A special day with friends..

Hello again..it's lovely and bright outside although pretty nippy when the hound and myself took our daily constitutional! I was taking more notice of Nas and his sniffing habits this morning due to being in the middle of reading Paul Auster's Timbuktu. The story concerns a dog, Mr Bones and his owner Willy G. Christmas who is preparing for his death and trying to find an old friend to leave Mr Bones with. Mum bought the book primarily because the dog on the cover is the spit of Nas, but it's also turned out to be a really good read. The section I'm reading right now is about Willy being fascinated by the dog's sense of smell and how important it is to a dog. Nas is a great sniffer too....

Well, the shawl was finally finished last night...phew. I'll post a picture soon. Currently knitting more mittens again with Louisa Harding's Kimono Angora in a mixture of pinks, purples and grey, very nice.. Also attempting to make a long, fabric wall hanging with pockets..a commission from Liv! She had seen it in a catalogue and wondered if I could do something similar. The next task is to find some coloured calico type fabric for the pockets..definately not a chore in my book!

These pictures are from a day in the summer of 2006 in Fukuoka city in Japan. It was an incredibly hot day..after a while in Japan, you tend to get used slightly to the humidity, but you never get over feeling like a drowned sweaty rat amongst lightly perspiring Japanese people! I have learnt the hard way that the only thing to wear is cotton shirts, even t shirts are too heat inducing!

My company on this day were Marli and Shirlei from Porto Alegre in Brazil. We were all in Japan to attend the wedding of my good friend Ikue and her fiancee Nei, who's mum is Shirlei. Marli is Shirlei's good friend. For nearly 2 weeks we lived together in the apartment that Nei and Ikue would live in after their marriage, while they stayed with her family. This was a fantastic time, these two ladies were so friendly and loving and we quickly became friends and helped each other to get by. For them, the country was quite a culture shock and I loved seeing Japan again through fresh eyes. I also found that my grasp of the language improved greatly through attempting to ask things for them. So today, I just want to say hello to those two special ladies and let them know that I miss them and am remembering them...