Handmade gifts and Tsukiji Fish Market

 I made this owl for my nephew at the request of my sister-in-law. It was because there was a little owl in a book that he kept grabbing and it was getting rather beat up. This was a replacement for it.

On the right is a picture of a baby shower gift. I used socks and headbands to make the cupcakes.



There was so much to see at Tsukiji Fish Market!

I believe this was salmon and salmon eggs or ikura.

Lots of shellfish.

 Not sure what kind of fish is on the right, they were dead and live fish.

 Extra large pieces of fish. We got to watch a piece of fish getting cut. It was very interesting!

More to come...

A Gift, Aprons and Unagi Ichinoya Restaurant

 I got this coin purse as a gift made out of some sort of wrappers, which I still haven't used, partly because it is too nice to use.

One of the women at Bernina club made and hand quilted this quilt! It was later on display at one of the quilt shows I went to.

I made the following aprons for my EA and I to use at school for our Fashion Design class. We used it for the scissors, seam ripper, and anything else we needed for the class. I use mine everyday for passes, pens, pencils, collateral that I collect from the students, etc.

One of the families we know in Japan took us to a restaurant that was serving unagi for over 100 years, but because I couldn't eat anything with gluten, this was my dinner. I had a platter of sashimi with crab and a large salad.

The unagi came in a dish donburi style. I heard it was delicious!

The name if the restaurant is Unagi Ichinoya. I don't know what the kanji is.


More to come later...

Old photos and Tobu Supermarket

Found this old picture in my files of the time we went to see Wicked at the Neal Blaisdell Center. After I took this picture, I found out that we weren't suppose to take pictures. I loved the show! It was the best Broadway show I've seen so far. One of the main characters in it was from Hawaii, which made it better.

The next two pictures are of Christmas gifts I made and have since given, since the last time I posted. A Christmas stocking for my nephew, hot pads and coasters form my mom. My nephew used to like to play with the hot pads and coasters. 

The following pictures are more from our trip to Japan. The first is of the train system. Boy, talk about extensive and confusing! Even those who live there use an app to travel on the trains. We rode the subway and the other trains. The only train we did not ride was the Shinkansen or bullet train. The hardest part was not being able to understand some of the operators when they announced which stations we were approaching, because they mumbled! Luckily, most of the trains had the names of the approaching stations above the doors and most of the people were very nice. I was even able to communicate with them using my broken Japanese.

We went exploring the next day and found a supermarket in the Tobu Store near our hotel. Yay! All the vegetables were neatly packaged. We also found sashimi, hot food, etc. It kind of reminded us of Shirokiya here. There was even a guy cooking sweet potatoes on the hot rocks!

We ended up eating meals and buying water from this supermarket...more to come in a later post.

Door Prizes, Rainbows, and Japan

 It's been a while since I've posted. The left is a picture of a half yard of fabric I won at one of the Bernina Club meetings that I attended.

The one on the right is a picture of a fat quarter that I got during an exchange at a club meeting. Each person who wanted to participate, needed to bring a fat quarter. Then we passed them down to the person on our left. We were supposed to make something with it, but I still have not used either of the fabrics pictured. Since I have gone back to working full time, I have not had the time or energy to sew much. Sigh.

 This is a picture of a double rainbow that we saw on the way to church one Sunday.

 We just got back from Japan. This photo was taken the night we arrived. We needed to catch the bus from Narita to our hotel in Kawagoe.

 The next day we went to Harajuku in the rain. It was the day before Typhoon Phanfone hit and we got very soaked. My jeans were dripping wet. I also ended up buying a new umbrella because I was having trouble fitting my old fat umbrella into the plastics provided by the stores. Each store provides these skinny plastic bags to put your wet umbrella in so that your umbrella doesn't drip water all over the floor inside the store. Each time you go in, you close your umbrella and put it in the plastic bag. When you leave you put the plastic bag into the container provided by the store. We used lots of plastic bags that day. The rain was coming down non-stop.

After Harajuku, we went to Shibuya to see the statue of Hachiko, where it was still raining. We ate lunch in Shibuya at Tenka Sushi. It was nice to warm up with a hot drink and get out of the rain. As we were leaving, we discovered that they were having a lunch time special, 100 yen for each plate of sushi! That made lunch even better!

Back at Kawagoe station, we did some exploring. This display came on a 3 pm. My daughter thinks it comes on a 3 pm daily. Anyway, there is music with drums, a float and dolls about the Kawagoe festival.

I'll post more in another post.

Star Wars Cupcakes and the Scenic Route

 Star Wars cupcakes! They were so cute. They were for someone's birthday party.

 This was the scenery on the way back to school from our field trip. There was an accident on the H-1 freeway, so our bus driver took us back to school using the scenic route. It was a beautiful day. Enjoy!

One of the students helped me get this nice shot of Rabbit Island or Manana Island and Kaohi Kaipu in Hawaiian. Kaohi Kaipu is the flat island next to Manana Island.

Pot Holders, Coasters and More

 My mom was cleaning up and she found this. This was from when I was in Kindergarten. I smelled pretty bad so I just took a picture of it and tossed it. Did you make one of these in Kindergarten? They got a large piece of butcher paper and made you lie down on it. You got traced, then you had to color yourself in. haha. I don't know if they still do this in Kindergarten.

 These are string pot holders and coasters. I made for my mom's birthday. I actually went overboard on the coasters and made double the amount. It was a good thing too, because I used them in a Christmas grab bag at the 2012 Bernina Club Christmas party. The woman who got it really liked it. She told me that she has to keep track of them so that they don't walk away.

 As in a earlier post here, I wrote about my worms. Well, I have a large black rubbermaid container with my worms in it. It is raised off the floor of the garage and the lid has air holes. One day, there was a small frog in it, like the one we found in the house. As I was moving the paper to feed the worms the frog jumped out at me! After that I decided to get the worms a new home. We went to Koolau Farmers and found this green worm bin. We tried to clean out the black bin, but it so large that we couldn't get all the worms out. Hopefully we can get to it this summer, otherwise I will have two worm bins! I don't know if I can maintain two of them.

QAYG and Candle Holders

I am exploring different ways to quilt my quilts on my domestic sewing machine. There are different Quilt as you go methods, so I signed up for a class at Bernina to learn how to make quilts using this method. The Bernina Club teacher made the samples and teaches the class.

The first two photos are samples of Quilt As You Go (QAYG) projects for the QAYG class I took. Did you know that there was a ruler I had to buy to make this? Apparently, this ruler can be used to make all the other patterns too. 



I decided to make the pattern in the second picture. I tried to make this during the class without the ruler, but I ended up purchasing the ruler, because it made making it so much easier and faster.

These are the fabrics I am using to make the quilt. I got done sewing strips on two blocks during class and that's as far as it's gotten. I haven't touched it since...I need more time. Hopefully, during the summer or spring break...

 These are thermal fingers...I must get some of these. They are great to use when ironing. Grace (the Bernina Club teacher), showed these to us when she showed us how to make these candle holders. 





The four flaps in the middle open up and you set your candle in there. She showed us two different ways to make them. This is the front...








Back








Front

Back...I don't know that I'll ever make one of these, but you never know...at least I have the pattern. They might make a good Christmas gift. She said they fit the electronic candles from COSTCO.