Onyx

Every morning towards the end of my hour walk, I go by a neighbor's house in the hills.  On one of the first days I waved to the neighbor watering his yard and his big black pit bull/boxer came bounding over the fence and made a beeline for me.

"Um...  Should I be worried?"

"Nah.  He's friendly.  He won't do anything.  He won't listen either."

Sure enough the dog jumped all over me, aiming to lick my face and getting his muddy paws up and down my clothes while the owner tried to catch him.  I felt like a tree in the middle of a squirrel chase.  I finally grabbed the dog's collar and held him at bay.

"Sorry about that.  He's still just a big puppy."

Well, I like dogs so I found out that the dog's name is Onyx and went on my way.

Since that morning every time I go by the neighbor's house I give a wave and occasionally exchange a few words with the neighbor.  There are a couple of small dogs across the way and they come racing down the drive and into the street making a lot of racket.

"You don't have to worry about them either.  Their owners just let them roam and they'll sniff the neighborhood out and then go home."

This morning just before passing the neighbor's house, he surprised me by driving by in his car, and he rolled down his window...

"Have you seen Onyx?  He got out this morning and followed the yappy dogs when they were checking out the neighborhood.  The other dogs have come home, but not Onyx."

So I let the neighbor know what route I had already walked and told him that I would continue walking the hills and keep an eye out for Onyx.

I was barely around the corner when I saw a big black shape go bounding up a small hill.

"Onyx!  Onyx!  Here boy!  I found him!  He's over here!" and I went running back to the cruising neighbor's car.

Together we spotted Onyx, behind the iron gate of a closed in yard and trees hiding a large white mansion.  How he got there, I don't know.  The neighbor and I stood on one side of the gate with Onyx on the other side woofing.

"How did you get in there boy?  And how am I going to get you out?"

We never did figure out how Onyx got in but the only way to get him out was to press the intercom buttons beside the gate.  A very sleepy and disgruntled voice finally answered the call.

"I'm really sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, (7:00 am) but my dog is locked in your yard at the main gate."

"What the...?  Well...xxxxx."

The gate swung open by some remote pressing of a button.  Onyx came bounding out and I grabbed his collar for the second time this summer.

"Sorry!  Thank you so much!"

Both Onxy's owner and I yelled our thanks towards the big white mansion as the iron gate clanged shut.  We never did see anyone in person.

"And thank you very much too."

"My pleasure.  If Onyx doesn't have a microchip yet, I'd suggest getting him one."

"Yeah, and maybe taking him to obedience school"

Miscellaneous stuff seen

Takumi and Bianca have come and gone.  They spend Friday night with us and all day Saturday and then they are gone with the wind. I wasn't good about getting pictures.

 When my brother saw Takumi fixing up my computer and iPad he asked Takumi if he would tweak his computer a bit.  It was running a bit slow and occasionally crashing.

"No problem.  Um.  Could you sort of look at my car?  The overheat light keeps coming on."

My brother, in his younger days, was in automotive mechanics and he still can take apart and put together a car fairly easily.  I have a feeling both Takumi and Keion get a little tired of friends and family asking for free diagnosis advice.  (Hmmm...  Doctors probably get this all the time too, right?)  I remember Marcy saying they'd never hear from some of their "friends" if their cars didn't break down.

Yesterday, the two guys peered over each others' shoulders, at the computer and at the car, while the other gave professional advice and repaired, deleted, wiped and installed different gadgets both mechanical and digital.

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There was a party last night down at the neighbors.  Whooey!  What a lot of racket!  I woke up in the middle of the night to a lot of yelling and cussing and laughter right in our front yard!  And this morning I find beer cans and gin bottles and trash all up and down the street.  I guess if I want it cleaned up I'm the one who will have to go pick up trash...

I remember one year when someone in the neighborhood had a party.  Probably a teenager because the day before there were leaflets in every neighborhood mailbox explaining that there was to be a party the next night and a lot of cars would be parked on the street and if there was too much noise or any problem, then to please call the provided telephone number.  Obviously the party holder's parents did not want angry neighbors to be calling the police on any undue rowdiness.  And the leaflet promised that by noon the day after the party that any and all trash on the street or yards would be picked up.  I assumed that there had been more parental injunctions related with permission for said party.  The next night there WERE lots of cars and some noise and in the morning a bit of trash around; but as promised, by noon it was all cleaned up, probably by the sleep deprived teenager.  I thought it all a wonderful bit parental guidance.  The neighbors all looked fondly upon the noisy party with very little sense of suspicion or annoyance.  Better than last night's festivities wondering if things were getting out of hand...

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On my walk this morning I saw this waving in the breeze from a telephone pole.  Anyone want music lessons?  Now this isn't interesting to anyone in the States, but it would be unheard of in Japan.  Telephone poles do NOT provide for free public advertising especially nothing so slap-dash as a tear-away printout.  Telephone poles DO provide for paid FORMAL advertising meaning signs made of metal and screwed on, for doctors and dental clinics etc.  I often think that it would seem very unprofessional for doctors to do telephone pole advertising in the States.

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Oh dear...  One more miscellany.  I found this colorful display in someone's front yard.  I wonder if the house owner is trying to brighten up his spiky plant or if he is protecting people from getting stabbed if they walk around in his yard.  An interesting use of plastic Easter eggs...

Enough rambling for this morning.

Bianca's quilt

I wanted to share with you what Bianca brought over last night.

This is Bianca's mother's quilt (spread out on MY mother's bed) and it was made by Bianca's grandmother 30 years ago.  The quilt has seen a lot of wear, and there were places that were tearing away at the seams and even in the middle of the blocks.  Earlier in the week Bianca had shown me pictures and wondered if I would be able to repair it and all I could say was,

"Bring it on over and I'll see what I can do!"

Such a beautiful quilt!  It is all hand appliqued and hand quilted and looks to have been done in the lap quilting style meaning that each block was probably quilted and then the blocks were connected by lattice and then battings and backings joined as one of the final steps.

But 30 years of use have definitely been hard on the fibers...  Bianca and I determined that some of the seams could be repaired but the places where the fabric had just worn away...  well, it might be possible to applique a heart or flower over some of the places, but that could ruin the symmetry of the original motifs.  There was one huge tear/hole and we could practically put a hand through it, so I sewed that back together, but the smaller damages I gave to Bianca after showing her how to repair them.  It's not that I minded doing the work but I like the idea of grandmother and granddaughter working on the same quilt over a divide of 30 years.

Bianca, I'm afraid, knows nothing of her now deceased grandmother's love of quilting.  Whether this was her first quilt or whether she made others.  If she took a class in order to make this quilt nor how many months or years were spent making it...  All these things that would be of interest to quilt historians and quilt lovers these days.  I suggested Bianca quiz her mother a bit and see if she can recall what else her grandmother might have sewn...   I can't believe that this huge double bed-size quilt could have been a beginner's project.

So the major damages have been repaired... But not everything.  Some places would have taken too much ripping out of the old stitches, and adding fresh fabrics might prove to be too gaudy with the pale, faded colors there now.

"I'd suggest leaving the worn spots and the stains.  The flaws and tattered places reveal how much the quilt has been loved and used.  Like people with greying hair and encroaching wrinkles, it all proves how much we've lived and seen and done.  Too much repair would be taking away something of your Grandmother's determination and devotion.  It is beautiful as is."

I'd still like to hear the stories behind this quilt though.

"Uh-oh" days

Each summer I write some post like this.

My mom was looking pretty good when I got here...  Chipper, meeting me at the door, sitting on the sofa, asking questions, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

But when you are 91, there are good days and bad days and in the mornings when I peer down at her in her bed it more often than not is an "uh-oh" day.  The past few days have been "uh-oh" days.

"Ooh.  My back hurts, my back hurts.  I can't sit up/get up/stand up.  Don't make me laugh!  It hurts when I laugh.  Boo-hoo! (she really says this).  You're hurting me.  Don't look at me like that, it makes me laugh."

I guess pain from laughter would be a good pain to have.... maybe.

"I can't put on my shoes.  I'm cold.  I'm not hungry.  Do I have any money?   Let me take us out to eat.  How many cats do you have now?  I have to go potty.  When did I get so decrepit?  Someone help me!  I just TOOK some medicine.  Are you sure?  How do YOU know?  What are all these pills for?"

From my once a year standpoint, I can't really judge things very well.

"Marcy, Grandma can't get up.  Do you think she broke something?"

"She does that once in a while.  She's probably just pulled something.  She's done it before."

Oh.

"Tani, her legs are really swollen.  When did that happen?  She needs to be keeping her feet up more."

"Well, they've sort of been like that since I got here... I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary..."

And conflicting advice has me in a tizzy too.

Marcy:  "Lie down with your feet up, Grandma."

My brother:  "Your back hurts because you lie around all day.  Sit up for awhile!"

For the first few days that I was here, Grandma was eating A LOT she was cleaning her plate (small plate) at every meal.  But for the past two days, she eats almost nothing.  It almost seems like too much work to pick up the fork and once the fork is in her hand, the piece of food gets divided into halves and then quarters and then eighths.  I'm reminded of the Slow Eater Tiny Bite Taker story in the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's book.

And I won't go into the soiling problem.  Ay-yai-yai!  I am learning that I can do what I never thought I could do!

There is no way my mother cannot have 24 hour care.  In a milli-second she is likely to fall even when pushing her walker.  I worry that she is going to fall out of her chair even when I have her settled!  But remember, Grandma does manage 11 months out of the year without me.  My brother says I'm coddling her too much.

My thinking is that I can only coddle in the one month that I'm here and I may not have the chance next year, so that is what I am doing.  But not without some worrying and a large amount of discouragement.

Time to get Grandma up.  What kind of day will it be today?

Machine quilting Sugar Fix

I have been sewing.  I'm surprised I've been able to do what I've done, but I may take the rest of my machine quilting home...

I finished adding the borders on the Sugar Fix and Basket Case panels and I basted the one and set up for some machine quilting on the Sugar Fix.  Ah... Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

My niece has a little Singer Prelude machine.  Little is right, and probably not very expensive.  It does the basics like sew a straight stitch and maybe a zig-zag stitch.  It seems to have a buttonhole attachment, not that anyone has ever used it.  It is completely manual... no digital screen or buttons, only two knobs to turn.  The bobbin case is the hard to get to type and the threading takes a bit of thinking/logic.

Kiana has had the machine maybe four or 5 years and it has served her (me) well.  The machine only gets used in the summer when I am in California, but it really gets a workout with me.  The rest of the year it sits in a corner of Grandma's living room very minimally covered by a sewing machine cover I made for it one year.  Still, it needs a good dusting when I set it up on Grandma's card table.

Even last year when I was sewing throw quilts and pillow cases for Marcy, I felt the urge to encourage and praise the little machine every time I sat down to it.

"Okay, little Prelude.  Don't fail me today.  You are really being stretched to your limits but all in all you are doing well.  I know it is hard and a lot to ask of you but let's take this one day at a time."

I have a fondness for the Prelude just because I put it through the wringer.  I have bought it a free-hand quilting foot so that I can machine quilt, though there isn't any way to lower the feed dogs on the machine.  Last year I did a major quilting job and was amazed that the machine didn't die on me.  This year?  Hmm.  Sort of like Grandma, a lot of groaning and a few stumbles...

I quilted the Sugar Fix panel and though it is nice and from a distance it looks pretty good, I'm not that happy with the machine quilting.  I THINK I could do an evener, smoother job on my machine at home.
 

Going through all those layers of batik (leaves layered on leaves) and adhesive made the sewing machine whir and complain, stopping in some places and then shooting off at a gallop in other places.

I really dislike the white dots at the corners and points.... when I changed directions on the machine, the bobbin thread pulled through and no amount of bobbin tension adjustment could solve that little glitch.

Overall it is pretty little quilt and I will leave it for my mother since she is so fond of hummingbirds (that was the reason I brought the kit to begin with; to give to Grandma).

However I am thinking that I'll take the Basket Case panel home with me to do on my stronger machine.  There are many more layers of fabric involved in that panel and I think it would drive the Prelude to exhaustion.

Birthday girl!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEIYA!!!

Today is Leiya's 24th birthday but I haven't done anything except send her an e-mail wishing her the best.  She is probably working hard today...

When I arrived in California I found a pile of pictures on Grandma's kitchen table and I see that they are from some old album or maybe she had just pulled them out of old letters that I had sent (before the digital age).  So I've photoed the photos and maybe Leiya (or her friends) will get a kick out of them.

This was taken when Leiya was in kindergarten, probably around 4 years of age.  Leiya's always been a smiley girl.  (On the flip side, she was always crying too.  I can remember saying that it would be a big day when she could get through 24 hours without crying.)

And this picture must have been when Leiya was about 5.  You can see that I raised my kids to be animal lovers.  I think we found the dog just before I had Leiya.  They grew up together.

This was taken at Leiya's kindergarten graduation.  Not that great a picture of Leiya but I wanted to show how the kindergarten teacher dressed up in kimono and kimono trousers as is the custom.

No date on this photo but Leiya's lost a tooth or two and she is wearing her gym clothes for elementary school so this was probably 1st grade.

And towards the end of elementary school, Leiya started wearing glasses.  

Ah... memories of when Leiya busted her hand when she got angry and punched a wall.  What sort of child am I raising?!

Whew!  Graduation day!  We got through those junior high years...  

And I guess more of Leiya's history is on the early days of my blog....

This is the most recent picture I can find of her.... I pulled it off of her Facebook!  She isn't too good about sending me recent pictures...

My sweet, grown-up 24 year old daughter.  I wish I could give her a birthday hug today!

More Southern California fauna

I'm afraid I have more fauna pictures today.  I continue my habit of going for an early morning walk and at 6:00 not many cars or other people are out.  I do walk down a main highway and on one side of the street there are houses but an empty field separates the hillside houses from the highway and it holds weeds and rabbits and... this!

I think this is a coyote though he doesn't look like the scrawny moth-eaten things I've seen before.  This looks like a pretty healthy coyote, so good for him... but maybe not so good for the rabbits in the area. This guy started when he saw me and I practically fell off the sidewalk, but as the two of us stared each other down I snapped a shot of him and then went on my way.  He never took his eyes off of me until I rounded a corner.  This morning I carried a stick with me on my walk but I didn't see the coyote again.

Around the corner there were... peacocks!  I had spotted them the day before but I wasn't carrying the telephoto lens.  They are way, way up there in the tall trees and when I saw them the day before they were making quite a racket. 

Do you see that knob on the lone tree branch on the right?  The bump right there halfway along the leafless branch.  That is a squirrel and the peacocks were very upset about him.  Whether the squirrel had been driven to an unescapable point by the peacocks or the peacocks were being annoyed by an intruding squirrel I don't know, but there was a lot of noise involved.  The conflict did not get resolved while I viewed them but this morning the peacocks are still there (in a different perching arrangement) and the squirrel was gone.  I do hope he CLIMBED down.

And on my own home front, a squirrel enjoying a snack right outside the kitchen window.  I guess I like the peacefulness of this shot the best.
 

Driving

I went to M and L's yesterday again.  I needed to buy some border fabric and I wanted some batiks to go with the dyed fabrics that came with the McKenna Ryan kits.  I had already seen the nice selection of batiks at M and L's when I was there the other day, but hadn't gotten as far as thinking about measurements or colors.  Back I went by myself, down this freeway and that, getting lost in Anaheim and wandering the streets without cell-phone nor GPS.  I passed Disneyland three times before I found it.
So I bought numerous yards of fabric; I passed Disneyland again before I came home and then I auditioned the fabrics for Grandma and Marcy.  I now have two panels with borders on.  I will try quilting them today.

In the afternoon Marcy asked me to accompany her while she took Kiana to... Disneyland!  It seems she has a year pass and it is just the thing for teenagers to do... spend the day or the evening or a couple of hours even, at Disneyland!  So back I went to Anaheim with Marcy (it meant that on the way home she could use the carpool lane).

"Did you forget anything at M and L's?"

No, I didn't and two fabric shopping trips in a matter of hours seemed excessive so I bypassed that suggestion though I have a feeling I'll get there once more this summer.  Of course with Marcy the trip seemed short whereas in the morning and being lost, I felt like I was on an expedition. 

To me, getting in the car and going somewhere entails subconscious calculations of gasoline and time consumption, weighing out the pros and cons of battling traffic or (in Japan) maneuvering windy roads and weather conditions.  In Southern California, we just get in the car and hit the freeways, several times a day!!

Still, I find the freeways a bit nerve racking though I grin and bear it.  Just thinking about the speed and being penned in from all sides by the huge cross country trucks makes me grip the steering wheel and lean forward intently with concentration.  I always breath a sigh of relief when I arrive at my destination or stumble home. It is probably the combination of speed and many lanes and not being used to driving on the opposite side of the road.  And by the way, I'm pretty good at that... I only hit the wipers lever (rather than the turn signal) once a trip! 

While I was in the passenger seat I admired a cross country heavy loader.  Now there's someone who seems to like driving!  The trucker's truck was sparkling and beautiful!

In Full Bloom, McKenna Ryan quilt panels

I am appreciating the cool California summer with no humidity and even the necessity of an sweatshirt in the evenings.  Tetsu reports that his mother was taken to the hospital and treated for heat stroke this week.  She is back home now.  I don't think my American family can fathom the suffocating heat that Japan has in the summer.  It is due to the humidity because temperature-wise, there are often days in Southern California when it is hotter.  I can imagine what Obachan (Tetsu's mother) is going through right now.  I wish I could whisk her (and the cats and the dog and Tetsu) away from all that for a month with me.

I am also appreciating the free time I have to play with fabric.  I had packed two McKenna quilt kits in my suitcase thinking that they would take up my summer but I finished the Sugar Fix (the one with the fuchsia) in one day... well, not finished, finished applying the collage... and I started on the Basket Case panel a few days later.

These are kits with the pattern and fabrics included though the pieces were not pre-cut and did not have the fusible backing on them.  I spent a day or two tracing the patterns onto fusible paper and then worked diligently at cutting out the little pieces and ironing them together to make the different flowers and vegetables.

Grandma kept coming over to the ironing board and making the same comments as each vegetable materialized.

"You sure have a lot of patience.  I could never do all that tiny work.  What is that supposed to be?"

She did not think my peppers or tomatoes looked much like peppers or tomatoes but she was very enthusiastic about my carrots.

Takumi and Bianca showed up about the time I was starting to make the flowers, and since Bianca is very craft-y she helped cutout and arrange flower petals and decipher the master pattern plan.

Together we managed to put together the complete panel and Grandma was very impressed in the end.

I think I was supposed to actually start with sewing a border on both the kits but I left that for last which is going to take a bit of maneuvering as some of the pieces need to be fused to the border too.  I will try to get to a quilt shop today and buy some border fabric and backing and batting and then maybe I will be able to devote a lot of the rest of the summer to free-hand quilting.

So two panels fused down.  Now if I were in Japan, all the pieces would probably fall off because of the humidity before I got everything quilted down!

iPad!

My son and girlfriend rolled in on Friday night.  Takumi is a working man now and it is not like summers before when he and Bianca could just spend a lot of their summer days at my brother's house between part time jobs.  Now he has a commuting schedule as well as an 8 hour work day.  YEAH!

So we visited on Friday night.  Takumi tweaked my computer a bit for me, defragmentizing... whatever that means, and cleaning up files etc.  Bianca and I went on a late night walk (and I got her up at 6:00 for an early morning walk too!) and I got to meet her new puppy, Kuro.

This isn't a great picture of Kuro but I wanted to show how cute he is with one ear bent...  It seems that in the mornings both ears stand up but by the time he's getting sleepy the one ear slumps down.  Such a cutie and so good for Bianca and Kuro both to have found each other!

Yesterday morning, Takumi announced that he was taking me to the electronics store and buying me an iPad!  Now, as you may know, I've been thinking about iPads for a good year and a half or more...  I got a longing for one when my friend Lorraine brought hers on a visit and when was that?  And I've looked enviously at my brother and Marcy using theirs too.

Tetsu and I have LOOKED!  We've visited I don't know how many different electronics stores in Japan and even got as far as the checkout counter but the decisions on what size, which version, what accessories might be needed, where it is going to be used, thus what type of wi-fi... all of those decisions just weighed us down and because neither of us knew the correct combination of answers, we always chickened out.

Takumi just said,

"I researched it out.  Leiya and I talked about it.  I think you need this size, this version, and these capabilities.  If you want the accessories then you can buy those but I'm buying you this iPad.  All you have to do is chose black or white."

I chose white.  I also picked out a cover that folds back and holds a keyboard as I'm pretty dependent on touch typing.

For the rest of the day, Takumi downloaded apps that he thought might be useful and set up accounts and linked things and synced things and I don't know what all.  Sometimes I jotted down passwords and other pertinent information in my notebook that I keep in my purse (analog), and I have now learned how to sync pictures, how to type e-mails and play a couple of games.  Patchwork and quilting applications Takumi suggested I ask my patchwork friends about...

Any suggestions? 

When Takumi wasn't teaching me things, he was playing a game with Grandma.  She was fascinated!  But I don't think she's going to want her own iPad yet.  She's still reminding me to develop my photos before I go back to Japan.  (And she's constantly telling me she needs to go buy film.)

Let's see how much I can figure out on this iPad before I see Takumi again next weekend.  (I did NOT figure it out enough to write this blog post...)