I am sorry that I have not posted in a while. But my truly spectacular 2018 is continuing in a fantastically epic fashion and not in a good way.
In the end of February my dad passed away. He lived a long life and I know he was ready to go, but I wasn't ready for him to be gone. I know that I am forty three years old, but to him I was still "his little girl" and I could always count on him for advice and to listen to the ups and downs of my life. He was the one "adult" still in my life and now he's gone.
I went to Coweta, Oklahoma, where he lived, to help my family with the arrangements and to help go through his things. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
And when I returned home I was not myself. A couple days after I returned home, I broke out into terribly ugly and itchy hives. And they weren't going away. Which forced me to go the dermatologist. She couldn't determine what caused my hives, we (meaning my husband and I) are thinking they were probably a reaction to stress from my father's passing - but she did let me know that the ugly, red, bump on my shoulder, that I have had for about a decade from a spider bite that healed weird, and that I only showed to her because I promised my husband, was probably cancer.
Wonderful.
As she put it, if you are going to get cancer, this is the cancer that you want to get because it won't kill you. Which sounds reassuring but, honestly, that still doesn't make it scary as crap when its about you. Fortunately, I found out two days later that it wasn't cancer - just an ugly scar. I still needed to have it removed so that it wouldn't turn in to cancer. Which is what I did yesterday. So I am typing this with three stitches in my shoulder.
My husband kept saying what more could possibly happen -implying the worst was behind us. His answer came when half of the people where he worked were all laid off by the company-including him. Yay!!! And then, a few days later our washer broke and we had to get a new one because the transmission went out.
I was unaware that wash machines had transmissions.
So this year is kicking my butt. I know that there are others that have it worse and I know that I should be grateful for everything, and everyone, that I have in my life, and I am, but the will to do anything productive sort of left me. Including crafting, cooking and blogging - three things that usually bring me joy. Thus there was no blogging going on.
However, there is one thing that I discovered in 2018 that makes me happy, and that is Japanese Sumo tournaments......... I know right?!?!?! Sumo!
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| There are so many things wrong about this poster. But the it still makes me smile. |
My husband and I love Japanese game shows and anime and we do searches on YouTube to see what translations we can find for some of the shows that we enjoy. One night, after one of our regular shows, YouTube decided that - if we liked Japanese games shows - then we would probably like sumo. It was so right! Within minutes my husband and I were enthralled.
Tournaments occur about every two months and we happened to catch the New Year's tournament. All two weeks of it. By the end of the New Year's tournament we were hooked. So we waited in anticipation for the next tournament in March. And we continued to love it. We jokingly say that we now have a sport that we can watch since we don't watch any of the usual sporting events. Like all sports fans, we wanted to support our "teams". We are American, so we thought the best way would be to wear a "team" shirt or jersey.
Unfortunately, sumo t-shirts are not cheap. Which I should have known from the cost of hockey and football jerseys that I have looked for as gifts for friends and family. So my husband and I decided that we would just do generic sumo shirts without one of our favorite wrestlers. This was much easier for my husband than it was for me. I guess there aren't a lot of female sumo fans in America because pickin's were slim and I definitely did not want to wear a shirt that proclaimed that I was a "Sumo Wrestler in Training" - yes, that is a real thing. I finally narrowed my options down to this shirt on Amazon:
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| I actually have a copy of this that I painted for my mantle when I do my eclectic art. Don't you think that she and the sumo guy look very similar. I may have to paint him with a turquoise background and have them as a "set". |
Unfortunately, I could only find them for men, and I didn't want a baggy shirt. I also didn't want it in grey, black or white. I wanted something cute. And in cherry blossom, because that is my favorite color, next to the turquoise, that the wrestlers where as they fight. Since I couldn't find anything in my size that I liked and in my price range I decided that I would make it myself.
First I went on eBay and got a t-shirt in lilac for about $5.00.
Then I drew the little sumo guy.
The next step was to put the drawing under the front section of the shirt and trace it with a fabric marker. This is where I found out that, if you are not careful, fabric marker smears very easily. This will be good to know when I do my literature scarf - which is a project that I have in my mind for another time.
And from there I painted him with fabric paints that I had purchased for myself to create a painted circle skirt like they used to make in the fifties. I thought this would be a perfect practice item before I started to work on the skirt. Also, I keep changing my mind about what I want to paint on the skirt.
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| This is what my little sumo guy looked like after I traced him. So the black you are seeing here is fabric marker. |
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| I painted his mawashi turquoise because, in the tournaments that I have watched, the sumo wrestlers don't wear white mawashi, Plus, I love turquoise. |
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| Here he is all painted! I don't know if you can tell, but I even painted the black outlines over so that my lines would be more defined than they were with the fabric marker. |
I think he turned out pretty good. And I am ready to wear my shirt in May when the next tournament starts!
Well, that is it for now. Unless something else happens in my life, and its 2018 so it may, I hope to be posting again very soon.
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