I think, we are crazy. / School corp auction

Saturday, there was a huge auction in the town which is for selling public schools' old furniture and equipments. My husband and I were pretty much excited when we got to the warehouse where the auction took place. It was HUGE. There are so many cool stuff that would be called "Vintage" on the market. If you are not interested in admiring old and used things, it would look like tons of refuses to you. To some people, including us, it looks like a mountain of treasures. There were so many junk lovers at the auction as you can see in the photo below.

Many things are nostalgic to us since we spent school days in early 70's through 80's. Some of items in the auction are not familiar to me (I graduated all schools in Japan) but my husband knows almost everything. Those goods reminded us lots of good and bad memories in our schooldays.

Colorful steel lockers. I love to have some. If I had a space to place them!

We wanted a piano for Nina. But we were too slow to bid it off. You need some skills to get what you want at auctions. My goodness, pianos were bid off at $20 each!

Since it was a school auction, there were lots of sewing machines. I guess I saw at least 40 machines in the section. My eyes got caught by these JANOME machines. They looked relatively new. Pretty sure they are newer than my old Singer machine. I hoped there were some dress forms but there were none of them. A dress form is on top of my wish list for many years. Well, I'll wait for a dress makers' auction being held in the town someday ;-p)

A couple hundreds of class room chairs. Some of them look so mid-century. Love the colors and style.

Look at this incredible printers table! Quality!

I really wanted some old stools. But I had to give it up because they were sold in bulk. I wanted a couple. So I didn't get any.

Doors. Heavy solid doors.

The poster on a steel locker. This one must have been in a workshop.

You must been wondering about the title of this post "I think, we are crazy." Why do I think we are crazy? The answer is in this photo. I mentioned it before that I didn't get any stools because of they were sold in bulk. And later.......maybe about one hour later......

We purchased 22 wooden (with vinyl back) old school chairs! Yes TWENTY TWO of them! We just couldn't resist getting them. I love the colors of the vinyl backs. The vinyl covers are stuck in the back with metal studs. They are all in pretty good condition. If we give some good maintenance to them, they would shine as stylish vintage accessories.

We both have lived in Tokyo for many years. There were cool vintage furniture stores along the avenue close to our apartment. These chairs would attract customers of those stores' so much. I can't wait to have some of them in my house. (We already have so many chairs in the house, though....) We carried all of them to our truck in drizzling rain. We don't have room to store them in our garage right now. So we took the chairs to the garage of a house we are renting.

Do you agree that we are a crazy couple? No? OK, there is a continuance.

We got these EIGHT SEWING MACHINES (and one steel cart), too! This time, I can see many of your jaws are dropped in my mind. OK, I have been wanting a spare machine which I can attach a low shank darning foot (and some other presser feet). Then we found these quality Janome machines in bulk. And they were SO INEXPENSIVE! It comes with the cart which I think it will be nice to have for storing my products in my workroom (I just finished re-organizing my studio). Is that a good reason for my purchase? Well, after we bad off the machines, there came a lady who wanted three of them so we sold three to her. And a while later she was still wavering if she wants a couple more so I gave her two for free. Because they looked imperfect and the maker was not what I wanted. (Of course in assent. ) Finally I got three machines and a cart, (watch your jaw, Ladies!) It was $25 TOTAL.

This is one of the machines I got. Unfortunately One of them has a problem feeding fabric correctly. But it seems simple to repair if you had a good repair shop. I am glad we got three. We hope another one to be a gift to someone after some maintenance.

My husband just came home from work five minutes ago. And he went to the garage where we store the 22 old chairs to get some of them. He said he is going to start refinishing them from today! He seemed happy when he said that to me. I think refinishing furniture is one of  his few hobbies. I will update about refinishing chairs and my "new" old sewing machines.

Thank you so much for reading such a long post! I am glad that you made it to the end. I hope you enjoyed the story. If not, look forward to the next post. I promise I will write about sewing :-D

Harujion Design Etsy shop is now open again!

Thank you for waiting so long for me to open my Etsy shop again! It is now finally open! There are many fresh items in new designs. Also there are sale item sections and some items are on sale up to 30% OFF! I am going to list more day by day, so please come and check the shop often!

I would like to share some of my new products in my shop. They are wristlets made with adorable fabrics. You will see many pouches made with this pattern in my shop from now on. Well..... if they go as quick as I expect ;) There are more info and photos of those wristlet in the shop listings. Please check them out if you are interested.

I occasionally will show and tell about new listings here when I have it in the shop.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope you all have a peaceful night and a good dream!

Autumn

Fall comes to us quickly after a new school year starts here in South Bend. I see Autumn color patches here and there when I take a walk in the morning. The sky gets high and clear. I just love to see the clouds moving in the Autumn sky. It is a pleasant moment of the year. But it passes by so quickly as well. That is why I feel this season is so precious. And a bit sad. I always try to print on my mind every view which the nature shows us in this short moment. Before it packs us in a box of gloomy gray sky and freezing silver snow. (I am getting to like Winter and Snow these years. This is going to be the seventh Winter since I moved in this area from Tokyo!)

I bake this Irish apple cake so often in Fall. We love the taste of caramelized apples on top. I am looking forward to going to apple picking at an orchard soon. I need to learn to bake the best apple pie this fall. Any good recipes? It would be great if it is easy to make ;p !

Nina had an apple day in her class room last week. They cooked apple sauce and made this little apple piggy. She has an awesome teacher this year again! What a lucky kid and parents we are.

And.....a new embroidery project is going on. The embroidery part is almost done. It will be a tote bag and on my Etsy shop soon as well. The shop is almost ready to re-open. I just need to organize information of the products and list them up in my shop.

Thank you for reading. Please have a wonderful week!

Folklore Flower Embroidered Tote!

It took some time, you know. But eventually......I finished my folklore flower embroidery project at last!

And here is the finished item made with the embroidery piece! It is a small tote bag. I am so happy how it turned and I love it so much! I hope you guys will love it, too! I have been working on getting ready to re-open my Etsy shop. The shop will open soon as soon as the products are ready. I am trying to stack up items in my small "warehouse" for selling. This awesome tote will be in my Etsy shop soon, too. I will notify you when its ready to go, here in my blog, twitter, and facebook as well.

The bag has one simple pocket and one zipper pocket, too. The lining fabric is a medium weight cotton canvas. A bandana print in red, black and yellow, is a perfect matching with the embroidery color scheme. The handles are dark navy cotton webbing.

In addition, I made this roomy pouch to keep your belongings nicely in the bag.

This pouch opens wide and holds a lot in it. Also it is nice that people don't see the staff in your bag.

Look! The pouch made to fit perfectly in the bag!

I put neat hand stitches around the opening. It makes the bag looks more well finished, I hope!

The pattern is my original and it was new. I wasn't sure until I saw this bag finished, but then, I liked that! I want to make more of my "one of a kind" products with this pattern.

This embroidery work was so fun. I am going to keep working on this kind of pieces from now on. And put them up in my shop as many as I can. Certainly it would take some time for you to see a new product in the shop. But I hope many of handmade lovers will be looking forward to it and be happy to be waiting. That's my dream. Thank you for reading, and hope you all have a happy weekend!

Still not finished all.

 You might have forgotten about these old chairs which needed to be refinished. I hope this post reminds you that we got a set of cool mid-century style dinning set in May.  I have left those chairs unfinished tooooooo long. They were sitting in the basement storage while we were gone to Japan. Finally I purchased a fabric for re-upholstering them last month and I'm slowly working on it only when I am NOT cooking, cleaning, gardening, driving, shopping, making things, and of course, sleeping ;p It is still not done yet, though I have three seats finished. Only two more to go....!

Previous owner didn't strip the old green fabric and just covered it with sleazy yellow towels! That obviously slowed down my work.

Cut a "New" (I had this faded form which is unused in my storage. I guess my husband got this from a yard sale sometime.) 1" thick form along the shape of the seat.

Wrap it with a piece of fabric using a stapler to hold the fabric in place.

Tuck the fabric in the corner to make the curve nice and neat.

Screw the finished seat in the chair. Yahoo! One down!

To be honest, I am not 100% sure of my choice of fabric. At least I can say it looks sharper and much much cleaner. I hope these chairs will add a bit more modern feeling to my dinning room.

Thank you for reading. I hope you started another wonderful week. And happy refinishing!

Work in progress / Folklore Flowers

This pattern is inspired by folklore embroidery designs of Eastern Europe. I have never been any of those countries. Sometimes I turn my thoughts toward there. Dreaming to visit those countries to see their exquisite traditional hand works. Today, I would like to share some photos of my work in progress. It is very close to finish!

I hope you all are having a wonderful September. Happy embroidering!

O'Bento for Nina / Box lunch Japanese style

I decided to make box lunch for Nina this school year. Instead of letting her to have school lunch.  Educating children what and how they should eat to develop their body and mind healthy has been very important for parents in Japan. Schools are very serious about what school lunch they serve for children, and teach them about nutrition, Japanese food culture and the background of ingredients etc. This education is called "Shoku-Iku" in Japanese. "Shoku" stands for "Eat", and "Iku" means "Education". I would like to treasure this idea even I am outside of my country.

O-Bento is the word for box lunch in Japanese.  If you are a quilter, you might have heard the word "Bento box quilt pattern" which is my favorite. Right now, making O-Bento very cute and fun by decorating with some elaborate technique is very popular among many Japanese Moms. This was my first try to make those "Kawaii (Cute)" O-Bento for Nina.

Rice balls and sausages look like faces decorated with Nori (Seaweed sheet).

That's not so bad for the first time, isn't that?

Sorry for the poor lighted picture. Its still dark when I wake up to fix O-Bento at 5:30am. This one has a cheese bunny on rice, sausage flowers, and potato balls with Edamame in it.

Waking up early is not very pleasant. But it is kinda fun for me to think how I can make every O-Bento fun and surprising. Though I only make these Kawaii kinds every other day so far. I make sandwiches and just simple rice balls sometimes. But never forget about nutrition. I hope I will make some very good O-Bento for sharing with you guys soon again. Happy O-Bento making!