In Stitches

Saturday was Hari-Kuyo at the Hashirimizu Shrine.  Caroline, our great, ever-faithful, events coordinator found this!  She, Gina and I headed out on the rainy day to see what it was all about.
This is what the Yokosuka City Events page said:

Needle Mass(針供養)
Needle Mass or hari-kuyo is traditional event when Japanese women
would gather their broken needles and take them to the shrine. There, they would take a break from any sewing and wish for their needlework to improve. Then, they offer a prayer into the broken needle and insert it into a tofu.
When: March 10th (Sat) 11:00 ~ 12:00 Where: Hashirimizu Shrine (走水神社)



We got there, signed into the registry and handed over those spent needles.  They then served sweet bean soup:

Gina with her Adzuki Sweet Bean Soup & Tofu

Enjoying our soup - we were given gifts when we signed in

 We went up to the needle alter - you are to pray for a blessing on your needlework.

The Alter for the needle blessing, complete with fish, fresh fruit and veggies, nori, a tofu cake, and lots of broken/spent needles...

The tofu cake: you place your bent/broken/spent needle in the tofu, say a prayer for blessing and say "Thank You!"

Blurry picture, but the enclosure for the alter had various needlework hanging up.  This one was very pretty..

Needles that were brought in...

More needles.  Mine are the ones in the piece of tape near the top, center (above the green paper and the yellow lid).

Fish on the alter - Red Snapper?

Statue on the cleansing basin

The gift we were each given

While the idea was to take a break from your needlework and ask for a blessing on your upcoming needlework, I was thinking more along the lines of a good tailor...