Japanese

February 23: Used clothes recycled by Mie
	How much items surround us in the daily life! Today, our homemakers' group, Group of Friends, have a meeting on how to make use of old clothes. During this winter, we have been thinking about to check our clothes, and we came together bringing old clothes. We have sorted them into the categories such as for children, female, male, and others.
	First, we had a meeting as usual. In our group, we make it a rule to have a time to read books in order to understand the meaning of the event.
	Today, the text was taken from an episode on "How I created 'Sweater Dolls' in my life as raising children without textbooks", written by Shuuko Tanaka and published from Fujin-no-tomo (Females' Friend) company. She said in the book, "When my five-year-old boy was playing with a doll, he was at a loss because the doll didn't sit in a stable position as he wanted. I have long been kept it in my mind. One day after eight years, when I was sorting old sweaters, I suddenly got an idea to make the doll, this is it." We could share the feeling what the motivation was, when one started to make something original by hands.
	After sorting old clothes, we check them what items could be reused by other members. I got a pink-colored sweater at a cheap price. Those members who raise small children picked up sweaters and pants and bought them. After that, we put old clothes into boxes to be sold at a bazaar. Finally, we picked up some shrunk sweater to make the Sweater Dolls.
	We make Sweater Dolls using paper pattern taken from MS. Shuuko Tanaka's book. Today, we cut out clothes and we will finish the Doll in home
	Here, they are cutting clothes from old overcoats to make scissors cases.
	Old clothes to be recycled were picked up by a group called "Work Space Oak Tree" which is a volunteer-based activity to help handicapped people. They will put old clothes to a bazaar or sell them as waste-cloth-mops. We always appreciate them because they always help us by recycling old clothes we had gathered. Next time, we would like to display each other the Sweater Dolls and scissors cases we made.

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