bingata, my love

I proudly present to you my love: a bingata komon. After having bought it from Yamatoku in october 2008, it stayed in my drawers for a long time, as I was too scared to even try to pair it with any of my obi; they are so colorful, that many a time, I feel I have too many chioces and yet none being the perfect, THE match.

That is until one fine day when I decided it was time to break the ice, and finaly paired it with my black, kikko nagoya obi and my red shibori obiage. It was a good outfit, in my opinion, but I felt there was something missing from it; again it was put in the drawers, for a better chance.

Next time I got to wear it, I pulled all of my obi and, in a crazy afternoon, after a lot of trials, I found a better match: my bluemarine obi with large golden karakusa and a purple and white bokashi obiage. Again, a very nice surprise and, at the time, I thought I found the ideal match.

 That is until I realised that the blue in the obi was drawing all my attention to the blue in the kimono, making the other colors pale, and since I love my bingata to bits, I decided I still have to look for a better match.

One obi I did not consider previously was my olive hakata. I bought it as a part of a 10 obi lot from Yahoo Japan Auctions, and when it arrived, I saw that is was sewn in places, and it was too short to make even a tsunodashi or a bunko musubi the traditional way.

So that will be my next challenge: pair this beauty with a new obi, hopefully, THE match!

the apple musubi..

In my last post I showed you a new musubi I've been trying... Now here's the tutorial!

I did mine in the front and the slided it in the back.

You will need a fukuro obi that has at least 30cm of design on the tesaki part.

a. fold the tesaki diagonally and fan it, like in the pic below; I secured it with a small rubber band:

b. fold the rest in half and wrap it twice around your waist, finishing with the taresaki part over the tesaki part:

c. make a knot just like here:

d. bring the folded tesaki under the taresaki, but over the knot you previously made...

e. ... and then fold the taresaki part in 4 (fold in half and then again in half), putting it over the tesaki and secure the whole thing with a koshihimo:

f. unfold the rest of the taresaki...

g. ... and then prepare it just like you would for a otaiko and place the makura and part of the taresaki right over the koshihimo:

here is where you add the obiage, which I only added later - I forgot :oops:

h. continue doing the otaiko, and secure the musubi with the obijime; I forgot to take a picture of that too.

i. this is where you slide it to your back; if you didn't use padding (like me :) ), you will need to add something inside the taiko part, to make it look bigger/fluffier; I used a purse wrapped in a furoshiki:

j. lift the ends of the folded part of the taresaki, to create a pouched shape to your musubi and you're done:

If anyone feels I left anything out, please let me know. And I apologize for the non kimono presentation, but it's past 11 pm here.

I hope you'll enjoy this one :)

shiozawa hitoe and wool obi

I've had this kimono for a while and only recently learned that the way the silk is weaved comes from Shiozawa, hence it's called Shiozawa style kimono. It's hitoe and comes from a lot of three that I bought last year from Yahoo Japan. Cream background and weaving is with black and wine red.

The heat outside made me think to downgrade it a bit, by pairing it with a pink-ish wool obi, a maroon indian shawl-turned obiage/heko obi - still thinking about it - and a white home- crochetted, flat obijime, tied in a kai-no-kuchi style.

I am still contemplating whether to wear my tsuke eri or simply wear it as a yukata - maybe a BIG NO-NO but I find the idea at least interesting.

Plus, I have this furoshiki and a pair of geta (got them as trades with a fellow Immortal Geisha Forum members) planned to accessorize the entire ensemble.

I am really excited to wear this tonight. I'll post pics of the final outfit probably somtime tomorrow.

This is the "sometime tomorrow" part; I ended up wearing it as hitoe kimono with the tsuke eri and no juban. It was quite cool.

New flowers... after a long break

Well, yesterday, after a long break, I couldn't keep myself from not buying this pretty cool ensemble from Yahoo Japan Auctions:





It consists of a Michiyuki - my very first one, and what find for a first: bingata - and a sky blue iromuji.

And to top it all, I only paid JPY500, as in USD 5.30.. How could I resist? Of course, add to that the Japan Auction Center commissions and fees + shipping and it doesn't sound as cheap anylonger, but still, if I were in Japan, this would have cost me under 10 bucks.

Now I do have another 2 iromuji, but they are the common pink you can find on ebay and even though those are very nice, I don't think I can compare the color. It's completely different. You know those little girls that squeal when they find or get something they really like..? That's how I feel right now, and I am already planning coordination looking in my obi drawers. Which reminds me... I have to take a picture of all my flowers one of these days.


*Squeal some more*

First post... first thoughts

Thus begins my first typing in Japanese. I have been struggling for a while to put it all together and up and working, but I am so proud of myself!! I spent almost 2 hours with Google translating for me back and forth English/Japanese and the other way around.. and still I am not sure I found the correct form of what I wanted to say so, just to make sure, I put it in English as well.

So why Tansu Flowers..? For all those not knowing, a "tansu" is a traditional Japanese chest of drawers aka wardrobe, apparently the best way to keep kimono and all things made of silk. And flowers... I kind of think of all my kimono as fragile flowers.

I've always been fascinated by Japan, and like any other ignorant, lived happily with the idea that geisha are high class prostitutes - shame on me... that is until I saw the infamous Memoirs of A Geisha and got mesmerized by all the kimono the ladies wore. That was the first thing that changed my mind, and for that I will forever be in thankful. I know now, looking back, that it wasn't a very good movie, but I still like it, and still watch it from time to time. A lot of people think it's a crap movie, that it doesn't do justice to kitsuke and to Japanese culture, but for me, it was THE thing that started my hunger for more. So, at least for that, this movie has my appreciation.

From February 2008 and up until now I've started buying kimono and all necessities, ending up now with over 20 kimono and about 30 obi which I love to bits.

Learning to put it all up correctly was a whole other story. After seeing the movie, the first thing that came to my mind was that I NEEDED a kimono. So I went on and searched patterns for sewing one. I will look for some pictures.. hopefully I still have at least one somewhere.

*To be continued*