orange fabric seems to have come from a cake flour bag. Look closely. Do you see the clever little "cake flowers"? The black and white patterned fabrics were tissue thin. They weren't even from the same patterns. I did a bit of a log cabin to combine the floral with the funky balls to make them one. Then, I backed them with new cotton fabric and did lots of stitching to give them some more support.

Each of the blocks have at least part of the original fabric. But, I needed to go into my own supply to add in extra for some of the blocks. Then, I also needed to use some of my own fabric for the border as there just weren't enough pieces left-over that were sturdy enough to start a new life as a new-old quilt. I had some 100% cotton batting in my closet that I really wanted to use up so decided to see how it might change the look of two quilts with the same design but in different tones. Unfortunately cotton batting just doesn't emphasize quilt patterns as nicely as polyester does. They just fade away into the background. Needing a little more pizazz I experimented with a zig zag on my faulty old machine. Then, I strung embroidery floss thru the stitches for instant embroidery. I don't like this quilt as much as the blue toned one, but I'm glad I could rescue some of the cool fabrics within it.

 

Original created in 1975 by the women of Elm Haven. Renewed in 2012 by yours truly.