Imabari

I had every intention, dear Kaizer Peeps, of posting about appliques and other bits of sewing miscellanea.  But there are more than a few colorful expressions my dad has for intentions, opinions, and the like, so I won’t bore you with what I intended to do.  (And I’ll spare you the gritty details on said expressions.)  The long and the short of it is this – I got out of town over the long weekend!

Mr. Kaizer and I headed down to Imabari in Ehime prefecture on the island of Shikoku to visit some friends.  (If I were a more clever blogger, and if it wasn’t currently past 11 pm, I would insert a fancy-shmancy link to a Google Map.  But no such luck today.)  Our friends live very near the ocean in this lovely town rich in maritime history.  It also has a castle.  And who doesn’t love a castle?  (This particular castle had historic samurai suits of armor.  Totally cool, but I know that if one of those guys came running at me with a sword that I would probably definitely make a stinky mess in my lil’ ‘ol panties…but I digress.)

Despite the awesomeness of the castle, we were there to visit our delightful Kaizer Kompadres – the castle was just a bonus.  M & Y used to live in our neighborhood in Tokyo before moving to Imabari nearly one year ago.  But the terrible part was that we hadn’t seen them since they moved.  *sniffle!

We had fun visiting historic sites and all, but the best part of the vacation was definitely spending time with M & Y.  They’re wonderful people!

Can’t wait to see them again soon!

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Felt Flurry

Yesterday I promised to let you know what I had accomplished over the weekend.  But here’s the kicker – I remembered and I’m actually doing it.  Yay for small victories!

All I can say about the weekend is that it was a flurry of felt for me.  I was working away on appliques for the childrens’ tote bags (for Ueda Joint) and got quite a lot accomplished.  Before I show you pictures, though, I have to apologize.  Mr. Kaizer took off to Osaka this morning and took the camera with him, leaving me the little digital point and shoot.  It’s still a good camera, but it was just plain dark when I took these shots.  There’s only so much mixed indoor lighting and a little flash can do for the subject of a photo – after that it’s just a terrible shot.  So, I’m sorry for the dark, far from stellar photos of the appliques.  I promise to post better pictures when I can.

First, I finished up the last little bits of embroidery on the Hello Kitties.  The eyes and nose are outlined in a backstitch with a satin stitch filling in the eyes.  I have started making the bows out of ribbon, but those are best added after the kitty has been machine stitched onto the outside of the bag.  Although only two are pictured here, I actually made 12 of these things.  I had made some of these before, so there were no surprises.

Now I wanted to make some more of the dinosaurs, but Yuzawaya stores all over Tokyo were out of the fabric.  I had to find something new, and I finally settled on this cute frog fabric.  The winking frog was the one I liked most, so I decided to make him into the applique for this particular bag.  He is about the same size as the Hello Kitty.  Instead of embroidering everything on this one, though, I got smart and cut out felt.  Much easier.  And easier is good, since I made 16 of these.  Yep.  Sixteen. Yowza.  I found out a lot about cutting very thin strips of felt while working on these guys.  Specifically, I learned that it’s tedious and I don’t like doing it.  But then I considered the amount of time each one would have taken to individually embroider and I realize my decision was probably for the best.

Only two more appliques to make, and I will be working on those this weekend.  Hopefully then I’ll be finished with the felt for a while.

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Kompadre Krafting

This weekend was a whirlwind of crafting activity (from which I am just now recovering), and I was joined in my adventures by my lovely creative kompadre, L.  Mr. Kaizer was gone for most of Sunday afternoon, so L and I were able to spread out in the dining room and get down to business with some serious cutting and sewing.  L and her boyfriend K (the charming duo with the silk screening setup) will be sharing a booth with us at Ueda Joint.  Aside from producing some stellar t-shirts for the event, L had some great ideas for accessories – you’ll have to wait if you want to hear more about the specifics of what she’s creating.

I do have to show you a little bit, though.  I mean, look at the colors she is using.  They’re fantastic.  Plus, she is using ricrac.  Is it possible that a project with ricrac in it won’t turn out well?  I doubt it.

The thing that really gets me, though is that she found all her wonderful fabrics at Yuzawaya.  It’s the same store I go to.  It’s not the same branch, but the idea with national chains is that you can find the same things at any location.  That’s kind of how they work.  But the thing is, I’ve either never seen the fabrics she is using, or I’ve seen them but walked right past them.  It really is remarkable how easily we can get sucked in to routine in a store and stop seeing the boundless possibilities behind everything.  At what point did I stop looking upon the contents of Yuzawaya as a source of inspiration and start to view it as an obstacle course to be navigated while in pursuit of one specific item?

I think there is only one solution to this: I must return to Yuzawaya when I do not have a specific project I am working on and just spend half a day wandering around.  The difficulty, of course, comes from trying to find a time when I have half a day to kill and no projects in the works.

Getting to see all of L’s goodies did remind me of a wise decision I had made many months ago – avoid the ribbon and trim section of the store.  When it comes to things this lovely I have absolutely zero self control.  L wisely kept her marvelous ribbons and laces out of sight, but I did manage to ogle this ribbon as it was being sewn onto a piece of fabric during the early stages of product assembly.  Absolutely wonderful.

Tomorrow I should have pictures of my own progress to share with you.  Until then:

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Goodies

Check out what Mr. Kaizer had for me when I came home from work today.  Five mini loaf pans, a liquid measuring cup, a strainer, a pastry cutter, and a sifter.  He just picked them up for me while he was out and about in the city.  So sweet of him!

But I think it’s his way of asking politely for more banana bread.

Scones & Lemon Curd

The question this Sunday was, what to bake?  After an apple pie and banana bread, the only other thing I really felt comfortable making was cookies.  My mom is a cookie-baking fiend.  Making eight different types of cookies for Christmas is pretty standard.  But when it came to other baked goods, they were almost never from scratch (except Grandma’s banana bread, of course).  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.  I think we have always been cookies and ice cream people.  I’m just saying that coming from a house that didn’t have a springform pan or a bundt pan, trying to navigate the world of baking is a little unnerving.  After just two recipes, I feel like I’m totally flying blind.  So what to try next?

Cookies was the obvious choice.  I’ve helped my mom make so many batches of them, it seems like the logical step – not to mention an easy one.  Ok, if you don’t count eating a bunch of raw dough as helping, I’ve probably actually helped about a dozen times.  The problem was that cookies seemed too easy, too familiar.  I mentioned in my very first post that I’m trying to do more things that scare me.  Well, baking anything besides an apple pie, banana bread, or cookies definitely scares me.  So I decided to try scones.

Ingredients for Lemon Curd

I know there are tons of recipes out there for scones with cranberries or chocolate in them, but what about just plain scones?  And what can you have with a scone besides jam so you can actually swallow it?  (I think every scone I’d ever had up to this point had been painfully dry.)  While looking for recipes, I found the answer.  Lemon curd!  Ok, I had never had it before.  But so many people raved about it, that I figured there must be something to it.  And I did a bit more reading and found out that It was a component of the filling used in fruit tarts.  So being able to make lemon curd couldn’t be a bad thing.

I prepped all my ingredients because I wasn’t sure how quickly the process would go once it started.  I’m glad I did – I didn’t stop stirring the entire time.  The only thing I didn’t do was zest the lemon.  But Mr. Kaizer, sweetheart that he is, did it for me.  As soon as it went in to the fridge, I cleaned up and started making the dough for the scones.  Since I have  never seen buttermilk for sale in Japan, I had to make my own following the instructions from the scone recipe.  It worked beautifully.

Ready for the oven!

I was not prepared for how sticky the scone dough was.  I was convinced I had done something wrong.  I mean, the recipe just said to cut the rolled out dough into wedges and to give it an egg wash.  It didn’t say the dough would stick to the knife like superglue!  I did what I could, though, and then shoved it all in the oven in the hopes that it would turn out ok.

After 20 minutes, I sprinkled the scones with powdered sugar and put them back in the oven with the broiler on.  But I had to take them out before the sugar was able to crystallize over the entire surface because the tops were getting too dark.  But aside from the tops being a bit darker than I wanted, they were perfection.  I mean, just look at the picture at the top and try saying no to it.  Cannot be done, my friends.  As for the lemon curd, holy awesomeness, Batman!  Totally amazing stuff.  I don’t know how I lived my life thus far without it.  If you have never had it, you must make some.

Both of these recipes will be printed out and stuffed into the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Dear Betty already has a lemon curd recipe, but hers calls for a lot more lemon juice.  I’m not overly fond of citrus, so I opted for the Joy of Baking recipe instead.  (When in doubt, use the recipe that calls for more sugar.)  The plain scones were fantastic for allowing the flavor of the lemon curd to really shine.  And I suspect that if I take them out of the oven sooner they will be the best tasting, least oh-my-gosh-it’s-so-dry scones ever.

Any suggestions for what to make next Sunday?

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Independence Day

I hope you all had a wonderful July 4.  We had a fantastic time celebrating with our Kaizer Kompadres and the holy trinity of Independence Day: beer, barbecue, and fireworks.  We also had some creative time as our dear hosts got their silk screening setup going for the first time.

Shortly after we arrived at our Kompadres’ house, they started turning the bathroom into a darkroom.  Screens have to be pre-coated with a light sensitive cream (but you can also buy them pre-treated, which was the case here).  The screens are then exposed to light – where the cream comes in contact with light, it solidifies.  The rest is then washed out and presto, you’ve got your silk screen.  This particular screen was a tester for determining just how long it should be exposed to light, hence the three pairs of owls.

Just after the the pork was injected with maple syrup (I cannot even  begin to tell you how amazing it tasted) there was a test run on a piece of paper.  It came out beautifully and there was much rejoicing in the land.  Many more ideas have begun to flood our little brains as we consider the full possibility of this new medium.  Our Kompadre hosts are extremely talented, and I can promise you that you will be seeing more of this.

After the initial success of the silk screening, it was back outside to enjoy the perfect weather while the food was expertly cooked by a bevy of barbecue masters.  I don’t know why guys always have to barbecue by group consensus, but as long as it tastes as awesome as it did on Saturday I’m 100% ok with it.  There was pork injected with maple syrup, shrimp skewers in a super spicy Thai sauce, marinated chicken, corn on the cob, and an absolutely amazing potato salad.

I got up early in the morning on Saturday to make a loaf of Grandma’s banana bread to take along.  It was extremely popular, even with the two Brits who I don’t think had ever had banana bread before and were reluctant to try it because they thought it would have a super banana-y flavor.  And yes, it was a multicultural Independence Day: 4 Americans, 2 Brits, 1 Aussie, and 1 Japanese Kompadre.  We also shouted lines from the Declaration of Independence at our British friends as thought they were official representatives of the British Crown:

“Please pass the potato salad.”

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people!  Oh, sorry.  Here you go.”

I’m kidding.  But we did steal their tea and dump it down the drain (we’re too far away from a harbor of any kind).  I’m kidding again!  They are wonderful Kompadres and we thoroughly enjoyed sharing the day with them.

What about the fireworks?  I was extremely excited about this part of the day.  When I was seven years old, my family moved to a different state.  It was a move from a place where fireworks were legal to one where they are not.  So while I remembered the joys of shopping for fireworks with my Dad and lighting them in front of my house as a kid (while the entire rest of the neighborhood did the same), it was something I was unable to do for a VERY long time.  Unfortunately, the Kompadres’ neighbor was less than thrilled about a bottle rocket being set off at 9:30 at night, so we were only able to light one.  But it was still fun.  We’ll just have to save the fireworks for the next Japanese holiday.

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Progress!

I don’t intentionally write a bunch of posts all at once.  Sometimes it just kind of happens that way.  I am trying to do a bit of crafting every day with fairly regular blog posts, but some days I’m just so darn tired that I don’t have the energy to do anything except convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.  You see, I also work.  A lot.  Like 60 hours a week a lot.  So sometimes there will be a few days without any posts and others there will be multiple posts – I do what I can, when I can.  Fair warning!

So this picture has been languishing on my hard drive for about five days now.  As you can see, we’ve been making serious progress with inventory for Ueda Joint!  Since this picture was taken the stack has nearly doubled in size. We now have the exteriors of 185 aroma healing pillows just waiting for their insides.  I’ll be sure to post more pictures as progress is made.

After all that machine sewing in one sitting, I felt an overwhelming urge to do some hand sewing.  So I made a little felt dinosaur applique.  Isn’t he cute?  I might need to make a few more of these guys…

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

Care Package

Remember when you went to summer sleepaway camp and Mom would send you care packages?  Well, I don’t because I never went to sleepaway camp.  But if I had, I’m sure my mom’s care packages would have been the awesome-est (yes, I am aware that “awesome-est” isn’t a word, but a new one had to be created to describe just how hard my mom’s care packages would rock).  A lot of places won’t ship internationally and a lot of others charge a small fortune for it.  So Mom collects all the stuff we order, packages it all up, and then mails it over here.  Both my mom and Mr. Kaizer’s mom do this for us.  Why?  Cuz moms, pretty universally, are amazing.  Our moms more so than others.

In addition to two books, a bunch of hair product that you can’t buy in Japan (and the only thing that stops my curly hair from looking like I stuck a fork in a light socket), a replacement ipod charger, and a stick blender, we received a few really awesome goodies.

Did you see all that ricrac?  Nine colors, five yards of each color.  What am I going to do with it?  Not a clue!  But it was on sale and I’m sure I’ll think of something.  I look at it this way: there are so many stash-busting projects out there that totally rock.  How can you do them if you don’t have a stash to bust?  I’m sure that one day I’ll figure out what to do with all of it.

Then there were a couple of surprise gifts.  For me, a cute bookmark with green glass decorating the end, cool black and white bobbie pins, and two mini totes.  I think the mini totes would make adorable gift bags, don’t you?  And for Mr. Kaizer, two hats.  Wild, crazy, funky hats.  Just his style.  He’s thrilled.  And while I think they’re pretty cool, I still cringe a little when I think about the amont of attention he receives when out in public while wearing them.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some goodies to play with!

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

You might want to know…

There is a giveaway going on over at Bee In My Bonnet you might be interested in.  I know I am!

The kit up for grabs is all the materials needed for making a batch of vintage day of the week dishcloths. It also includes the winner’s choice of four vintage iron-on patterns.  Keeping my fingers crossed!

I remember the dishcloths my grandmother hand embroidered and how much they fascinated me as a kid.  They were what first got me interested in embroidery (at the ripe old age of 6).  I used to sit on the floor in my room on rainy days and stitch on paper plates hoping that some day I could make something half as wonderful.

I think I am going to add a project like this to my to-do list.  If anyone knows an online store selling vintage embroidery patterns, please let me know!

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer