hot, hotter, and hottest and ...

Hello, I am back.  Not that I was on holiday or was ill.  Thank you for visiting my blog while my absence.

It's August.  The most detested month if you ask me.  Most Japanese people do not like summer (in my opinion), unless you are on the beach side.  It's really, really a miserable month down here.  However, this year I have my beloved ice cream maker with me.  I have of course made a regular ice cream but I find sorbet is easier to make and more to my liking.  To make fruit sorbet, you just process your fruit through the blender, sieve, and chilled it in the fridge, then process it in the machine.  My absolute favorite is watermelon.  Oh, how I love my ice cream maker.

As you may know I live in Japan and one of the traditional performing arts is called Noh.  Kabuki is the other and more famous and fancier.  Kabuki has been performed in both Europe and North America so you may have known what it is like.  Noh, on the other hand, is a masked play, mostly singing and dancing.  The singing is on a little monotonous side and sounds like chanting and dancing is very subdued, so subdued the performer almost do not move.  No set or prop on a few metres squares of a stage.  Not for everyone but it's beautiful nonetheless, especially if you could catch the meanings of chant like singing.  There will be a performance held at the Noh Theatre near our place later this month and I am looking forward to it. 

In case you are wondering if this is still a craft blog heavy on Japanese silk thimbles, here are two of my latest thimbles:

I used to make a lot of this design.  This is a weaved nine patch diamonds but I like to call it "Harlequin" because it reminds me of the cover of Agatha Christie's "Mysterious Mr Quinn".  

This one is the same design I have been making recently a lot; pinwheel.  Because of the colours I chose for this one, red, green, and gold, it resembles poinsettias.

I have added the poinsettias thimble to my "Share Your Thimbles" at Flickr and found out that we have a new member to the group.  Please kindly go over to the group's page here, and welcome our newest active member, May as magic_pochacco.  She has uploaded a lot of lovely thimbles and beadings.  May, if you are reading this post, please kindly mention the size and material of your work in the description field of the photo. 

If case you are interested in purchasing my thimbles, here is a link to Etsy.