La Chanson Japonaise ... ???

A Japanese music duo was featured in one of the morning TV show a few weeks ago I was told, that they are Japanese but sing in France and that they sang in a TV trailer of Festival Paris Cinema last year.  Must be very talented, I thought.  So, I went and looked for them on YouTube and found them.

Zoun-Doko Bushi by Les Romanesques on YouTube

I do not have a word to describe their performance.  Unusual?  Different?  Humoristique? Peculiar?  Whatever I (and you) think of them, their song sure sticks to you.

Tout va bien-ien-ien, tout les citoyens-yens-yens
Je me promène le dimanche matin
Les pigeons picorent des miettes de pain
Je mets mes pieds sur une crotte de chien


The melody itself is of a Japanese origin, but their lyrics are their own I think.

Then there is another song:

Mademoiselles by Les Romanesques on YouTube

Comment allez-vous, 
ma jolie petite fille, mademoiselle? 


They are quite something else.

The picture is nothing to do with today's post, but it's always nice to have some pictures so I thought I should include at least one.  This is one of the "on the process" pictures I took last summer when I made several thimbles in the same design but with silk thread in various colours and gold thread.

I believe I have shown this picture before and some of you might remember.



*** Shop Update ***

The listings of four Japanese print (cotton fabric) are going to expire very soon and as I announced it before I am not going to re-list them.  If you ear-marked them, please go and have a final look.  The listing of a set of 24 silk sewing thread has already expired.  I plan to revamp my shop (not know when I actually get around to do so, though), so it will remain unavailable at Etsy however, if you would like to purchase it I can list it as "specially reserved" for you.  Please drop me a line.

another mumbling with the typhoon gone but a new one approaching ...

The current typhoon is over the island and now on the sea but it was disastrous leaving 21 death and 54 missing.  As I told you yesterday, it proceeded (is still proceeding) extremely slowly and it dropped a tremendous amount of rainfall over Japan, leaving floods and landslide all over the country.  Even it has been over, it still keeps raining, heavily in certain areas. 

We are doing fine, virtually no damage at all, just a heavy rain last night.  Kyoto had been a capital city of Japan for over 1000 years for a reason with less damages by earthquake, floods, and other natural disasters than other area.

However, there is a new typhoon has appeared on the weather forecasts.  It's 13th and is heading to this way ....

This is one of the two thimbles I told you I had made recently with the one I showed to you yesterday.  The technique is the same, but the colour scheme is different and as a result it appears as a different design.  I wanted this one in shades in the same way as the previous gray one.  I used three colours but obviously the lightest in shades is too light and the contrast in colours is stronger than I hoped it would be.  I am going to dig in my thread stash boxes later to see if I can find a suitable one.

I opened one of the word documents I have neglected for so long today.  It is titled "Starter Kit".  As you may have correctly assumed, it's my long standing project of silk thimble starter kit instruction.  I really hope I can offer the kit (or maybe it becomes an on-line course) later this year.  I posted about how I make my thimbles before and you are supposed to make your own thimble following my instruction.  Here are the links to these posts:

thimble base making

marking paper

how to stitch

post script of how to stitch  (please scroll down a little bit since it started with other subject)

tidying up your initial stitch

how to make two-scales design thimble  (one I used to call bi-coloured scales)

cosmetic touch-up

There are other posts tagged as "how I make my thimbles" but you do not need these recent posts, yet, in order to make your own first one.  Please be patient with my English.  I read these posts mentioned above and found a lot of grammatical and typing mistakes.  Also I used to call "sections" as "segments" in the earlier posts until I had to use the word "segment" to represent a portion of the line.  Questions are always welcome.  You can leave a question at either the particular post or at the most current one, it doesn't matter.

If you would like to see what it is like quickly, may I suggest "First Thimble Kit" at Etsy.  The kit includes a ready-made thimble base with two rows of stitches done and a instruction booklet.  So you just thread a needle (also included) and continue stitching.  Please note that the instruction booklet does not show you how to make a thimble base. how to apply padding, or how to mark your marking paper.

Lastly I am still hosting a photo sharing group at Flickr.  Please come join us once you made your own, or just pop in and admire our work there.  Thank you.

mumbling with typhoon coming and staying ...

It was not very nice to have a typhoon hanging around for a week and finally the 12th typhoon (we don't name typhoons in Japan.  We just give them the ordinal numbers instead) is now almost at the edge of the one of the four main islands and moving northward VERY slowly.  It is said that the typhoon is similar in size to Irene which hit NYC and moving in the speed equivalent to jolly bicycle ride.  The news report said that some parts of the country got half the annual rain fall over the night.  The morning news was full of flood and landslide.  Fortunately for me, the area we live has not affected very much, so far.  It's just like a very windy day now but it's going to be very rough tonight.  It seems that the typhoon got slowed down further.  

The photo is my most recent thimble.  I have made two more in the same design but in different colours.  I like its blue and gray hue.  Since I do not dye my threads, I have to shop looking for the "right" colours.  The haberdashery I frequent only sells Fujix Tire silk thread but about a year ago I purchased other manufacturer's silk thread on-line as dead stock as they were out of business.  The brand name was Hyoutan and their colours are very delicate and in lovely hue as you can see in the picture.  It's quite a shame that they are no longer in the business.

As you may know I have listed Japanese cotton prints fabric at my Etsy shop and the listings will expire on 19th September and I am not going to re-list them.  If you ear-marked them for the future purchase, please have another look at them before the listing will be gone.

Speaking of Etsy, well, I am not very happy with some of the listings there.  It's about copyright infringement.  I switched from paper books to e-books years ago except the picture heavy crafts and cooking books and a few years ago something called "geographic restriction" was introduced in e-books market and you cannot buy certain books if your credit cards are not issued in the correct country.  It's about the publishers and/or writer's copyright.  The certain publishing house only bought the right to sell in the certain countries and if you do not have a credit card issued in that group of countries you are not entitled to buy it in e-book format while you are welcome to import the paper book published by the same publishing house.  It does not matter where you are currently living, it's the credit card which matters.  Weired.  I am not very happy about the situation and I do not fully understand or agree with their reasoning but I can accept it.  The writers' and publishers' rights have be protected after all.  What I am upset about is there are many of the sellers at Etsy who simply scan the paper books and sell it in JPEG or PDF format saying it's "e-books".  It's outright piracy.  What upsets me more is the fact that there have been many people who bought them.  It's quite easy to realize that the "book" was scanned manually because the listed photos of sample pages show the edges of the pages of the book or a trace of shadow which indicate that curved pages at the binding.  It's quite clear that the pages of the books are scanned and they chose to ignore the fact that they were buying the illegally copied books, or just don't care if it was a legitimate book or not as long as it was cheaper than buying from the bookshop.  I have reported several sellers but it's a up-hill battle.  Please pop in to Etsy and search for "ebook".  You would be amazed to find so many scanned PDF/JPEG files among the seller's original patterns and instructions.  When you add "Japanese", then the majority of the results would be piracy.  What the world has become ... 

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.

Bal Masque

Some of you who lives in Northern countries actually celebrate Midsummer while it's just another day in wet season down here in Japan.  It's kind of funny since Midwinter is marked on the calender as one of the days of importance.  To be precise, Midsummer is marked as a day of importance on the calender but we do not celebrate or anything.  Perhaps everybody so hate winter and we all need a reminder spring will come eventually, before the weather becomes harsher (the coldest is February here).  

Anyway June in Japan is not a very nice month.  It's VERY WET.  It's either wet and chilly or wet and hot.  It's a transitional month before summer which is worse; July being hotter and humid and August being the hottest and more humid.  

It's not very comfortable to wear a mask in June in Japan (or any other summer month, for that matter) but if I were to attend a masquerade ball on Midsummer's night, then I would like one of these masques here and dress like Titania.  "The Merchant of Venice" is a mask maker whose web page I stumbled across years ago.  They do not update their web page very often, if ever, so after a few visits I stopped checking on it until about a month ago when I moved from Internet Explore to Firefox and thought it was a good idea to make sure all the bookmarks still worked.  The page still exists and I am glad for it but I doubt they have added any new mask since last time I visited their site.  I have not purchased any yet, but my favorite is a one called "succubus" which you can find in Gothic category.  I might one day place an order for it...

Happy Midsummer and enjoy the longest day of the year.

P.S.  I wonder it's also called a midsummer even in Southern hemisphere?

thank you for your support and prayers for Japan

I have planed to post this one for so long but have not got around to do so and I feel really bad about it.  It has been over two months since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan.  Since then we, who live in Japan, have received a huge support from all over the world and I would like to thank you all for your effort to help us.  We cannot thank you enough but I would like for you to know we in Japan all appreciate all the efforts and all the prayers you made for us.     

Perhaps some of you are wondering what happened the "sending tote bags for school children in the affected area" programme.  It went very good indeed.  They wanted 1000 bags as a first batch to send to the affected area by 15th April but in the end they could manage to receive 59,000 bags!  The first batch of 1000 bags went north from Tokyo on UNICEF's truck on 7th April, and thousands of bags traveled northward to the children in the affected area everyday afterward.  You can read the report here, although it's all in Japanese.  Thank you letters are also posted as well as the list of the name of the participants of the programme. 

I read about a lot of craft people sent their work to Japan for morale support, like comfort quilts and temari.  Big thank you to you.

Etsy meet in Japan + social networking + shop update

As most of you probably know I sell thimbles and pin cushions I made at my Etsy shop as well as "first thimble kit" and silk thread, plus occasional floss silk wadding.  Etsy is an on-line market place concentrated on hand made products and supplies.  I started selling at Etsy shortly after I had started this blog and of course have not made much sales.  I do not make much sales when compared to other more active sellers but I cannot complain as my merchandise is not very popular items.  My sales have been heavily depended on the "word of the mouth" as you call it.  Someone mentioned Japanese silk thimble in their blog post and put a link to my blog for tutorials and I got quite a few visitors and consequently a part of the visitors also visited my Etsy shop and some of them actually made purchase.  I believe this is the way most of my sales were made.

I may have alarmed some of you by my previous post about statistics but I can assure you that I do not have any interest in what you view on-line.  I received about 20 or so unique visitors daily with total 40 to 50 page views according to stats application I installed here and when the number of visitors hit over 100, then it is certain that someone mentioned my blog or Japanese silk thimble with the link to my blog somewhere.  I try to track the source and leave a thank you comment there and that's that and nothing more.  Checking key words sometimes tells me what the visitors wanted to know.  A little while ago the keywords analysis shows "backward" along with my name.  It made me wonder if some of you might have been wondering how to make backstitches.

Then late last month I received a message from Etsy International Team (which I did not even know existed) that a representative would come visit Japan and would like to have a meet with the sellers in Japan.  And so I went the other night to meet other fellow sellers and Etsy people.  We had about twelve participants and it was more than I expected as the venue being not very convenient for most.  I am not sure what I was expected from the meet but I found it quite interesting.  That to know that Etsy would like to expand Japanese market.  Not Japanese customers buy from the sellers overseas, but domestic sales.  At the moment most of the sellers (at least the ones, including myself, who were there at the meet) only sells to overseas.  Not that we do not wish to sell to people in Japan, but simply we do not have Japanese customers.  The language is a huge barrier as well as payment options but the biggest impediment is most people never even heard of a hand made craft marketplace called Etsy, ever.  Etsy has been trying to be multilingual and a few of the European languages have already introduced we were told, but that multilingual features only applies to the public space like top page and help pages and not individual listings.  I myself would not call it being multilingual.  As a customer I find it quite annoying when the language option only available on top page.  Not having a very high expectation about Japanese domestic market but anything to increase sales is welcome was consensus at the meet among the sellers it looked. 

What I really found interesting was that the majority of the people at the meet did say they facilitated Twitter.  Earlier last month, another craft market place called ArtFire with which I have created an account with but never listed anything, sent me a newsletter that they were having a boot camp for social networking and asking me if I would like to join.  As a matter of fact I had opened the account at Twitter about several month ago but immediately after I got myself an account I had realized that I had not had anything worthy to Tweet.  Did you really want to know what I was going to prepare for dinner?  Perhaps you might have been interested in what TV programme I watched the other night.  What do people actually tweet about?  So after creating an account I had put Twitter aside without tweeting anything at all.  So the newsletter last month from ArtFire about incorporating the social network tool with sales intrigued me, intrigued me enough to sign up.  It turned out the boot camp is a kind of on-line discussion.  How to sign up the social network such as Facebook, Twitter, and blog and how to maintain them.  It is actually quite informative for the very beginner such as myself but may not be so for those of people who already had a fundamental knowledge about how they work.

I am still not sure how it works, but I made my first Tweet on my latest listing at Etsy.  It appeared on my account page and there is a link to my shop as well as two photos I uploaded there.  It is actually quite nice and it could be nicer if someone besides myself could have seen it, too.

These four fabrics and a new thimble are now on the shelf at my shop at Etsy.  Please come and have a look at here.

statistics

Although it does not show on this page, I have installed one of these statistics application here.  It shows how many visitors and page view I got.  The reason I installed is not so that I could check the number of the visitors daily.  I know my blog does not get much visitors.  I am an infrequent blogger with a small number of readers and I am quite content with it.  What I want to know is where people come to visit to my blog, so that I could know my reader a little bit more and I do not mean geographically where you are, although the "visitor map" is very fun to look at.  Most of my readers are in Europe and North America with a small number of views from Asia and Australia however, I have recently started to receive viewers from South America, Africa, and Tropical Islands.  Wow indeed although they could be a one-time viewer.  It will make me very very happy if you are the one reading this from Maldive and leave me a comment.  

If not geographically, then what?  What I like about stats is it shows me which web page the visitors come from.  I am not interested in your on-line activities and I do not check where you come from routinely.  I only check it when I got a hike in the number of visitors.  It means someone mentioned my blog somewhere with the link to me.  In this way I now know Russian temari group talk about thimbles as well as temari and British embroidery people had a first view of Japanese thimbles. 

The other features of the stats I like is keyword analysis.  The majority is my blog name and my name, with Japanese thimbles and how to make thimbles but sometime I got something that makes me smile, like "when did photo sharing first started".   It may not have meant "my" photo sharing but someone tried search with that keyword and ended up to my blog.  Amazing.  It's December 2009, if you are interested by the way.

Peonies in Pink + thimble making mumblings

All these pictures are taken in late April and early May but I did not get around to post them until now.  Probably because of the extra harsh summer last year all the flowers are on the smaller side and less in number, but they are lovely nonetheless.

 

Beverly at How Sweet The Sound is hosting a weekly Pink Saturday and from her web page you can visit a lot of posts in pink.  I wish you all happy pink weekend.

I have received a quick question from Sandi about one of my "how I do" posts.  She left me a comment on the post in question as an anonymous reader so I do not have any means to get back to her except replying here.  Sandi, I am sorry to expose you like this but I really do not have any choice.  Sandi asked for my confirmation if I used a single strand of size 25 perle cotton (like DMC's six strand ones) in the post where I talked about alternatives to silk.  Yes, I did.  A strand of size 25 embroidery floss is close to the size of the silk I use for my thimble making although the cotton perle is very softly twisted that the finished thimble lacks the certain luster of the tightly twisted silk gives.  I would like to wish Sandi happy stitching and hope she would join the photo sharing this month with her new thimbles.

Pat left me a comment on the previous post about her thimbles for April on Flickr.  She showed us two thimbles, one is scales design in lovely pastel rainbow colours, and the other one in brown is called "kanoko" in Japanese.  Textile people would know what kanoko is.  It's a kind of Japanese tie dye design.  The direct translation of kanoko is a baby deer.  The design is said to be resembled the back of the baby deer.  You know, there are spots on the back of Bambi?  By the way is there a designated name for babies of deer, like puppies and cubs?  Anyway her brown thimble is called "kanoko" design. 

I have been trying to assemble a thimble starter kit for you know how long and still not finished yet.  I firstly thought to sell the kit with all the materials apart from scotch tape and machine thread with an instruction booklet for base making and how to stitch two scales design. The booklet contains a lot of photos instructions and the printing cost becomes a problem.  At the moment my draft is A4 30 pages.  One set of 30 pages takes a lot of time with my printer and as I plant to sell it, it's just not practical.  Using copier costs expensive and as my business is very very small, utilizing printing service is out of question.  So I am now leaning to the idea of PDF file so that the customer choose to print it or view it on their PC.  I know not all of the countries use the same size papers.  Does my instruction booklet cause a problem where people do not use A4 size paper? 

I have another idea.  What do you think about on line thimble making courses?  You buy a kit from me and I mail the material and send a PDF file via e-mail.  Then you join the on line group like Yahoo and Google.  You will upload your finished work on the group' photo page and we can have a discussion board over the concern/question/whatever.  I would love to hear your thought.

a quick note ...

This is just a quick note to let you know that I will officially announce the start of the new photo sharing at the later date and that you can start preparing your thimbles now.  I got a cold and haven't been doing very well for over a week.  I have much to tell you about but I am still supposed to be in bed, so off to bed I will go now.  Wish you happy Sunday with your family.  Chloe P.

found something I could do, too

*******

This is my second post today.  If you are visiting for Pink Saturday, please scroll down.  Thank you and wish you happy pink weekend.

*******

I subscribe several (perhaps many) newsletters and one of them told me this morning that a craft organization was collecting tote bags to send to the children in affected area.  The organization, Japan Handcraft Instructors' Association, was asked by its member in the affected area to see if they could collect hand made tote bags for children because they lost almost all the belongings as tsunami hit the area, let alone school bags. 

As soon as I read it, I started digging in my hoard of fabric.  The one I used for the bag is something I have been saving for something special as it was the last of the bolt at the store and I was told that it had been discontinued so no more was available.  I found it's a perfect occasion to use up one of my most coveted fabric.  The instruction given on the web page along with the specification looked easy enough so I took out my machine and started sewing.  It took me five hours to finish because, as I told you several times, I am not very good at machine sewing.  It didn't help that the bag has to be made of quited fabric and I didn't have ready-quited fabric at hand.  Over all, I am quite satisfied with the finished bag and I hope the new owner would like it, too.

The organization is one of the government registered organization and reliable one, I believe, to entrust my bag to deliver to the children in the coastal area in Fukushima.  The nuclear complex is focused at the moment but the area was also affected by tsunami.  Tsunami was the reason why we have problems at the power plant, to start with.  If you would like to join to make bags to the children, here is a link to the details.  The problem is that their English page tells you nothing about the project but the general information of the organization and their activities.  The closing date to receive bags is 15th April and it won't give you much time to send them from abroad, I am afraid, and there is an issue regarding tax/duty.  I know there are several readers who live in Japan.  Perhaps some of you could participate in the programme I am hoping.

Thusday mumbling

It has been a week since the disaster.  In addition to the earthquakes and subsequent tsunami, we are now facing a nuclear disaster, too.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the kind words and efforts to help Japan.  We really appreciate it.

I have been thinking.  About many things.  I am watching the disaster reports on TV, just as you do who live outside Japan, from the safe distance and I feel guilty.  The guilt over surviving, not suffering, not doing enough, not being able to do more.  We are heavily discouraged to send stuff to the suffering areas individually.  So all we can do is donating money and there is a limit a person can donate and it makes me depressed.  The city halls and relief agencies, as well as TV networks, are collecting monetary donation and scholarships for orphans are expanding, but these efforts are not enough. 

The support efforts from overseas are reported here and we all feel good, that we are not alone.  The morale support is also vital in case of disaster as well as monetary support.  The supporting messages/articles on the paper as well as individual prayer on the message board help us keep going.  And then, jokes and malicious comments appeared, too.  They hurt us tremendously however, we all believe in the freedom of speech in Japan, so I exercise my right and say that it shows the person's bad taste and insensitivities.  In Japan everything has its time and place.  Whatever the personal belief is, it's not time, or place, to express it now, so just shut up and later when everything resumed normal then start talking, is the general opinion I believe. 

I have been wondering what I can do.

Friday mumblilng

I have finally finished the flower basket.  You may be wondering about the smudge at the bottom.  It is not a stain.  I put the smudge there to make my signing stitch obscure.  Yes, a signing stitch.  We sign the embroidery in the same way we sign the calligraphy in Japan.

Thank you for your kind welcome back comments and e-mails.  I am still trying to catch up with the correspondence and will take some more time to get back to you.  As for the monthly challenge idea, I am not entirely sure if it works, but I have decided I will give it a try, at least once.  The main concern is that restricting to one design may result in excluding some people who are not up to the design.  I thought about it for a few days and I realized that I was not sure how exactly the monthly challenge works.  Is it like "can you figure it out?" and I only give you the finished one and the participants will try to see if they could reproduce the design by themselves, or I choose the design and give the instruction, too?  I need more of your opinions here.

Some of you may remember that I considered changing the currency at my shop at Etsy.  The foreign currency exchange rate is relatively stable at the moment but it may fluctuate drastically again without warning and setting the currency at the shop as the denomination of the country I live can save the trouble of repricing the merchandise whenever the currency rate fluctuates, or rather save me from feeling guilt by increasing the price.  So, finally I have went ahead and changed it to Japanese Yen.  At a glance it looks the same as before, but once you opened the product page, the price is shown in YEN than US Dollars.  I apologize for the inconvenience caused but I have to protect myself you understand.

Lastly, as you may have already known, we were hit by the big earthquake and tsunami this afternoon.  The most affected area is north-east of Japan and luckily the area we live are not affected and all my family are safe.  I have been watching TV from the moment the earthquake hit and the damage toll just keeps increasing. ... ... ...  The earthquake itself was big with a lot of aftershocks, but it is tsunami that is devastating.  Please note that I am speaking in the present tense.  Tsunami is still rushing to the Northern coasts, over 10meters high.  It may take a few days until we knew the final number, but it looks grim even now... ... ...

on-line advertisement

The web service which offers something free, either blog or social network, or anything, got advertisements.  Do you pay attention to them?

I generally do not.  However, the two advertisements caught my eyes the other day.

One was on-line printing service offering free business cards printing.  I have always wanted nice business cards for my shop so I decided to investigate it.  It turned out that "free" is for the basic grade paper and I still had to pay for the processing fee.  I was not sure if you could still call it free, but I was intrigued enough to look further, and found out that with a small fee I could custom order the cards and look what I got;

The other was for photo books which offered limited time discount.  Naturally, I had a lot of photographs which I should have already dealt with.  So here are my first photo books:

(There are two because the second one was for my companion)



(We had a dim sum making class at the hotel kitchen during our stay)

February is not too bad when ...

As mild as it is in Japan, February is still the coldest month. The day is getting longer and the sky looks (sometimes) cheerful and you can almost feel spring being there, and I am well aware that there are a lot of places where people are suffering from a very cold weather, including heavy snow, yet I feel cold down here.

In addition to my "seven days of specialness swap" earlier this month, I have got wonderful surprisings this month, too. The first one was from the last month's winner of Share Your Thimble photo sharing, Kat in Texas, also known as Shidepro. She sent me a box full of embroidery floss. When she responded to her winning notification she asked me if I was interested in trying out the bulky nylon thread she used. When mailman came to my door and handed me a box from overseas sometime later on Sunday morning, being Sunday means no mail delivery unless it's express service in Japan, I was puzzled. Surely I would remember if I bought something from overseas which comes by express airmail. Would I really? I knew I was expecting sample thread from Kat but surely it would be in a normal size envelope and not in a box. Oh, was I wrong. Inside the box there are beautifully carded thread, not only the bulky nylon, but Kat also gave me colourful samples of size 8 perle cotton.

I mentioned that I have never actually seen a size 8 floss, she kindly gave me an opportunity to try them out. The problem is, I am kind of a pack rat, stashing everything and not actually using them. I have pledged that I use (hopeful) many of my hoardings this year and actually make something using them (have you seen my pair of curtains in the last post? I am really proud of my self that I have been keeping my promise - so far), I might decide to use them. But you know, using up thread stash is difficult for me. They are beautiful as they are and I don't want to mess them up. I also have variegated floss from Julie as one of the 7 days swap. I am afraid my thread stash may not be reduced anytime soon.

Then the following day I received a lovely collection of sample floss from Kat, I got this from Jane. She created a fabric book back in last autumn, and each page of the book represented the alphabets. She chose a quilt for Q with nine patch quilt featured on the page and challenged her blog readers how many squares we could find in the page and luckily I won the prize. I have seen many temari before, all of them in the display case at the shops, but this is the first one I actually hold in my hand, let alone own it. For those of you who are not familiar with temari, it's a (obviously) ball; direct translation is a "hand ball", as opposed to a "foot ball". There was a foot ball game played by noblemen more than a thousand years or so ago but the game and the ball were not the one we are familiar with today, not soccer, rugby, or American football. Temari has gone back to a few hundred years I believe and made of a fabric/paper/thread core ball covered by thread wrapped around to form a sphere then embroidered on a surface. Not very bouncing but it was a girls' indoor toy. Today, nobody actually play with them but to display and admire its beauty. I admire mine everyday.

February is not bad at all, not at all, in deed.