Because of earlier failures, I thought for a long time I didn't have what it took to keep a happy, healthy succulent plant indoors. But that was dumb. On a sunny windowsill, nothing could be easier to maintain. Watering every week or two? Bright, filtered light? Done and done.

Small succulent plants are cheap, but plant containers are not, so when I thought about expanding my windowsill garden to the kitchen, I started looking around for inexpensive containers I could modify into planters. The answer: bread pans! Nearly every thrift store has a few of them, priced at less than a dollar. They have a clean, simple shape and just need a few drainage holes added. Here's what I did to turn my 59-cent bread pan into a succulent planter.

Materials needed:

Bread pan (look for a thin pan made from a material that will not rust, as rust will affect the soil's pH)
Succulents
Potting soil formulated for cactus or succulents
Hammer
Awl or nail plus something to widen the holes (like an old screwdriver)
Kitten (to inspect your work -- optional)

Use the hammer and awl/nail to poke evenly-space drainage holes in the bottom of the bread pan. If using a nail, widen the holes by pushing in an old screwdriver. If your pan is made out of the same material as mine, it should be very easy to do this.

Allow kitten to inspect the drainage holes. If everything is up to code, proceed to potting the succulents.

Gently remove the plants from their pots and place in the bread pan. Fill the pan with the soil, water lightly and you're done! Succulents like bright, filtered sunlight, good air circulation and a watering once every week or two. (Better to water too little than too much.)

The succulents in my pot are Baby Toes, Blue Elf aloe and something else that didn't have a cute and catchy name. They seem happy so far! (Now that the plants are out of reach, however, the kitten is less than thrilled.)

My birthday was celebrated with my favorite people in Japan at Warung Phuan, my favorite Thai restaurant in Nagoya. It's run by the nicest couple and the place is so small and cozy that I always feel like I'm hanging out in a comfortable living room somewhere rather than at a restaurant. But what's with the scary picture above, you ask? It's a bottle of snake-infused liquor I was strongly discouraged from allowed to taste. It tasted...really horrible. But the lizard liquor and the ants were okay!

(Note to anyone living in the Nagoya area and considering this restaurant: these are not usual menu items. The rest of their food is totally normal and really tasty-- especially the som tam!)

And as a birthday gift to myself, I made another skirt from Sew What Skirts, this time a drawstring seersucker number with an appliquéd anchor. Actually, it was less of a gift to myself and more a necessary way to cut down on the amount of fabric I'll have to mail back when I move. Although I haven't yet perfected my ideal skirt pattern and buttonholes and I don't seem to agree, I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out.

Sorry for the infrequent posting lately. Believe me, a week without Candy Friday hurts me more than it hurts you. Lately I've just found myself gripped in the kind of procrastinating terror only an imminent move across the ocean and complete life change can bring. I've observed a pattern in my procrastination, when comparing this move to my original move to Japan two years ago, a pattern involving crafting while watching an entire TV series on DVD, instead of organizing, packing or doing other more useful activities. I'm calling it Forthcoming Upheaval Procraftination, or F-UP for short.

So yeah, there's been a lot of Alias and Orangina knitting and general F-UP behavior around here lately.

Two summers ago, it was actually much worse. Not only was I terrified about packing up and moving my entire life to an unknown place, I was also dealing with leaving Rob, a.k.a. Captain Tenderheart, a.k.a. the Person Whose Absence Drains Joy From My Life. So in the final month before my departure, I suddenly decided one day to pick up embroidery, a hobby abandoned for the previous two years, and make him a pillow with Darth Vader's head on it. For hours and hours every day, I worked on the pillow while re-watching every existent episode of The Office (UK version) with my sister, who had never seen it before.

I felt calm, chain-stitching and grimacing along with my sister at David Brent's awkward antics. I didn't have to worry about what I needed to bring, what I would forget, what would be useless, and what I would be missing. Who I would be missing. I forgot to dwell on the possibility of Rob not being there when I returned, of him finding someone else, wondering if I was gambling away the greatest person I had ever known.

He loved the pillow, of course. What self-respecting Stars Wars fan with a mild interest in stylish interior design wouldn't? He also hugged it fiercely and pretty much constantly during the first several months I was away -- sorry, honey, the secret of your softheartedness is out! -- which led to me musing it must have soaked up so much love it was like a sodden sponge of super-love. I'm halfway convinced that's how it survived a fire.

And here we are. T-minus six and a half weeks until the Pacific no longer separates us and somehow we are still as strong as ever. Maybe even stronger. It's hard to feel regret for those hours spent making something for the one I love the best rather than, say, sorting old bank records. Maybe it's okay to F-UP once in awhile, when you really need to.

(This entry has a very special soundtrack. Please open this link in a new tab or window and listen along as you read.)

On Saturday my friend Mami had a birthday party at a small bar in Gifu and I decided to sew her a little something as a gift. A few hours before the party, I flipped through a recent issue (Vol. 27) of Cotton & Paint and saw a fairly easy-looking tissue holder with a pocket for a handkerchief.

Both tissue and handkerchiefs are necessities in Japan, as public restrooms sometimes don't provide toilet paper and rarely provide paper towels for drying your hands. (And carrying a hankie around means less waste. Mottainai!)

I didn't have time to embroider anything complex, so I settled for a simple cross-stitched "M." The fabrics are all Japanese cottons and I especially love the blue floral print. The ribbon was a 100-yen store find.

Mami seemed surprised and happy to receive a handmade gift, but honestly, not as happy as she looked when a huge group of us surrounded her and sang along with Fannypack: "Hey Mami! You sexy! Hey Mami! You beautiful!"*

Hey Mami! It's true!

* I thought I had never heard this song until Saturday, but I realized tonight that it was featured in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which I think demonstrates how completely I have tried to banish that movie from my memory.

Summer is approaching and I'm itching for more skirts. For me, the perfect summer skirt is cotton, A-line, in a cute print that matches various tops, not too tight at the waist and definitely not frumpy. Most of the time, I find my Perfect Summer Skirts at thrift stores, but with the dearth of affordable second-hand clothes in Japan alongside the proliferation of cute fabrics, I decided it was time to try my hand at sewing my own skirts.

Despite its cheesy name (and does anyone else feel like that should be a question mark instead of an exclamation point?), Sew What! Skirts is exactly the kind of how-to book I needed. It takes you step-by-step through the process of drafting a pattern for and constructing a skirt, in a tone that is casual without being cloying and detailed but not overwhelming. While I could have just bought a couple simple skirt patterns and made a lot of versions of the same two or three skirts, it wouldn't have been nearly as flexible or creative as having the basic formulas for many different skirt elements which I can put together any way I like. Elastic waist, drawstring, wrap or zippered? One ruffle or five? There are guidelines for making nearly any skirt style you can imagine and recommendations for tailoring patterns to your personal preferences.

Not that I'm at the ruffles and zippers stage yet. My sewing experience up to this point had been limited to totebags, pillows, and an apron for my gentleman. For my first skirt, I wanted a basic elastic-waist, A-line skirt made of a light cotton, the kind of thing that would be comfortable to wear around the house on sticky summer nights, but attractive enough to wear out of the house as well. The seersucker fabric printed with flowers and leaves I bought while on a fabric-buying binge last weekend seemed perfect. With all the steps carefully laid out for me, I had no problem putting everything together and only made a mistake in the hemline curve of my pattern, which I was able to fix without incident.

The finished skirt isn't perfect, but it's just what I was looking for, and I know what I need to do to make the next one even better. I'm actually kind of looking forward to conquering my first zipper. My only complaint about the book is the artfully out-of-focus pictures used for a lot of the finished skirts, which made me feel like there might be something weird about the way they actually fit. There are clear (but much smaller) pictures of the skirts on a dummy, but I would have liked to see the skirts out and about and not uselessly blurry. Also, a few of the skirt styles are definitely not for me -- I'm not a organdy-over-brocade kind of girl -- but all the patterns are so flexible, it seems simple to change them into something that doesn't remind me of eighth grade dances. Additionally, if you're a super-experienced seamstress, this book is probably too basic for you, but it is perfect for a beginning or intermediate sewer addicted to skirts like me.

(If you do buy the book, be sure to join in on the Sew What! Skirts sewalong on Flickr.)

Every year my town holds a festival with a vaguely Earth-Day-ish theme, with plants and homegrown vegetables for sale, reusable canvas bags kids can decorate, and an old-Japanese-lady version of a church rummage sale. I call it The Ogaki Hippie Festival. Last year's festival was packed with college-age kids in tie-dyed clothes, swaying to the tunes of the Phish-type band playing in the middle of the park, an unexpected sight in the midst of my rather staid, decidedly unhip(pie) town. I returned this year with my friend Liz in search of more cheap potted plants, yummy Indian food and dorodango.

Dorodango are perfectly smooth and shiny balls of mud, surprisingly beautiful objects originally made by Japanese children on the playground which have gained popularity recently both in Japan and the United States. The retired Japanese man I tutor remembers making them when he was small, and tells me he and his friends used to throw them when they were done, smashing to bits what must have taken hours to make. I'm sure there is a haiku about the fleeting nature of life to be found in there somewhere. Liz and I just wanted some super-shiny mud balls of our own.

Under an open tent, a glowering old man and a cheerful old lady presided over several tubs of dirt and a bucket of thick mud, each one surrounded by groups of small children rubbing, dusting and patting the growing balls of dirt in their hands. After snapping a few pictures, we asked the cheerful woman if we could try and she cheerfully urged two clumps of mud into our hands, demonstrating how to squeeeeeze the water out of the clump while shaping it into something roughly spherical. We squeezed and squeezed. "Dō desu ka?" we asked. "Chotto..." she said, and proceeded to squeeze for us. This exchange roughly translates to: "How's this?" "Um, yeah, no."

Step one: cut a hole in the box squeeze the mud.

After a proper squeezing by strong granny hands, our mud balls were dense and ready for the dirt. She led us over to a tub and we squatted next to a cool dad sporting a track jacket and hip glasses. He and the old woman attempted to pool their collective knowledge of English and instruct us on the next steps. From what we gathered, we were to sprinkle dirt on the balls and transfer them from hand to hand gently. Gently. We sprinkled. We transfered. The balls cracked. Suddenly, the glowering old man came barreling out of nowhere, yelling at us in Japanese and shaking his mane of gray hair vigorously. The cool dad translated for us: "Squeeze, no!"

But what to do about the cracks already present? Wasn't squeezing the only answer? Judging from the disapproving lines creasing the face of Dorodango-sensei, apparently not. Liz's ball was rescued by a friendly young Japanese mom, while I continued to gently sprinkle and transfer, sprinkle and transfer. The cracks began to slowly fade. Liz resumed shaping her now-crack-free ball and, after a period of contemplative sprinkling, yelped. Her fingernail had gouged a tiny divot in the ball. "It looks like it has a bellybutton," she said sadly. My own dorodango was still slightly ridged where the cracks had been. We forged ahead regardless.

Kids and cool dads.

Finally, the cheerful woman decided we were ready for the next step: sifting dirt through a screen, then dipping the palms of our hands into the resulting soft dust and rubbing it into the ball. It was at this point we realized we had unknowingly pledged the rest of our afternoon to the making of dorodango. We had already been at it for an hour and we noticed the people who had been at the stage we were currently at when we arrived were still there, dipping and rubbing, showing no sign of finishing. I overheard Dorodango-sensei telling someone the finished balls on display had taken three hours each to make. I reported this to Liz. We looked at each other, shrugged, and continued to rub.

Having reached this stage without being yelled at again, we were able to relax and observe what was going on around us. Liz was fascinated by a middle-aged man wearing headphones and assiduously working away at his dorodango with nary a smile or sparkle of joy in his eyes. Every time he had to take a break, he would hand the ball to his wife, who stood, patient and still, until he finished eating his snack and handed her the discarded wrapper. She put it in her purse.

I was most interested in watching Dorodango-sensei, the grumpy old man who obviously loved making these mud balls and seemed simultaneously pleased and pained by the kids' attempts at making their own. I saw him patiently help a toddler compress the initial clump of mud and start shaping her own tiny dorodango. I also saw him squeeze his eyes shut when one little girl dropped her ball and it smashed on the grass, like he could physically feel the mud shattering into a thousand irretrievable chunks at her feet. Most of the kids addressed him as "Sensei" and spoke in polite Japanese, except for one short-haired girl who looked to be about eight, who called him "Ojiisan" (Mr. Old Man) and spoke in blunt, casual Japanese. I admired her bravery. The man was intimidating.

Congratulations, little girl. You have made it onto my Kids I Want to Steal list.

After about an hour of polishing, we risked showing our dorodango to him. "Is this okay?" I asked in Japanese. "Mō ganbare," he said. Don't give up yet. But the festival was ending, the other booths packing up and getting ready to go. I noticed some people were putting dirt and the unfinished balls in plastic bags to be finished at home. I also noticed the booth was strictly BYOBag -- "We don't have bags!" Dorodango-sensei barked at a terrified child who dared ask for one. Luckily, we were in the Land of No Public Trash Bins, Not Even At Hippie Festivals, so both Liz and I had plastic bags floating around in our purses, which we dug out gingerly with dirt-encrusted hands.

Clutching our plastic bags of dirt and mud balls, we made for a nearby water fountain and attempted to rinse off and brush away the dust covering our hands, clothes, hair and shoes. Did I mention it's really windy in my town? And that some kids thought it funny to toss the dirt into the air? And that my once-black shoes had become a dull gray? Then we went back to my place to finish our dorodango in style, not crouched in the dirt and dust, but sitting on chairs on my balcony, sipping cold beers, polishing until the sun went down. Liz's ended up beautifully shiny, nearly as nice as the display dorodango we saw, but mine somehow ended up dull and slightly pitted from its journey in the plastic bag, which had been slightly wet. I was glad Dorodango-sensei wasn't there to see my pitiful first attempt.

This is not my beautiful dorodango.

We then contemplated throwing the balls over the edge of my balcony. Life is fleeting and so are dorodango -- but not when you spend three hours of your life making one. Maybe after I make the next one, I'll throw the first one against a wall somewhere.

(Updated to add: If you are interested in making your own dorodango but don't have a Dorodango-sensei nearby, My Little Mochi looked up some resources and CRAFT:03 has a how-to article. Perhaps you can convince a friend or relative to don a gray wig and yell at you sporadically for the full Japanese dorodango experience.)

Last week was Golden Week, a gloriously long (almost) week of holidays when many people in Japan travel and my town empties out. It was mostly sunny and warm and very very quiet. I used Monday to make a patchwork scarf for spring. The nights are cool enough to leave my bare neck chilly, but wool weather is long over. I've been seeing light cotton scarves everywhere and I can't decide if they are a trend this year or I've only been noticing them because I wanted one. But I've been noticing them. And I wanted one.

The main fabrics I chose were two light cottons sold on narrow rolls and often used for children's pajamas, one in a kitchen-themed print and the other printed with peas. I added some small pieces of other cottons and linens I had lying around. Before buying any more fabric, I'm trying to make a few things with what I already have -- a resolution made much more difficult by the trip I took to Otsukaya on Thursday. (But I didn't buy anything, mainly because I was starving and too cranky to bother choosing just one or two things from the piles and piles of appealing summer fabric. This has led me to the conclusion that craft-shopping, unlike grocery shopping, is best done on an empty stomach, if you are trying to keep resolutions about not splurging.)

The scarf is soft and light and provides just enough neck warmth for rainy spring days. No more enviously eyeing boys decked out in pastel cotton scarves and canvas blazers. Hooray!

Saturday was Girls' Day in Japan and I celebrated by making my most elaborate doll to date. This is the Sagi Musume (Heron Maiden) doll, modeled after the main character of a classic Japanese dance about a heron that transforms into a woman and falls in love with a man who does not return her love. It has been most famously performed by the great onnagata (female impersonator) Kabuki actor, Tamasaburo Bando.

This is without a doubt my favorite doll so far. I love the flowers in her hair and the fabric-like softness of her kimono. I also like the white hat, which somehow reminds me of both a wedding veil and a plastic shopping bag. Everything about her seems soft and draping and a little sad.

I like her even more after watching a video of Tamasaburo Bando performing Sagi Musume while wearing the costume this doll is based on. Her long sleeves are like wings, I see now, and the flashes of red at her sleeves and the hem of her kimono are like the bright underfeathers birds flash when shaking off rain or snow. The video is ten minutes long, but worth it, especially for the latter half, when he (she?) closes the umbrella and does a series of eerie, bird-like dances.

I finally had the time and motivation to sit down with my sewing machine this weekend and make something with all that cute fabric I bought. Ignoring all the creative suggestions you gave me, I chose to instead make an unexciting-but-useful totebag with the postage-stamp canvas.

It does have one not-so-boring detail: a removable inner pocket that I can use on other pocketless totebags. (I despise having to dig around in a giant bag for my lip gloss.) The ties are made with ribbon I bought at the 100-yen store. I can't wait to use this bag all the time once the weather warms up. For now, my bulky winter coat makes totebag-toting kind of annoying.

You may have noticed Giant Jeans Parlor's new Lunar New Year look! Please excuse any weirdness or ugliness for the next week or so; I'm slowly working my way through all the little things that have to be fixed.

On Saturday I headed out to Seki with a bunch of other foreigners, to shop for washi (handmade Japanese paper) and learn how to make origami umbrellas from Chisako, the coolest paper-doll-making teacher in Japan. (Remember her? She taught me how to make this doll and this doll.) After that, we'd learn how to make sushi from her husband, in celebration of Setsubun.

But first...the paper. Oh, the paper. I'd been to Mino for the annual paper lantern festival, but I'd never stepped into its washi shops, probably because I knew I'd go crazy and want to buy everything. But in the end I only took home two big sheets.

I bought the red paper printed with morning glories in the middle.

After lunch (mentaiko pasta, yum!), we went back to Chisako's and trooped up to her craft room to learn how to make origami umbrellas, which look like they might be easy, but are actually ridiculously difficult. Here is a nice picture of the one I made, which only looks nice because you can't see the creased and ugly bottom side:

Really, it doesn't look so great if you peek under its skirts. But I have hope that future umbrellas will look a little better and am spurred on by the fact that Chisako's 80-year-old mother who has suffered a stroke is able to churn out perfect-looking umbrellas made from old calendars. I wish I was an ancient and awesome Japanese grandmother.

Anyway, after the umbrellas, we gathered in the kitchen to learn how to make inari-zushi and maki-zushi from Chisako's husband. The tradition on Setsubun is to eat an uncut maki-zushi while facing the lucky direction of that particular year. This year it was north-northwest.

I'm facing NNW, rest assured. You can see the scrapes on my hand and my nose from the bicycle fall!

You're also supposed to throw roasted soybeans while chanting, "Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto!" (good luck in, devils out!) which we did right before leaving. Hopefully all this good luck rushing in will help me in my umbrella-making.

(You can see all my pictures from Saturday here.)

Oh, hello there. Where have I been for the last two weeks, you ask? Only in my most favorite place in the world, the much-maligned, traffic-ridden, smog-choked, season-less, crazy, wonderful Los Angeles. I watched about a million movies (actual figure: 14 movies), knit a cabled hat (see below), became addicted to Animal Crossing on my new Nintendo DS Lite (Rob!!!), slept in until 10AM every day and spent some time with friends and family (hi Joanna, Jenn, Kelly, Meg, Sarah, Jon and Therese!). I also ate a lot. But that's nothing new.

One of my favorite Christmas gifts came from my mom -- I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris's hilarious and surprisingly practical guide to entertaining. I would give you quotes from the book about how to comfort grieving gay men and flatter rich uncles, but the gigantic hardcover didn't make the trip with me to Japan. Just trust me that it's good.

I knit a cabled beanie in cream-colored Tweed Bazaar, a cute Japanese yarn, over the course of the trip. I used this pattern, but made it bigger to fit my possibly-gigantic head and tweaked it a bit. I'm not normally a beanie person, but it's really comfortable and I love the yarn, which has little flecks of blue and orange. And it's also my first cabled thing ever!

Now I'm back in Japan, marveling at the impossibly clean, quiet trains and watching my breath puff out in the middle of my impossibly frigid kitchen. Winter as usual. Thank god for my kotatsu and the 24: Season 5 DVDs I just bought.

So this is what became of that Kureyon on my kotatsu: a colorful cloche. Very colorful. In earlier times, I would have been afraid of wearing a hat this aggressively bright, but this is Japan, people. I see boys with crazy blonde hair and girls in the most baffling fashion combinations every day. I can't figure out if I have been so blinded by weird fashion that I now have no taste or I have been so saturated by imaginative fashion that I have moved on to some higher realm, where anything goes and yeah, you totally need a pair of legwarmers to complete that outfit. Either way, I don't mind wearing clownishly bright hats.

So. About the hat. The pattern I used was the one-skein wonder cloche Cirilia devised, but knitted about an inch and a half longer than the pattern suggests, because I have a rather large head with a lot of hair to cover. The flower is based on the Two-Layer Irish Rose, which is a good pattern to have on hand, as it also makes a very cute pin and is a good way to use up bits of nice yarn.

And if I look a little sullen in the first picture, it's only because I took it the morning after the whiskey party. My new hat makes me very happy, I assure you.

One of my dreams has finally come true: I have a knitting group in Japan! What started with just my friend Liz and I knitting together on my couch grew last week into a group of almost fifteen girls meeting at a cafe in Gifu City for a night of...uh, knitting. But also coconut milk tea, lots of fun, a broken beer glass and a waitstaff possibly traumatized by a giant group of foreign girls armed with needles. And we're doing it again this week!

This means I won't have to do so much knitting alone in my living while listening to audiobooks. Not that this is such a bad pastime, mind you. It recently produced two finished winter accessories, just in time for the recent temperature drop: a turquoise merino wool mistake rib scarf and an Artyarns Supermerino Panta. Both the yarn and pattern for the latter were sent to me by the lovely Cirilia and I already have plans for making several more as Christmas gifts. Panta really does live up to all the hype, people. Especially when you have to ride your bike to work on a frigid day and are wearing your hair in a ponytail which would doubtlessly create a weird lump under your winter hat. So what I mean is: when you don't want to sacrifice vanity for comfort.

I made another doll this weekend with Chisako, this time an Okinawa doll. The main difference seems to be the kimono, which is made of paper designed to look like bingata fabric. I love this pattern and the way the turquoise looks with the super-bright orange. As I told the person sitting next to me in class, "I'm trying to blind everyone who looks at this doll."

The other difference is that this doll has a nice upswept hair-do, a headband and a tiara. I love tiaras. Other than that, the folding techniques were the same as last time, only the teacher didn't help me as much, which means this doll is a little less professional-looking than the last, but it feels more like mine.

On Saturday, I finally attended a paper-doll-making class taught by the skilled and extremely kind Chisako, a certified doll-making teacher who lives about an hour away from me. Nearly everyone I know has taken one of her classes and every doll they've ever shown me has looked incredible, so I was excited about the class.

I'm fairly certain this type of doll is called anesama ningyo (big sister dolls), but Wikipedia is not giving me a lot of history on them. Chisako called this the "temari doll" because she is holding a paper replica of a temari, an elaborately thread-wrapped ball used as a toy in olden times.

We got to pick the paper for the kimono and obi and I went for an autumn theme. I haven't done paper crafts in quite awhile, but I think all my sewing and knitting came in handy; I seemed slightly less terrified than everyone else in class about messing the whole thing up. Chisako seemed completely unconcerned about that possibility and the whole process was almost easy. Looking back, I realize it is because she took over the more complicated steps, but since she was always explaining what she was doing, it never felt like she was doing it for us.

The coolest technique was making the hair. We started with a plain, flat piece of black paper and -- through a series of scrunchings with various implements -- transformed it into something soft and striated that looks more like real hair. I keep staring at it, maybe because I wish my hair could do what her hair is doing.

Chisako has a class nearly every month, so I'll definitely be going again. I want to get to the advanced level soon!

So after making the I Collect Fruit totebag for my sister, I decided I was in dire need of my own dark blue, food-themed bag. Thus, the Taiyaki Tabetai totebag was born.

"Taiyaki tabetai!" means "I want to eat taiyaki!" which is pretty much how I feel most of the time. Taiyaki are fish-shaped pancakes stuffed with sweet bean jam, most commonly eaten at festivals. They are kind of like the funnel cakes of the Japanese food world. But better! Think of all the protein!

I debated whether or not I should use Japanese characters or write the Japanese words in Roman letters, but embroidering the foreign characters won out. I mean, I might as well take advantage of the fact that I can write in what amounts to a secret code for most people. Who WOULDN'T choose the secret code? As I was embroidering, I had absolutely no idea if the finished bag would be legible, but -- as I write Japanese with the careful neatness of an eight-year-old -- it ended up being fine.

And yeah, the little tai applique is not sporting a bloody back wound; he's just leaking bean jam. Sweet sweet bean jam....

My youngest sister requested a totebag to use as her school bag when she goes off to college this fall. Being the generous and food-obsessed older sister I am, I promptly agreed, and asked her for a list of her favorite foods. Fruit topped the list, which reminded me of a patch I had seen at a craft store a couple weeks before, a tiny, expensive patch that said simply, "I collect fruit." It was so very tiny and so very expensive, so instead of buying it, I resolved to make something myself using that phrase. For free! (Kind of.)

And it all came together in this tote: fruit-collecting, fruit- and veggie-print fabrics, some quick backstitching and my first foray into interfacing. The sisterly reaction included both the words "insanely" and "cute," so I think we are both pretty happy with how it turned out. I admit to briefly fantasizing that the bag will somehow make her lots of new friends in college, like the cool people who are likely to get along with her will be lured in by the power of the I Collect Fruit tote. But maybe I'm just having one of those delusions of craft grandeur again.

Since I arrived at the tail end of the summer festival season last year, I didn't get it together in time to buy a yukata, or summer kimono, but I was so envious of all the girls in their bright colors, flower-embellished hairstyles, square-bottomed purses and wooden shoes, crowding the trains on summer festival weekends. (This picture I took last year gives you an idea of what I mean.) This year I bought my yukata and obi early, from the most aggressive Japanese salesperson I've ever encountered, who very politely tried to sell me all the yukata-related accessories I might possibly need. I, in turn, very politely declined. I was going to make my own purse, thank you. And there's no way I would subject my poor feet to an evening of intense walking in wooden shoes. (My feet and I have a shared aversion to painful shoes, no matter how cute.)

It was my first pattern-less, guideline-less purse, which led to several mistakes and a lot of head-scratching, trying to picture how it was going to work when I turned it inside out. But eventually it all came together and except for a mistake in the lining, it's exactly how I pictured it. Best of all, both the outer and lining fabric came from my swap with Mariko and the basket and drawstring came from the 100-yen store, bringing the total cost of the purse to less than $2. Even the politest of pushy yukata-accessory peddlers couldn't beat that.

And here it is in action, on the train after a long night of fireworks and festival food:

I should add that I was so completely terrified about putting on the yukata wrong or not being able to put it on at all that I did a dry run several hours before, just to be sure. Should you ever need them, these instructions are nearly as helpful as a Japanese grandmother.

Next Monday is umi no hi, or Marine Day, in Japan. According to the rather poorly-written Wikipedia page I just linked to: "We wish to express our gratitude for the favor of the sea, and it wishes maritime country Japan to prosper" is assumed to be an outline in the law concerning the national holiday. Uh, really?

Coincidentally(?), maritime themes are big in the craft world here right now, so I found some cute anchor and... boat-steering-wheel fabric(??) a couple weeks ago. (Any pirates out there, feel free to correct my vocabulary.) I knew I wanted to turn it into some sort of patchwork project and it seemed the right time to finally try out the handy Super Eggplant totebag tutorial. And so, this:

Interior, with cell phone pocket. The red fabric reminds me of ocean currents.

Since it was my first totebag, my first patchwork project and the first time I had done cross stitch since the age of 9, there were inevitable problems, most notably the sewing of the handles inside the bag -- it's a good thing I live alone and can't take out my craft rage on anyone else -- but it's done and I love it. Best of all, it expresses my gratitude for the favor of the sea and wishes maritime country Japan to prosper. Really, it does.

My first amigurumi. Coming soon: more crocheted Japanese produce!

I see book covers all over the place here, which I find very cool and somehow satisfying. Reading from a book with a brown paper cover reminds me of elementary school. For this reason, and also because foreign books are ridiculously expensive ($25 for a paperback!), I decided to cover the book I bought yesterday.

And what book is it? Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, which feels like such a treat. I've been reading so much classic literature lately because that's the easiest to find at the library here that reading something outside the canon is something special. So special it deserves its own book cover decorated with origami paper from Kyoto.

I got my first haircut in Japan this weekend. I was afraid of my first haircut in Japan, I have to tell you. I was afraid of ending up with a girl-mullet, which seems to be a popular haircut here. I wouldn't look good with a girl-mullet. I would, I think, look like Janet from Three's Company if I had a girl-mullet. But luckily, I had no reason to be afraid. For only slightly more than I used to pay for my impersonally-hip turn in a vintage barber's chair at Rudy's, I got the BEST shampoo I've ever had (it was like 15 minutes long! with lots of head massaging!), a non-mullet haircut, a blow-drying and straightening, and a lovely conversation with the stylist, a woman who spent a year cutting hair in Los Angeles. She almost convinced me to get a straight perm, which is nearly as popular as the girl-mullet here, but now that my hair is back to its non-straightened, wavy-crazy self, I'm happy I kept it that way. (Here's a picture of it in its temporary stick-straight state.)

In pursuit of my resolutions, I've been cooking and crafting more. I used the holiday on Monday (Coming of Age Day, kind of a big birthday for everyone who did or will turn twenty in this school year) to finally tackle something major with my sewing machine: my own version of the hip (as in the body part) bag, which is Japan's cute answer to the fanny pack. I've seen them everywhere here and have wanted to buy one, but they seemed ridiculously expensive. This one is made of turquoise velveteen, lined with cotton and decorated with a wood button from the 100-yen store. It took nearly all day to make and the straightness of the seams -- much like the straightness of my hair -- leaves something to be desired, but as with my wonky hair, I love it anyway.

One: Learn enough Japanese cooking vocabulary and kanji to be able to use all the amazing cookbooks and cooking magazines (a.k.a. food porn) that surround me. In pursuit of this, I bought a cookbook of 15-minute meals to get started and, as a future goal, a more complicated book of recipes from a bakery called "Ouchie Cafe." I bought it specifically for the goma (black sesame) cookies and the kabocha (pumpkin)-filled cakes. Yum!

Two: Start making quilted things. I noticed when I got to Japan that quilted bags, tablecloths, curtains, etc. are popular in the world of zakka (the Japanese name for household goods and accessories -- I love zakka!). I thought it was a modern development, but when I visited the Hida Folk Art Museum on New Year's Day, I saw tons of quilted bags and hats from at least a hundred years ago. Quilted drawstring bags have been a kimono accompaniment for ages, apparently. This explains the proliferation of incredibly cute quilting fabric at craft stores, as well as all the remains of kimono fabric sold cheaply here. The only problem I face is the lack of a table of normal height, which will make it difficult to use the foot pedal of my sewing machine. What did the Japanese women of olden days use -- their knees?

Three: Take more pictures of the things I eat. (This was inspired by this book: Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth.) I'm kicking myself now for not taking a picture of the amazing breakfast I ate at the minshuku (B & B) in Takayama, where I spent New Year's Eve and Day. It included many elements of osechi ryori, the food traditionally eaten on New Year's: gomame (small dried sardines in a sweet sauce of sugar, mirin, soy sauce and sake); kamaboko (pink and white fish cake -- red and white are traditional New Year's colors); namasu (daikon radish and carrot pickled in vinegar, also considered a red and white food); a small piece of omelette; and a thin chicken and vegetable soup with a giant piece of sticky mochi at the bottom, one of the most delicious soups I have ever tasted.

And after writing all that, I'm kicking myself even harder.

I have been living, breathing and dreaming of crafts for the past week. Last night was the first time I didn't have to stay up until midnight, eyes burning, hunched over my self-healing cutting mat, breathing in Mod Podge fumes. I was looking forward to the break. But strangely, while I was watching the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD, my hands felt empty and useless and I immediately had to start a new knitting project (turquoise alpaca/wool wristwarmers!). I am a sad case.

Once the holidays have passed and everyone has received their gifts, I will post some pictures of my tiny triumphs. (Above is the card I made for my Secret Snowflake. You can just make out the purse I knitted for her in the background.)

The lovely Meg invited me over to her house today for some holiday baking and I had a great time, even while we were madly scanning the grocery store aisles in search of egg white powder, which we never found. (Perhaps we will both die as a result of eating royal icing made with raw egg whites. But I doubt it.) Our favorite man was one that Meg cut out and smooshed slightly, so it baked into the shape of a chubby boy playing soccer. So cute!

We used this recipe and we both highly recommend making the cookies as thick as possible because they get all cakey and yummy.