I like... cats...

Me:      "Hello, my name is Jackie."

Group: "Hi, Jackie."

Me:      "...and I like... cats..."

There should be an equivalent of AA for cat people like me. No, I don't have a million cats in my apartment - just one fluffy little spoiled demon. But I love them as a motif on kimono, and fortunately for me, designers are into this trend as well. One of my favorite sellers on Rakuten was having a sale, so I picked up some things - mostly cat themed things...

Black cat and temari tabi (just look at the pink bow around its neck!)

Cream black cat hanhaba obi

Burgundy cat "peeking" nagoya obi (its red eyes are kind of freaky though!)

Lavender tabi with colorful dots

And biyosugata (Thanks, Bebe Taian!). This one is hanhaba sized, mostly for yukata musubi.

So yeah... 猫がだいすきです！ >^-^<

Mid-South Con/Go Hime Entry and Sakura Festival

This past weekend was Mid-South Con, a local sci-fi/fantasy convention. They do include some anime things, but for the most part, it's not my cup of tea. Josh and I decided to go on Saturday mostly based on being bored, and my sister was doing some promotional stuff there. Last minute, I decided to do kimono hime style with my blue sparrow and take Taisho Roman kimono. Here's the result:

The orange colored "obidome" is actually a Pikachu button because the little pink rose obidome I had on broke... I also decided to enter this in the Go Hime contest. Here's to hoping!

On Sunday, we had our local Sakura Festival. This is the first year that we've had to do it indoors and there were no sakura trees blooming! Usually, the blossoms are almost gone by now because our weather gets warm early, but it's been an usually cold spring so far, so the buds haven't bloomed yet. And it was rainy on top of being cold!

Anyway, my dance group performed traditional and modern dances, and they also had taiko drummers and various stations with crafts or other culture things to do. Here's some pictures from the day:

The entrance

Wasting time before the performance

The guys did a traditional dance called "Kojo no Tsuki".

Our modern dance to "Oh! Enka"

Our traditional dance was "Sakura Sakura".

Our traditional dance was "Sakura Sakura".

Bon odori dancing; this one is "Tokyo Ondo".

Bon odori dancing; this one is "Nintama Ondo".

Our dance group =)

Some of the little gifts for sale, mostly homemade!

Sachi-san and me. I love her style!

Sachi-san made tea for the guests

Sachi-san made tea for the guests

Sachi-san did kimono dressing, too!

Me in my yukata. (Please note that I'm wearing tabi because of the dance.)

Taiko drummers

Taiko drummers

THE COLORS!!

This was a super impulse buy today:

But OH MY GOD, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE COLORS?! I've been looking for either a wide stripe or color block kind of style kimono, and this was on Shinei today. I'm in love!!! It's 163cm, which is a little short for me, but for $20, I don't care.

I'm not sure how to coordinate it yet, so suggestions are appreciated. =)

Vintage Buys - Diamond Kimono and Crane Juban

As much as I love new and modern pieces, I've been itching to get some more vintage ones. Since I got permission to start our own Kimono de Jack here in  Memphis (Twitter -- Facebook -- Blog), I figured it would be a good time to do some kimono hime with some vintage kimono. Truly, the only vintage kimono I own are these two. Pretty (well, and one is crazy...) but both are BLUE. And I found so many kimono with blue as the predominant color in this search. But the one I ended up purchasing caught my eye because it was 1. NOT blue, and 2. the diamonds make it look kind of like a big playing card.

I also grabbed this juban since I own none with longer sleeves.

Now I have to figure out how to coordinate the kimono... =)

Sakura Kitsuke

Josh and I had another one of our casual "basic" tea ceremonies this weekend. We usually have one once a month that our sensei does not attend (he lives in Ohio and flies down once a month), and it's more for introducing the public to the basics of tea ceremony. They are super casual, so I usually use the chance to wear more casual kimono instead of the more plain iromuji for our other classes.

Today, I took advantage of the chic tea ceremony principle of wearing motifs slightly early. I chose a pink komon with stripes and sakura, a green gingham obi, a peach obiage, a cream sanbuhimo, and a pink rose obidome (made by me). The green and the peach colors were chosen to bring out those tones in the design.

Also wore this new double sakura kanzashi I got from Kimonomachi. Just an extra touch of spring! =D

 Josh wore his light blue kimono and black hakama, and modernized it a bit with a neat hat. I love it!!

 Silly picture of Josh "praising" the moon. He's a night person lol XD

Blue Botan Kakeshita and Pink Rose Yukata

It's been over a month since my last post! Time got away from me this past month!!

So here's just an update here on what I've bought recently:

A blue kakeshita with red and white botan:

And a black-based yukata with pink roses (and silver glitter!!):

I didn't need the kakeshita for any real reason other than I just wanted it ;) (well, maybe I'll use it for a maiko henshin since it's not as obvious of a kakeshita as some), nor did I really need the yukata, but my dance group is performing again for our local sakura festival at the end of the month, and almost everyone is wearing black-based flowery yukata. I have about 10 yukata, but none fitting that description, so I found this in a TL and well... it'll be here next week XD.