It's now a month+ since I tested positive for COVID.
I am still tired, brain fogged, confused, having phantom smells, the occasional fever and some feelings of depression. 

​Having done more reading I found an article about how "they" are seeing that people who take longer to recover (i.e. long COVID) are those who continued to work and did not rest enough. Some people have told me it has taken 2-3 months for them to feel fully recovered.

With this information, I shall be resting for another month and at that time if I am still showing symptoms I will contact one of the Long COVID Clinics in the area to see what else could be done.

​And for something else, here's a temari I just finished. I started this one back in 2021 and stopped due to the tendonitis in my right thumb. I was planning on finishing it after I returned from The Big Walk. I started to work on it but as we all know, now, I got COVID and then realized I was making too many mistakes that had to be undone so I only worked on it when I felt good. It is a C8 and comes from one of the Japanese temari books but I can't find which one at the moment. 

During the 8 month long planning for this trip, one of the items I had pack was temari making supplies. Elisa has Japanophilia, as do I, and since I make temari and she does not, we thought this would be a great opportunity to show and make her a temari or two.

I assembled a basic kit of rice hulls, yarn, pins, needle, paper strips, mari thread and colored threads for the design, and 2 patterns I knew I could finish during my visit. 

​A day or two after I arrived I started making a mari by putting the hulls in a piece of cloth and wrapping with yarn and then wrapping with a pale teal. I showed Elisa how I use the paper strip and pins to mark and divide the ball. The next day I lay down the marking thread and started stitching. I did not finish the first temari until after I returned from the walk.  After the wrapped bands on a Combination 8 in red, green gold/brown was finished I started the Simple 12 kiku pattern in Pink and Purples.

The best part was when Elisa decided to take some artsy-fartsy pictures of the supplies used and of me too.

Quite a while ago, I stitched a temari with the shiny threads from Japan. This pattern is called plum blossom and because Elisa of Scotland has a Victoria Plum tree, I sent it to her.  Elisa is very into digital photog and today she sent this picture to me.

Last month I started this basket weave temari. I based it on a temari from one of the books from Japan (Cosmo #5) but where they used 2 colors, I used 5 - 3 for the main weaved squares and two for the framing. I also changed up how the bands weave into the framing. I chose one direction (x, y or z) for each color this results in  2 of the 3 main colors being woven in each square and the squares on opposite sides of the temari are the same.   I also took many measurements long the way to make sure everything stayd "true" so the framing at the corners would meet nice and tight. Then I made a coordinated yubinuki using the same colors, again in a basket weave where stitched threads are the warp (vertical threads) and the weft (horizontal) are woven but NOT stitched.

For the past few weeks I have been working on some advanced temaril - this first is Cedar and this was done 3 times to get it correct. It is stitched with 3 strands of floss to make an all over covering.  The second is a type of  yubinuki obi design that is stitched with double perle cotton thread. I stitched twice as my first color choices did not get the design to pop. I then decided to make a yubinuki stand to go with it it.

Here is a temari I just finished for fun.
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In my prior post I made a Ninja Star temari. I decided to make a yubinuki ring stand for it instead using a plexiglass ring stand like those use to display stone spheres and eggs.   

For this core, I used part of a card board tube (the core of a toilet paper roll) and cotton quilt batting.  The design would be the same colors as the temari and have a small woven section so the ring base is similar but not the same as the temari.

Now that the course work and my patterns, for the Level 2 certification are done, all I can do is wait until February to submit and then in May/June I will be notified. 

I am now doing some temari for the fun it. First up is an advanced C8 from a Japanese book. This was a stitch-a-long in the temari group, back in September. It is call Ninja Star and if you quilt you might think of it as Monkey Wrench and if you weave it is similar to a hounds tooth.  If you don't quilt or weave, never mind!

The mari must be very round and the markings with in 1 mm or less of each other, otherwise it throws everything off.  Most of this temari is woven but a square structure is stitched on the mari thus giving a frame for the weaving to attach too. All the stitching is done with doubled thread and it is important to ensure that no twist happen as the threads are woven. 

I actually wound 2 mari. The first was too large for the pattern and I would have had to experiment to see if I could make it work with extra rows; it was just easier to wind a new mari in the correct size. After marking with regular sewing thread, it is removed later, I measured everything 4 times to make all the divisions and intersections as even as possible - lots of pins were used to indicate where I had been. Then the stitching and the weaving!

I was partway through the weaving and I almost gave up - twice as I was not seeing the design. But I do not give up and figured if it did not appear, I had at least learned what not to do. When I started the last set of wraps, the design began to appear - YIPEE.  I did have a lot of grooming to do - where you push the threads around to even and straighten them. 

​Next up, a Yubinuki base in the same colors for it. That will be my next post

The last lesson has been completed WOOT WOOT. 

This lesson is about a continuous path of stitching. In Japanese is it Hito Hude Gake which is translated to One Stroke of the Brush. In brush painting the brush is placed on the paper and not lifted until the entire design or calligraphy character is completed. In Temari, it means that one thread defines a design in a similar way.  IF this design were worked in one color, it would be one continuous thread - starting at the North pole a pattern stitched at the starting pole and then, without ending off, moved to the next section, etc until the opposite pole is reached and then the stitching direction is reversed and it worked back up and around until the starting point is reached! That's a long thread!

The temari to make for this lesson is on a C10 with Kiku's on each center. One color is used for stitching North to South and another color is used for stitching South to North.  Since learning to make the transition points from one center to another is tricky I decided that the "bonus round" would be worked first.  

For the pre-bonus round, I worked a similar pattern on a C8. This in the pictures with the green mari wrap and the orange and yellow threads. The stitched pattern is a double kiku which gives it a sunflower look. My mari was smaller than what was specified in the pattern instructions and my stitch spacing was too far apart in some areas; thus some of my points ended up not being even from pole center to center. 

The C10 temari was wound with a dark purple thread and then I used a lavender and bright green for the stitching. My transitions were better but I think the lavender gets washed out by the green. IF I do this again, I would wrap the mari in lavender and use a dark purple with the bright green for the stitching

The last temari I made for lesson 11 was a "Plum Blossom" on a C8. The lesson showed a Plum Blossom on a C10 but it was not required to do. Well, being the over achiever that I am I decided to try it and use my fancy Japanese threads - in pinks so it really looks like a plum blossom flower.  Note: Elisa of Scotland has a Victoria Plum tree in her back garden so I have seen pictures of those blossoms and so I was aiming for soft pinks transitioning to almost white.  

Since the Japanese thread is thinner than the Size 5 perle cotton I mostly use, I made the mari a bit smaller and used the thread doubled in the needle.  

This was certainly a challenge! The thread from Japan is a polyester, which gives it a wonderful shine but it loves to twist and knot so I was constantly de-tangling it. If I had taken a stitch and not realized the thread was twisted I had to pull the threads back out and straighten them so the two threads would lay flat, next to each other and also not bunch up where the stitch was made. I also uses A LOT of thread. I used for shades of pink but I used up 1+ cards of the white, there are 30 meters of thread on a card. 

When I was almost done I could see I should have spread my stitches out a bit more as there were gaps at the center points of the pentagons (where the pink triangular petals meet) so I did some extra fill at then end but still left a little gap at the very center since there really wasn't room along the sides to lay more threads. 

I am glad I did it but I should have done it once in the perle cotton to make it easier - Oh well, live and learn.