Roses at Kyu-Furukawa Garden

First up thanks to those who commented on my last post. I guess I'll continue blogging for as long as I feel like it and then stop. Basically the same life rule I follow for everything else, especially chocolate.

Yesterday I had an outing in the rain to Kyu-Furukawa garden. There is an english-ish house and a formal english garden, then below that is the traditional japanese section. This was Walk 7 in the Flower Lover's Guide to Tokyo and the book lives up to expectations. You start at one station and end at another so you get to see all the bits in between as well as the garden. Traditional shopping streets...

A Temple (Muryo-ji) - I adore those trees with their balls of leaves on the ends of the branches. No idea what they are called.

A pink police hut.

These are not usually pink but sakura (cherry blossom) seemed to be quite a theme throughout this part of town. For instance...

Plus the buses all had sakura designs on them.

Getting to the garden itself, I was really surprised. I had hoped for Azaelias and I got....roses!

Plus a lot of people. I suspect a coach party of retired japanese had just arrived but there were also one or two groups of ladies-who-lunch. Otherwise I suspect I was the youngest there. The photo above was just the one bed along the side of the house. There were plenty more.

When the rain restarted there were the colourful umbrellas to contrast with the flowers.

I took photos of soooo many roses. I made a mosaic but the individual photos with the names of the roses are all on Flickr.

This is all that was left of the Azaelias - a week earlier and they must have looked amazing.

The japanese part of the garden was just as beautiful.

There was a lovely viewing platform where you could look over most of both gardens and I spent a while sitting there and mulling over life in general. It was a very pleasant place to be!

Somewhere...in Nakano Fujimicho...

There is a Temple almost on the doorstep of the Salvation Army Bazaar but I cannot find out what it is called. It says "Ryhhoji" on google maps but googling that isn't getting me anywhere. In any case, it is well worth a look if you are in the area. The day when I took these was crazily bright and sunny so they all ended up looking a bit washed out.

You can tell a Temple from a Shrine in various ways but one is that a Temple has two Nio (buddhist guardians), one on either side of the entrance. These ones were behind glass and it was so sunny I could only get an image of them from the side.

This pair were quite amazing and the carving was wonderful. They would certainly scare the bejeezus out of me on a dark night. Traditionally they traveled with The Buddha to protect him from harm.

I had paused outside the Temple to message The Pooch and while doing so was approached by a wizened japanese lady wearing a hand sewn bonnet. She was very insistent I go with her into the Temple and I failed to mime "I'm using facebook messenger but as soon as I find the right Pusheen icon I am going in" so along I went and she was insistent on pointing out to me that it wasn't just the Nio who were on protection detail, but also two stunningly coloured more contemporary looking warriors who literally had their backs.

There was too much reflection to take the other chap's photo but I liked this one best since he was standing on the backs of his...enemies? slaves? They reminded me a bit of Shrek. The armour the two of them were wearing though was not in the least bit comical.

Inside there was the ritual hand washing area.

Given the warmth of the day I was more than happy to do this. You pick up the scoop in your right hand and pour water over your left hand, then do the reverse, then finally draw a third scoop of water and run it back over the handle of the ladle itself, thus leaving it clean for the next person. Inside was the temple itself with some lovely carving and the donation box in front.

The roofs of the Temple and the other buildings around it were beautifully finished in traditional Japanese style and had these fearsome gargoyles on the ends of the ...straight-bit-along-the-top. Coping? Copping? Something like that.

But then I also spied these little guys - kind of a cross between a dragon and a tortoise.

Nakano Fujimicho itself is a quite part of town although I did like their street lights.

I am having some blogging mojo issues at the moment. I read a lot of blogs on Bloglovin and a number of them have only been blogging a year or two but have made them into thriving little businesses. I have always put myself off doing anything like that so it's made me wonder why I am blogging. If it's just a diary then I could do that offline. I think also I have been thinking of myself as a knitting blogger still even though I've been mainly sewing for about two years now. I only go on Ravelry once every 2 months or so whereas it used to be my Facebook equivalent. One sewing blogger asked for comments recently on what readers looked for in a blog and I put something about projects, discoveries and lessons but not too much personal stuff - specifically no dog photos. But then my blog has quite a lot of personal stuff on and multiple cat photos. So am I writing the kind of thing I wouldn't want to read?

Maybe I'm over thinking things.

Making Up For No Making

I've already made more this week than I did in the whole of April. I had a sudden attack of makedness (which should be a word) and so I give you...a thing to stop the door slamming.

Primpted by necessity rather than aesthetic value but it does the job very nicely. There are some batting scraps folded up inside to simply stop the door going 'wham' or 'clickity click' when the breeze catches it. Action shot.

If you actually want to close the door you undo the ties and leave it hanging on the knob. Nice.

Then we have a sunglasses case.

I handsewed the patchwork part of this last September, cut out the sandwich and glue basted it then never got any further.

I brought the pieces with me to Japan and finally it appears.

Straight line quilted since the machine I've been lent is very basic. The case has got one of those press-the-sides-together-and-the-rigid-pieces-bend-and-it-opens type closures.

This sewing machine cover was also whipped up this week.

The tulip fabrics were from the 100Yen shop and the rest were from stash. We get a lot of dust here and three weeks away had let it build up on the machine so I thought the time was right to finally make one.

These makes were all quite practical but highly satisfactory to complete. I hope to have other attacks of makedness in the near future.

One of those "Oh God" days

You know those days where you sit there, clutching your head, going "ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod" over and over and over again? I have had one of those days yesterday.

My utter dick of an ex brother-in-law is being an even bigger dickhead than the last time he was a dickhead. As go between I get both his idiot selfishness and constant demands on top of his last set and my sister's anger and dismay at his utter dickishness.

And then, this morning, I went to the Calico Cat Cafe. Here (on youtube) is the music from the Hamlet Cigar advert (english people living in the 80's will get this, otherwise it's Air on the G String to the rest of you) to listen to while you look at the photos.

(She looks really sad but actually was having an awesome time with the toy. It's just her folded ears.)

(On my lap)

Hinata (above two photos) is one of my favourites. She has an awesome face but also blisses out in a kind of trance state if you tickle her chin.

In a never before seen or experienced moment, two cats were sitting on my lap at the same time.

The golden orange one was first and wasn't too pleased about the munchkin cat (very short legs) getting on too but reluctantly decided there was room. Plus Hinata was hanging about getting occasional strokes, biding her time til I was free. Or so I tell myself.

Cats. Yeah.

April Makes

Not exactly one of my most prolific months, but then I've either been staring at cherry blossom or in the UK for most of it.

Before I went I finished my name tag for Susan which I really hope she got and which I blogged about here. While away I managed two things. The first was a pair of Rise and Shine socks using a free pattern available here (Ravelry Link). The pattern is staggeringly simple to remember, even for someone like me who has no memory, and it was very satisfying to reach the end of each repeat before heading back the other way.

In fact I enjoyed it so much that having finished the main pair (for my sister) I had enough yarn left to do a baby pair for ickle Jasmine. Mother and baby socks - what every mother needs!

I also made a pin cushion for the EPP Early Summer Swap which needs to be sent by Monday. Must get on with that.

It has come out a little pouf-ier than desired as my stuffing was extremely springy. I incorporated some left over hexagons into the sides and then did a little blanket stitch to define the top and bottom.

I do adore variegated thread so used yellow for the bottom and green for the top. I am really happy with it so will be sending it off to the recipient toot sweet.

Makuhari Messe Doki Doki Flea Market

This was my outing for today. I'm still a bit dozy from jetlag but I managed to unglue myself from bed for the 90 minute journey across to the other side of Tokyo Bay for this. It is an annual event and there are other flea markets so why did I bother going so far? It was the size that drew me. This is just one part of one hall.

There were three halls. You do the maths. Except don't - apparently there are 1500 stall holders and they got 6500+ visitors yesterday. Yowsers. Plus it's on over 3 or 4 days. That is a lot of stuff. The middle hall (shown above) was people without cars and handmade things. The halls either side, which were the same size, were more like a british indoor boot fair where people had rocked up with their junk in their car's trunk and were hawking it to anyone who went past. For instance, this person was selling replica guns and chinaware.

There was a bit mixture in the car section between people genuinely having a clear out and those who were traders and had brought stock with them. In the floor section the majority were having a clear out but there was also quite a lot of brought in stuff like toys. Some were new, some were vintage, and some were...

...indescribable. But if you wanted an adult size Darth Vader costume with flashing light panels you were in the right place.

The 'handmade' section was quite interesting as a fair chunk of it was what i think of as "sticking stuff on other stuff" craft. The actual name begins with a D...what is it now...Decoden. Nice explanation here. It is really quite astonishing what some people will attach tiny plastic food pieces to.

There were also a fair number of sticker stands - this is clearly where those cool dudes at the airport get all their suitcase stickers from.

Not everyone was as interested in what was going on as I was. This guy seemed particularly non-plussed.

While this little'un was seriously happy about his motley collection of new toys.

I should probably stop taking pictures of other people's children though.

Overall it was really interesting and I picked up a few handmade tulips, some traditional-to-somewhere doughnuts and also doubled the size of my basket collection by buying another one. If you happen to be in the area at the right time of year it is well worth a visit although be prepared for massive crowds and the crying children that inevitably go hand in hand with this kind of event.