It's time to...

Yes, once again Rae from Made by Rae and Dana from Made are dedicating a whole month to all kinds of crafty goodness for the little men in our lives. Actually, the month is already half-way through and there have already been lots of great tutorials for trousers, bags and more, round-ups of cool fabrics for boys and lots of generous giveaways which you have, well, missed. Sorry. But there's still a lot more to come, so pop over and have a look. And if this is all news to you, you probably missed Celebrate The Boy last year too, so don't forget to look through the archives while you're there...

Last year I got quite into it all, but this time the extent of my boy-celebrating seems to be limited to preparing to give birth to one. I would like to make something for K's birthday too (which is Saturday) but we'll see how that goes. The pile of crochet squares is slowly growing - I've made 23. Thanks to ridiculously early trains to work, I made 2 this morning before 9am! Unfortunately the pattern calls for 64...

I made the same blanket for K and was horribly behind then too. I remember that I took some shortcuts so I had a look at his blanket today; not 64 squares, not even 49, but a mere 36. Then I just sewed them together and crocheted round and round the edge of the whole thing until I ran out of wool. Add that to the fact that I was stitching together those 36 squares while in hospital having just given birth, and I don't feel quite so behind schedule after all...

Happy Valentines Day!

No, I haven't cracked the secret of time travel and magically sent you back to the beginning of last week. This is just how long it took to get around to showing you what we got up to.

K made a couple of Valentine-themed crafts at school. A crown (or 'king' as he insists on calling it) decorated with hearts...


...and a butterfly made from hearts too:


Here at home we were not as organised and didn't actually make a card for H until the afternoon of Valentine's Day itself. Luckily H had it in his head that Valentine's Day was on the following day, so we got away with it :-)

We were limited to what we had in house, so potato-printing it was. K enjoyed covering half a dozen sheets of paper with red hearts...

...and when they were dry, I cut out heart shapes and we stuck them on a piece of red-ish thick paper we had lying around. I forgot to take a photo of the finished card until a few days later, by which time it had lost its will to stand up unaided. Oh well. You get the idea.

While the paint was drying I also made a very simple chocolate orange mousse for after dinner. I only made a half batch of the serves-4 recipe, but that was still enough to make 5 individual little mousses. We had one each that night, but H wasn't particularly impressed. Rather than greedily eat the other 2 all to myself, I sent H round to his parents' house with them, avoiding over-eating and acting the dutiful daughter-in-law all in one fell swoop. Hee hee.

One month to go!

Can you believe that I only have another month until my due date? Where have the last 8+ months gone? This pregnancy seem to have just flown by. I suppose it's a common refrain from women having a second or subsequent child - the older kid(s) keep you so busy that you don't have time to focus on the new arrival. Still, I do feel a bit sorry for him (I did tell you it was a 'him', right?), neglected before he's even been born...

Touch wood, this pregnancy has gone very smoothly so far. Very little morning sickness and no real problems with backache or other common pregnancy ailments. Compared to when I was expecting K, I have been having less leg cramps at night but more heartburn, but really I'm feeling fine. I have to remember not to eat or drink anything after about 9pm though, or I can't lie down in bed without feeling sick...

My doctor here is very big on walking, and recommends a brisk, daily, 60 minute walk throughout pregnancy, or at least in the final month. When I was expecting K, I was out there in all weathers, clocking up some major mileage. It's surprising how far you can get in an hour at a good pace; I remember meeting a friend in the centre of town on a snowy February day and giving him a real shock when I told him I'd walked there. Of course this time, I haven't walked a step, apart from 15 minutes to the nearest station to go to work on Sundays. On the other hand, the other big thing at the doctor here is weight gain. They are Very Strict and declare that no-one should gain more than 10 kg. The first time around I was very careful with my diet, walked my socks off and was constantly nagged by the midwives, finally reaching D-Day just the right side of the magical 10 kg. This time I've just carried on as normal, with no special attention to diet or exercise, and heard something from the doctor last week that I never thought I would hear - 'No problem at all with weight gain'. Wow. It rivals the other 'Never to be heard from a doctor' quote of a month or so ago - 'It's definitely a boy, no mistake'.

With just a month to go, I suppose I should be starting to prepare for this little one's arrival... A couple of weeks ago I did manage to go to one ante-natal class, for women at at least 30 weeks, where the midwife said she assumed we'd all packed our hospital bags, and got everything set up for the baby. I struggled not to laugh out loud. I've tended to think 'oh, we've got everything we need already', but I suppose I should dig out K's old baby clothes and wash them. And it occurred to me that we don't have anywhere to put things for the new baby, so we did go out and buy a chest of drawers on Saturday. That's a good start, right?

In theory I should have a little more time soon (assuming the baby doesn't come too early of course...), as I'm finishing work this week. University classes have already finished for this academic year and I handed in all the final paperwork last week. The 2 group classes that I run will meet with me for the last time this week and then Vivian will take over from March for 6 months. My little side-job of kids interviews has been wearing me out recently (yesterday I interviewed about 140 children, with 30 minutes for lunch and no other break), but there's only one more to go. I do have a couple of private students that I'll keep meeting with until I go into hospital, but that's just sitting around and chatting really. Oh, and I'm still working on those transcriptions too...

If I do find some time I'd like to fit in some walking, and Making Stuff! The baby blanket I'm crocheting (you know, the one I bought wool for extra early so as to have plenty of time to complete it) is far, far behind schedule. I'd like to sew a couple of things for the baby too (plus it's K's birthday soon and I'd like to make something for him...), but we'll see. Must write more blog posts too! Actually, I blame Lisa for my lack of free time, for lending me lots of good books at New Year's...

Victims of the snow

Our house is about a kilometre from the sea and, until 30-odd years ago, most of the land between here and the coast was filled with pine trees. Nowadays all that remains is a narrow strip, between a major road and the sea, which stretches about 10 kilometres along the coast.

When we drove along there the other day, to go to the Sea and Life Museum, it was quite shocking to see the damage that all the snow we've had recently caused to these trees.


The weight of the snow ripped branches off a lot of the trees, but what really surprised me was how many trees had simply been snapped in half, with the entire top part of the tree missing.

I suppose the weight of the snow bowed the smaller trees right over (as in the far right of the photo below) and a lot of them never recovered.

Severely damaged trees along that roadside have been marked with pink tape, so I suppose they will be chopped down before long. It's very sad...

Sea and Life Museum

If you've been reading my blog posts so far this year, you'll probably be relieved to hear that this one has nothing at all to do with snow, or the weather in general. After 6 weeks or so of work and bad weather, we finally Did Something on a day off!

Friday was a public holiday here, in honour of Mum's birthday (or maybe something to do with the constitution...). After a sushi lunch, we went to the Sea and Life Museum in Sakaiminato, just a 15 minute drive from our house. H and I had been before, but it was something new for K.


It's a museum rather than an aquarium, so there are no living fish, but there are over 4,000 preserved fish and crab specimens. The English-language leaflet boasts that it is 'Japan's largest museum of taxidermied fish!!' and also states that 'The ocean is kind of interesting.'

One of the things the museum is most proud of is this 2.8 metre long giant mambo/sun fish (yup, it's real). Upstairs there is a collection of old farm tools, fishing equipment and household items, but K was much more interested in this little tunnel with hundreds of harisenbon (porcupine fish) suspended from the ceiling...

His favourite thing in the whole museum was this fishing boat though. You can go up some steps on one side, walk along the deck and then go down again on the other side. There wasn't really anything very interesting on the boat itself, but K wanted to go up onto it time and time again.

Finally, I couldn't resist this shot of K being eaten by a shark. His worried little face fit that hole perfectly!

You can never have too many boots, right?

Back when there was still plenty of snow on the ground, I treated myself to a new pair of boots. They are a rather pleasing bronze colour with a slight metallic sheen, and have just the right amount of heel for comfort...


But the best thing about these boots? They are basically wellies! Yes, they are rubber boots, all moulded in one piece with no pesky seams to allow leaks (unlike, well, all my other boots and shoes, I have discovered...). Definitely a step up from the blue wellies I stole from H and have been wearing to the supermarket lately. These beauties are perfect for tramping through the snow and then going straight to work or social engagements... or the supermarket.

The last snow post of the season (I hope...)

I don't write anything for ages and then, when I do, it's about snow again. Can you tell that there's not a lot going on here at the moment?

As forecast, we had quite a lot of snow again over the last weekend in January (as pictured above), and I was glad that I decided to stay the night in Tottori instead of trying to get there in time for work on Sunday morning. As well as avoiding being late, I also got to enjoy a peaceful evening to myself in a comfortable hotel, paid for by someone else. Definitely no complaints there...

Now though, one week later, we are virtually snow-free! Here's the last little bit that was still hanging around on our lawn this afternoon...


... and looking out over the fields you can see that there's not much there either:

Of course, there are still huge mounds of snow (or 'snow mountains' as K calls them) in carparks and other places where the snow was cleared, but places that just had their natural quota of the stuff are pretty much clear now.

This change in the weather coincided exactly with the old Japanese calendar. Setsubun, the day dividing the seasons, was on February 3rd and on the 4th, the official first day of spring, it was warm and sunny and the snow was melting. Today was rather overcast but until now we've had really lovely weather and it truly feels like spring may just be around the corner...