Shawl knitting and Terrarium class

This beautiful shawl is on my needles now. This is the first time for me to knit a shawl in English written pattern.

 I have not been a shawl person until last fall. I got Shingles in my left shoulder in last October. One Saturday morning I found some small blisters in my shoulder. I instinctively thought that this must be Shingles. So I went to the urgent care but I couldn't get a correct diagnosis.  After all I was diagnosed with Shingles by my own physician on Monday. Since then I almost always have miner pain from my left neck to arm. I wish I could have gotten an immediate treatment at the urgent care. If I could have, I probably have recovered completely... I mean without any pain as a hangover from Shingles. If you have some symptoms look like Shingles, just go to see your doctor immediately. Delay in treatment will cause remaining pain in your nerve long time.
Anyway! I wanted to say I started use scarves and shawls since then because I need to keep my shoulder warm to prevent the pain. The misdiagnosis was not a good experience at all but knitting a shawl for myself is very enjoyable. And the pattern is not hard to knit but very interesting!

I learned "shawl cast on" for the first time. I haven't heard of it in Japan. I wonder this is a common technique among shawl knitters.

Using cable needles. Shape the shawl body first then continuously add the edging with a pretty lace & cable braid pattern.

I am almost there! I cannot wait to finish and use it!

*********

I took a terrarium making class at Junk Evolution. Playing with plants and soil felt good. We planted succulents in glass containers and added some ornaments like pine cones, twigs, butterflies and so on.

The process was very simple and easy. I put this on the breakfast table in my kitchen. I think I will make a couple more for a bathroom and a bedroom.

I hope you enjoyed it and please have a  great weekend. Happy Friday!!

Ten days in Japan

Nina and I came to Japan last Wednesday. We already spent ten days in Japan. The first week is usually spent for recovering from jet lag every time. Now we can enjoy our fun time with my family and friends without getting tired in an odd timing. I was hearing that it is unusually hot and humid this Summer in Japan before we left the US. But fortunately the weather has been pretty much like a usual Summer (it is still very hot and humid, though!). So I think that made us easy to adjust ourselves to the climate here.

My father lives in the city by Tokyo Bay where is about 50km away from Tokyo. We mostly stay my dad's house when we are in Japan. The house is built about 35years ago. He has a tiny Japanese garden in front of his house. Those beautiful pine trees were much much smaller when we moved in this house. Now they look so solid and tough.

Well-kept Bonsay trees and flower containers.

Keeping a tiny flower bed became my Dad's hobby these years. It is so nice to see colorful flowers every time we come back here. He is a very good and hard working gardener.

We visited the Onsen (hot spring public bath) in our town with my sister's family. There are many different kinds of hot tabs. Each tab has different active ingredients in its water and also they are in different tab styles like "Ne-yu" which is a very shallow tab you can lie down, "Awa-buro" which is a jacuzzi, "Goemon-buro" which is a deep tab looks like an ancient rice cooker, and so on! Many of Japanese people love taking a bath. And we are not the exceptions. The picture below is our pretty girls got high-spirited before taking a bath!

You gotta have a yummy ice cream after taking a superb bath!

When you see a big dinosaur, you have to climb up to the back of it. How can you resist?

Brand-new thing to Nina. Mastering to ride a RipStik (it is named "Braveboard" in Japan). It took a couple days but now she can ride and turn!! I am afraid we gotta buy one when we get home! (She is borrowing it from her cousin.)

I didn't prepare any projects to do on the trip this time. I just didn't have time to think and prepare before we left. I just grabbed some crochet hooks, Tatting shattles and some lace yarns for killing the time on the plane. So I pulled out some left over yarns sitting in my old room here and started some motif crocheting when Nina went to her cousin's house for sleep-over. There were not enough amount of yarns to make a large thing. I am thinking to use these for embellishing a scarf for this Fall. I just cannot spend days without making stuff. There are more supplies I could not transport to the US. So hopefully I will spend some of them while I am here in Japan.

The rose from my Dad's garden.

I am going to Tokyo tomorrow to see my best friends. It is my favorite event I am looking forward so much for a whole year! We are going to have a delicious lunch and talk and talk and talk for hours! Also I will shop around fabrics, craft supplies and books, too. I will report about my shopping in Tokyo (mainly in Shinjuku area) soon. So please stay tuned if you are interested in Japanese craft trends! Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Happy traveling!

Language issue / Sakura (Japanese cherry) Blossom

I always appreciate that I live in this amazing internet age. There are more than two hundreds people all around the world following my blog, almost three hundreds people liking my facebook page. That is truly amazing and that definitely inspires my creation, my life and myself a lot! Those good crafty folks from everywhere on the globe encourage me so much and spreading my world so much wider! I would like to yell to all of you THANK YOU! today and also want to apologize for an issue. It is the language issue. The languages I speak and write are only Japanese and English. And my readers are from all over the world. I love love love you to leave comments in my blog, my facebook, or Flickr. I am always looking forward to hearing from you. But unfortunately, I cannot read French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Finnish........whatever except the two I mentioned above :ﾍ:
The point is that I am not able to approve the comments which are wrote in those languages I cannot read since I cannot recognize what is written in the comments. I know that those readers wrote something very nice and maybe very useful information. So I feel so very sorry about that. If possible, please write your comment in simple English. So we all are able to share your valuable information together. And again, I am so sorry if you posted your comment in your language in the past and I didn't publish that because of the language issue. I hope you understand my circumstance.

Changing the subject, my Sakura (Japanese Cherry) trees are in full bloom! This Spring they got more flowers and its beautiful. I love Sakura soooooooo much. I hope you like them too.

Have a great weekend!