It's bleeding!

Chi ga dete iru!
The Pumpkin Prince has outgrown his full function car seat and is ready to progress to a booster seat. On the other hand, my friend N's son is growing out of his infant size car seat and is ready for a regular car seat. She is also in the planning phase of building a new house. So I planned a nice little Sunday tea where N and her family could come check out our house for ideas (she was especially interested in our kitchen) and she could pick up the Pumpkin Prince's old car seat. N's two-year old is allergic to eggs and wheat flour, so I bought locally grown apples and grapes for him. N brought an assortment of items from her local pastry shop.
I was getting ready to make coffee when I heard a loud cry. And the Pumpkin Daddy yell, "he's bleeding!"
The Pumpkin Prince had fallen and cut his forehead and was bleeding like…like…I don't know, livestock?
Facial wounds are notorious for bleeding more than their size. Fortunately, N was a quick thinker and shoved the Pumpkin Daddy aside, grabbed a handful of Kleenex and pressed firmly on the cut. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly. We apologized to N and her family and asked them to go home (with the car seat, of course), and I took the Pumpkin Prince to the duty clinic, which was a dermatologist's.
(As I've previously mentioned, in most Japanese communities, there is a "duty doctor" who covers the entire city on Sundays and national holidays. Of course, the emergency department in large hospitals is open all day every day, but for small things like colds and cuts, you are supposed to go to the duty doctor.)
As it turned out, the dermatologist was of the cosmetic surgery kind (he was the former chief of reconstructive surgery in the biggest reconstructive surgery department in town). He stitched up the cut very quickly. That was 2 weeks ago, and there's hardly even a trace of a scar left.
So…we were lucky that N's head is screwed on straight (much straighter than mine or the Pumpkin Daddy's) and the duty clinic doctor was so skillful. So we got treated by a plastic surgeon on a Sunday for free (medical care for children under 15 is free in this city.) Another episode that makes me thankful for Japanese medical care…(your milage may vary according to your age, location, nationality and ailment…)

Egg yolk is yellow

Tamago no kimi ha kiiroi Apparently, my favorite fashion blogger paid this blog a visit. So, yay! Thanks so much for dropping by! The Pumpkin Prince had his class trip to the local zoo. He asked for either a Doraemon lunch or a Pokemon lunch. Since my last attempt at blue characters fared badly, I decided to stick to colors found in natural foods.

Pikachu is rice colored/ flavored with boiled egg yolk, salt, and curry powder, with sliced cheese and nori features. The mouth is imitation crab. The Pokemon ball is a hamburger covered with sliced cheese, imitation crab, and nori. I always show the kids the lunches before I pack them in their bags so that they know that the lunch started out as a reasonable likeness. When the Pumpkin Prince saw the lunch, he said, "I wanted Doraemon!" I think 4 1/2 years old is old enough to give the "you're supposed to say thank you before you ask for better/ different/ more" talk, isn't it?

expands at the bottom

susohirogari
Yesterday the Pumpkin Princess had a make-up swimming lesson. Between Facetime-ing the lesson to the Pumpkin Daddy (who FaceTime'ed the Pumpkin Prince playing in the park) I ripped out the stitches in my 5 year-old white Uniqlo jeans. I wanted to slim the boot-cut legs so that they would be a pair of classic straight-leg white jeans that I could wear to work pretending they were white dress pants.

I ripped out the hem and the topstitching on the inseam.

When I got home, I traced the line of the back and front panels of my "gosh-why-didn't-I-buy-two-pairs-of-every-color" classic cut gray Uniqlo jeans on to the white jeans using chalk. The white jeans were cut almost exactly like the gray jeans up to the knee.

Then I sewed along the line, zig-zag stitched and trimmed the raw edges, and re-hemmed the cuff. I decided not to re-do the topstitching on the inseam because it wouldn't really change the look of the jeans that much and it would be pretty much near impossible anyway (I think the topstitching was originally done before sewing the side seam) . I think the whole procedure took about 3 hours. I now have classic straight cut white jeans that fit perfectly at the waist and hip.

(It) hurts, but...

Itai kedo...

I have a love/ hate relationship with heels. These days, I wear them about twice a week when I think I need to make an effort to look sharp. I would love to be one of those leggy women who can strut around in ballet flats and look cool, but I have short fat legs that need all the help they can get. Even women with nicely proportioned bodies are afraid of flats. For example,

my favorite fashion blogger in flats:

And my second favorite fashion blogger in flats:

See how they are standing on their toes for their full-body shots? They're doing that to make their legs look longer. They know that they need the heels to create the body proportion required by modern fashion, but want to wear flats, so they compromise by being photographed on tip-toe. And these are women with beautiful, long, slender legs. So heels hurt. Everyone knows this, and everyone who tells you otherwise has something going on or is on something or both. I've found that some things help, of course. In a similar vein as DIY alterations, I've taken to putting things in my shoes that take the edge off the discomfort. This pair has self-adhesive silicone rubber arch supports, and a heel pad on the right shoe but not the left. This is because my right foot is slightly smaller than my left, and if I get a pair that fits my left foot, the right shoe keeps slipping off. The heel pad keeps keeps that from happening. The shoes are leather, so they'll stretch eventually, and I'll probably slap a heel pad on the left shoe while changing the heel pad on the right shoe with a thicker one.

I wear this pair with toe cushions. The toe cushion keeps my toes from sliding into the narrow pointy end of the shoe that will strangle them, and lets it stay in the wider portion of the shoe.

You work with what you have (or can afford), be it legs, pants, or shoes.

How'd that happen?

Nande kou naru no? I bought a Uniqlo dress in June. It was off-white and had an embroidery lace bodice, a crochet lace waistband, and a light, airy semi-flared skirt. I thought I'd wear it under denim jackets. The bodice was looser than I liked, so shortly after I bought the dress, I decided to add waist darts. Last weekend (of course this would be about 3 months after I decided I wanted to alter it) I detached the lining, removed the crochet lace waistband, ripped away the skirt from the bodice, and added waist darts...and discovered that the waistband still fit the bodice without alterations. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. The weirder thing is, the looks slightly more fitted than before I altered it. In another "how'd that happen," my post about shortening the sleeves to my chambray jacket has 63 hits so far (most of my posts get about 10, and the hits are by people on my Christmas card list. That is, if I actually ever got around to sending Christmas cards. That is, never mind). Sorry to the people hoping for an alterations tutorial. Maybe someday...but if I do one, the first one is going to be a trousers alteration.

Still here

Mada iru

Anyone still here?

(sound of crickets chirping)

OK, I'll just talk to myself, then.

2 months ago, there was an enormous work SNAFU that was entirely NOT my fault, but I got us out of it. I think I am the only one on campus that could have got us out of that one...but leave it to party pooper types to make it like 1) it IS my fault 2) I am a LOSER for LETTING this happen (as opposed to being a total rock star for getting us out of it). 2 months later, I can look back and say "oh well, there are party poopers to be found everywhere in this world, I am the ROCK STAR, baby" but back then, I let the pooper get me down.

Getting down let me lapse into a period of no exercising or sewing. I should know by now that exercise give me more energy and sewing is stress relief (not to mention a way to keep away from late night drinking/ munching).

Summer is here, and along with it, gakudo lunches for the Pumpkin Princess. Gakudo is after school day care. They look after the kids for the entire day during long school holidays. They don't have meal prep facilities, so they order box lunches from an outside contractor, but sometimes the Pumpkin Princess wants to take homemade lunches. (Actually, she wants a homemade lunch every day, but that's not happening)

The Pumpkin Princess said the Monsters lunch wasn't very good. I made it for her when she went to see "Monsters University" with her day care. The rice got a little too watery when I added the sushi rice seasoning. 

There's more, but that's all for now.

I came all the way here

Kokomade kimashita

My quest for jeans that fit at both the hip and the waist has finally brought me...here.

I've removed the rear center belt loop, and ripped the waistband from the back yoke. These are Uniqlo stretch high-rise straight leg jeans bought online about 2 or 3 years ago. They were about 5 cm too loose at the waist, even though they fit just about right (not too loose, not too tight) at the hip. To be on the safe side, I decided to take in 4 cm at the waist. I put 2 darts on each side of the yoke, and then I stitched the waistband in 4 cm at the rear center. Then, I stitched the waistband back to the yoke, and replaced the belt loop. The last part was the most difficult, because 2 layers of belt loop  (2 layers of fabric x 2) + 2 layers of altered waistband (2 layers per altered layer x2) meant that the machine was stitching through 8 layers of denim. I was pretty much yanking the fabric through the machine.

So the stitching is a little crooked and the back center belt loop is a little low. But now, even without a belt, I can get by without having to hike them up every 30 seconds.

Once I got started, the whole thing took about 3 hours. 

The only thing is, it took about 3 months to get started.