最近は新型コロナウイルスの影響で、不安な気持ちになるニュースが多いですね。

「なにも変わらない、普通の日々」の大切さを改めて感じています。

ちょっと疲れたな…と思ったときは、ぜひ、アルファベットチョコレートを

食べてみてください。この程よいミルク感と口どけのなめらかさは、

同じような商品たちの中でもずば抜けています！！（※いろいろ食べ比べた僕比）

製造元の名糖産業株式会社は愛知県の会社みたいなので、

広い視野で見ると、これも一種の『地産地消』ではないでしょうか！！

It’s been Spring for a few weeks now and I am enjoying going around town on walks and checking out the new flowers. The cherry blossoms are starting to fall, which makes the ground and canals look really pretty — but it also gives me terrible hayfever!! It’s hard to find good masks these days, so my hayfever is especially bad right now. I want to take longer walks in the countryside, but my eyes start crying and I sneeze every few seconds. It’s worth it to see lots of Spring scenery though…

みなさんこんにちは！

ずっと「Stay home」で退屈しているそこの君！朗報です！！！ハローズの授業がオンラインで受けられるようになりました！！

再来週からZoomというアプリを使ってオンラインで授業が始まります！そのためにみなさんにお配りした日程で、来週練習を行います！お手紙は届きましたか？

もし届いてない、知らないという人がいたらハローズ大垣本部校に練習をください！0584-84-3111ですよ！

それではみなさんに来週会えるのを楽しみに待っています！！Have fun and Speak out!!

Awhile back, myself and another teacher invested in a sewing machine. We had small projects in mind. In particular, I had plans to make a witch costume for the Halloween party (which I did actually end up doing!) Since the fall, however, it’s largely sat unused, gathering dust. Such a pity. Sewing projects require a lot of time and attention, especially because I’m not especially skilled at sewing, let alone handling a sewing machine, so I’ve largely just been short on the time to invest in a project all these months. Recent events have changed those circumstances, however. A month of cancelled classes and precious little to do– talk about a recipe for insanity. So, I brushed the dust off our machine, cut up the fabric scraps from my witch costume, and set to work making some cloth masks.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t remember how to set up the machine! And I, of course, misplaced the manual, to boot.

So my first “sewing day” largely consisted of me fiddling with the machine, messing around with the needle, the bobbin, the stitch settings, etc. It took two hours of fiddling for me to finally get the machine to start sewing simple straight stitches correctly, but sew simple straight stitches I did! That was an exciting moment. Of course, as soon as I conquered the sewing machine, I was faced with my next greatest nemesis: the iron.

I hate ironing. I avoid it at all costs. My wardrobe is specifically tailored to avoid ironing anything. Not that ironing is complicated. I did bully my dad into teaching me how to use an iron before I moved to Japan, which really paid off, so when I pulled the iron out of my closet, I didn’t have to spend the next two hours fiddling with it. Instead, I had to spend an obscene amount of time constantly ironing one component of one mask for thirty seconds, then returning the iron to its cradle to reheat for two minutes. The woes of a cordless iron… It’s a very long, time-consuming process. Honestly, just ironing all of the mask components took another two hours. But finally! The machine was set up, and all my pieces were cut out, ironed, and pinned. So I settled in to sew it all together.

And, naturally, that’s when the sewing machine stopped working again. It had sewed some test scraps together just fine before! The tension was a smidge off, but nothing too noticeable. I didn’t think it constituted a serious problem after two hours of fiddling just to get the machine to that point. I was wrong, though. It was a serious problem. After yet more fiddling and testing, I did manage to diagnose the problem, thankfully: I’d wound the bobbin incorrectly. So I got to redo that whole process, reinstall the bobbin, re-thread the entire machine, and run through some more test scraps.

Then I made my first mask! Huzzah!

The craftsmanship was top notch. …..For me. I definitely wouldn’t pay money to buy this mask off the shelf. Especially since I patterned it wrong from the start, and it was sized for a baby. Whoops!

So, yeah, my first mask was a total disaster from start to finish. I ended up cannibalizing some of its components later, though, so at least it wasn’t a total loss. And it was a valuable learning experience. I got many hours of practice ironing, patterning, winding the bobbin, threading the bobbin, threading the machine, back stitching, and seam-ripping. So much seam-ripping. My next mask ended up the correct size, and its construction was a lot more stable. And the masks after that showed even more improvement!

I’d like to think I’m finally getting the hang of this whole mask-making business, but I don’t want to jinx it haha.

コロナウイルスの感染拡大を防ぐため、みんなが

外出を自粛し協力しています。

そこで、みんながどんなふうに時間を使おうかと

思っていると思います。

外で遊べないから、友達と会えないからストレスがたまる

などあると思うので、勉強の後にゲームをしたり、動画を見たり

良いと思います。ただ、その時にTVで流れる世界で起こっている

悲惨な映像、情報に目をそらしてばかりもいられません。

こんな時だけど自分にも出来ることがあるかもしれない、

自分ではねのけるべきこともあるはず、と思って、他人任せに

出来ないことに向き合う気持ちが、この先の自分たちを救うの

だろうと思います。

とりあえず、みんなには、自分のためにもなるこのことを

お勧めします。それは、お母さんのお手伝い。できれば、

最初から最後までを経験してみてください。

お料理だったら、買い出し、作る、食べる、洗う、しまうまで。

一連の流れを知ることは、為になりますよ！

洗濯なら、仕分け、洗濯する、ほす、たたむ、しまうまで。

どうか達成感を味わってみてくださいね。