Spring flowers

When I first started my blog I did so for friends and family back home. It was easier than sending out mass emails, as I had been doing for some time. While I know many of those friends and family (Hi Aunt Linda! Hi Sharon! Hi Ann! Hi Lorna! Hi Liz!) still read, at least occasionally, things have changed. Comments are mostly from fellow foreign women in Japan.

Discovering, and slowly beginning to join the online community of foreign wives in Japan has been somewhat of a surprise, but a good surprise in so many ways. I've virtually gotten to know an amazing group of women who are strong, intelligent, friendly, and super funny.

A number of months ago, when one of my bloggy friends was struggling with pregnancy stress, I watched as another blogger reached out virtually and physically across the kilometres that divided them, and sent a surprise care package that lifted the spirits of the mum-to-be.

Ever since then, in a combination of pay-it forward and karmic balancing, I've wanted to send that blogger a parcel. I don't (yet) have an oven, and she doesn't need me making her baked goods anyways, so I went with my usual, I knit her a scarf. I spent HOURS pouring over online patterns trying to find one that featured a certain type of tree. Plenty of oak leaves and maples too, but not what I was looking for. Then I remembered a post she wrote, about her garden finally showing the signs of spring. There was a picture of beautiful little white flowers... kinda like these ones:


With all the stresses of the earthquake and moving and everything else I often found it tough to gather the mental focus to knit lace, and the scarf didn't get to her for the chill spring days... But I hope she enjoys it just the same, a reminder that the flowers of friendship bloom all year round!