Fika Friday

It's my favorite day - FRIDAY!!

 

I realize I've been a tad delinquent in posting these days. But I'm back! Life has been busy lately, but in a good way. My crafting buddy, Beth, and I just signed up to do the SWEA Christmas Fair again this December here in Los Angeles (Lucia festival!) and so begins the crafting! We're also thinking about doing another Christmas fair this year...2 in one season?! Are we crazy?! Yes. We definitely are a tad crazy, the good kind of crazy though.

 

 

 

 

This week, I made this homemade BBQ sauce and it turned out pretty fantastic. I did substitute the Worcestershire sauce for tamari but that was it. I also made these blueberry muffins for our to go breakfasts for the week. Also quite delicious. Other than the usual tom foolery, not too much has been happening here. Roller derby is still going great, and I finally picked out my name: Eleanor Throwsevelt, number 1933 (her first year as first lady). I'm loving skating so much!

 

 

So, for the Fika Friday. I didn't have an official fika this week [gasp!] so I decided to do a throwback fika from when Ryan and I were in Japan.

 

Fika Rundown:

 

Where: Tochigi, Japan

Who: Myself and Ryan

What: Japanese coffee and cake

Best part: Japanese cafes are the cutest. It's all in the details and this fika was no exception. Darling decor and delicious, cutesy treats!

 

That's all for now, folks! Happy Labor Day weekend!! :)



Shibori Indigo Class

This weekend I got to take an amazing Shibori Indigo class with Glennis Dolce for my birthday (thank you Ryan and fam!) and it was incredible! I have never dyed with indigo before and it was so fascinating.  Did you know the indigo dye is actually greenish-yellow when in its dye form and it doesn't turn into the beautiful blue until it becomes oxidized?! I definitely had no clue until yesterday.

Below is one of my favorite dyed indigo swatches from class.  It was directly from Japan and quite intricate.

Here is one of the vats of the dye:

Here are our pieces drying after dying:

More pieces out to dry:

This is one piece I did that I tried to add a Scandinavian touch to. :-)  I used a picture of some Rosemaling as inspiration and broke it down into a basic design.  Then I used a folded running stitch before dying.  It was time consuming and tedious, but I am glad I gave it a go.

 The piece above was done on linen. I loved the linen the most of all the fabrics we got to work with.  We also got to work with bamboo batting, raw silk, different cottons, silk noil, hemp, antique trims, and a couple other fabrics that I don't remember the names of.

And after class, I compiled a few of my favorite swatches and threw them into a frame for fun.  We had this frame around from Goodwill last year so I flipped the art around and arranged my swatches on the other side.  Ryan has coined it, "Color study #1". 

[sidenote: sorry for the dark, glare-y photo]

Overall, I learned a ton and met some really fun people.  A success! 

Happy almost Thanksgiving!!

A year ago in Japan

Today marks exactly one year since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  It's crazy to think that it's already been an entire year since it happened.

source

In case you didn't know, Ryan and I spent a little over a year teaching English in Japan.  During the end of our school year was when the earthquake hit.  I always meant to blog about Ryan's and my experience, but just never did.  It's difficult for me to know how and what to write about it.  So, I'm just going to recount our day.  We were about an hour South of the epicenter and inland, so we had no tsunami effects in our area but still felt the huge earthquake.

Thankfully, it was a day when both Ryan and I had a day off together (I seriously don't know what I would have done if I had been alone), and we decided to head north to spend our day shopping and sightseeing.  After eating a lunch of gyoza, we headed to the mall.  We had just walked through the glass doors when Ryan noticed that the ceiling lamps in the Starbucks were swaying back and forth.  He paused and asked if there was an earthquake.  

Earthquakes are so common in Japan that no one really pays any attention to them.  And that's what happened at first.  People just kept doing what they were doing until the earthquake continued to build and didn't die down like usual.  The ceiling lamps were crashing into each other by that point and things were starting to fall off of shelves in the stores.  Then people started saying things in Japanese we didn't understand and started rushing out of the building.  We figured they knew what they were doing so we followed them out to the street (I had always heard not to go outside during an earthquake...but panicked and figured it was what we should do in the moment).  It was the eeriest feeling watching the buildings around us sway.  Tiles were falling off of the building and cars were stopped in the middle of the road.  It felt like it lasted forever.  When the shaking finally stopped we knew we had to get somewhere in the open (not surrounded by tall buildings) for the aftershocks.

We made it to a parking lot for the first aftershock. After that, we headed to an open park where we waited out a few more aftershocks until we decided to try and head home.  All public transit was non-operational so we ended up taking the longest and most expensive cab ride back to our apartments (I think it was almost $200 USD).  It wasn't until the cab ride home that we saw (on the TV in the cab) images of the tsunami.  The footage they showed was shocking, until that point we had just thought it was a huge earthquake.

When we got back to our apartments, things were knocked over and we had no power.  The rest of the day and night there were constant aftershocks.  We heard about the Fukushima "meltdown" a couple days later.   By then we had power back (we were very fortunate, many cities north of us remained without power for much much longer) and were able to check the news regularly.  The remainder of our school classes were cancelled for the year (which was almost over anyway) and under the advisement of the US Embassy (and our families), we decided to go home a couple weeks ahead of schedule.  

One of the storefronts we walked past on the way to the parking lot

As I'm sure you know, Japan is still in the process of recovering from this devastating event.  It will take many years and constant help to continue the progress they've begun to make.  If you can help, here is a link to many options for relief funding for Japan from the 2011 tsunami and earthquake.

A dress for a baby

First, Happy Valentine's Day!  Hurry for a day dedicated to eating chocolate and getting flowers!  I know I will definitely be eating my fair share of sweets today, I hope you do too.

Ok, back to sewing and crafting.  I made this wee little baby dress from Anna Maria Horner's book, Handmade Beginings, the dress is called the Pretty-as-a-Picture Dress.  A number of our friends are having babies in the near future and I thought I'd get a head start on some baby gifts! 

It uses one fabric to showcase the design in both the front and back of the dress.  I had this adorable porcupine fabric that I found in Japan and figured this would be a great use for it!

Back view: You can see how the elastic around the waistband (except for the front panel) gives the dress some cute gathers.

Front view:

And side view:

This was a great day project.  I started it in the morning and finished after lunch, with many coffee breaks in between.  I am loving Handmade Beginings, it has adorable projects for every aspect of parenthood: from diaper bags to maternity clothes to baby toys, a great range of things to create.

And if you're looking for a fun Valentine's day craft try making your own paper hearts with this tutorial:

Happy Chocolate Valentine's Day!

The random mid-May post

Hello folks. Long time no post!

I don't have much to post at the moment, but thought I'd share a few random tidbits with you. First - these little Swedish baby booties I made for my nephew:

And they are reversible! But, I'm sad to say that I only made 1 booty because by the time I finished it he had outgrown it. I still think it's pretty cute though.

Second item of business, this cross stitch piece my grandma has at her house, I love it. It reminds me of my grandma. I've been super into cross stitch these days, my mom found some of her old kits that she bought but never made so I've been plugging away at them. I'll post my progress one of these days.

Does anyone know where you can find a stamped cross stitch kit (that's a cute pattern? I love the old samplers but can't find any!!)? I can't find one for the life of me, and I'm usually pretty good at finding craft supplies. Hmmm...

And lastly, I'm getting married in one month to this handsome guy - woah baby!

(picture from the Tokyo airport, we hadn't slept in a while...)

Back in America

Nikko 2010

I know I've been absent from the blogging world for a while, so let me catch you up to speed:

After the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear problems in Japan, Ryan and I decided to move back to America 3 weeks earlier than we had planned. We arrived in Texas about a week ago, where I spent some wonderful days with Ryan and his family (after some not-so-wonderful days frantically packing and moving out of our apartments in Japan). I then flew back to Michigan and drove down to Chicago with my parents to visit family there. I just arrived back home (Michigan) yesterday and am still busy unpacking, organizing and locating all my crafting items in order to start crafting in order to start blogging again! Phew. I'm tired.

It's been a whirlwind of events and emotions since I've been back. I already miss my friends and life in Japan but am also overjoyed to be with family again.

There is so much to be done in Japan and every donation helps, if you want to make a donation here are a couple reliable places to make one:

Covenant World Relief

Red Cross

source

A day in the flower park

Ryan and I were able to spend a beautiful Friday strolling through the Mito plum blossom flower park. It was glorious. Here is a small glimpse of what we enjoyed:

"The Earth laughs in flowers."

-Emerson

Have a joyous weekend!