Little Toolie Tuesday - The Blue Toolie Set

I made this set and gave it as a gift to another stitcher. The set consisted of a pin cushion, a needlebook, a scissor fob, a needlethreader and fob, and another fob that I later added a Clover circular cutter.

Lunch with Friends

After spending the morning scrapbooking with Vicky, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Bombay Blue - the favorite of all four of us.

Race Car Sushi

My friend Vicky took me to a new (to me) kaiten sushi place. There is a touch screen for ordering and the sushi is delivered to the table by race car on a little track.

 

And the sushi is only 100 yen per plate!

Ted's Away

Ted’s been away this week – first at a conference in Tokyo, now on a rock climbing trip with students in Nagano.  He’s sent a few photos and it looks like he’s having a good time.

 

Before he left, he gave me this panda fan (purchased at the hyaku en store), just in case it gets hot in Hokkaido. So far I haven't needed to use it.

 

Friday afternoon my friend Alicia and I worked on a photo album.  Another friend, Vicky, joined us after her work day and we all had dinner at the Indian restaurant, then attended a cello-piano concert at the university.  The cellist is my upstairs neighbor and a university music professor. 

 

 

Saturday, Vicky and I continued stitching on our ornaments. They will look nice on our trees, come December, don’t you think?

Stitching with Vicky

Saturday was cool and rainy outside, so my friend Vicky and I got together to visit and stitch.  My husband was gone for the weekend on a trip with his kayaking class and her husband was doing something with one of his friends, so we had the whole day to ourselves.

I keep thread in this little pencil box that I've had for years.  She recognized it as having had a similar one in her younger days.

We each started a little ornament on 28 count evenweave fabric, using #8 perle for eyelet stitches and accentuate for Rhodes stitches.  I’m using pale blue and silver, and although I didn’t take a photo of hers, you can imagine it done in red perle with gold.
 

I think there will be beads in this ornament’s future.  We’ll see next week when we get together to work on them some more.

The Visiting Kitten

No, she didn’t come to visit me, she visited my friends. My friends were taking care of this cute little kitten while her person was away.  They know how much I like cats and invited me to come over to play.  She is like the energizer bunny running around – in the bag, out of the bag, playing with the toys, in the tissue box, on and on.

Who Me?

Finally, she winds down and stretches out in front of the heater, but not for long.

Autumn Shrine Festival

There were three festivals in our town this past weekend.  Unfortunately the weather was not very festive – it rained most of the time.  There was a window of time on Saturday when the rain stopped. We arranged to meet up with two of our friends, who are both English teachers, to attend the festivals. At the time of this festival weekend a year ago, I had just met the wife of this couple and the two of us attended the festivals together. (You can see last year’s post about this festival here.)  Her husband had not yet come to Japan and Ted was in the US for a couple of weeks. Coincidentally, her husband and Ted were on the very same flight to Japan later in September.

Back to the present

We toured the Shrine grounds.

 

Close to the Shrine, there was an interesting bonsai exhibit. I think we saw some of these same little trees last year and it doesn’t look like they’ve grown a millimeter.

 

While we were looking at the fortunes, a monk came out and gave us each a book on the Shinto religion – in English!

I didn't realize it at the time, but he is in the left edge of the photo.

 

The festival had all the typical food and game vendors which cover two long streets. The Shrine is in the area where the two streets meet.

 

After leaving this festival, we made our way to the Mochi Festival.  I’ll post about it another day.