March Fudangi Friday with Sakura

🌸🌸🌸 Belated Fudangi Friday with blooming sakura 🌸🌸🌸

This is a cotton kimono with a lace overlay share fukuro obi, mint green obiage, and brown obijime. The sakura are blooming here so I wanted to do an ode to them (pink, green, and brown for petals, leaves, and branches) without outshining them.

First Postpartum Kitsuke - Spring Edition

After just having a baby, I can't really do kitsuke on myself, so out comes the trusty sewing mannequin! I got this cotton kimono and obi fairly recently and was dying to see them together. I tried to use colors in the obi for this ensemble to help keep the spring look, since an orange kimono could easily lean toward autumn.

Zelda Symphony Ensemble

My husband and I went to the Orpheum last night to see the Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses show last night. I wanted to wear a more formal ensemble, so I finally had an opportunity to wear this yellow crestless irotomesode that I bought last year. It also gave me a chance to wear the new haori I bought recently. I chose a royal blue obiage for a pop of color. The obi I got recently from eBay. It's a cream-based taiko-gara fukuro obi with lavender and blue karabana. The sanbuhimo is light pink with silver threads. The obidome is handmade with items from the craftstore. The camera unfortunately did not pick up the true vividness of the colors.

Hitoe Season Comes Early in Memphis

As often is the case in the Southern USA, warm temperatures come quite early here in Memphis. This weekend, it was over 80 degrees F, and wearing awase in that kind of heat (and with rampant humidity!) can be torture. Outside of Japan, it's a little easier to not follow the traditional rules of awase, hitoe, and usamono. By Japanese standards, I shouldn't switch until mid-May to hitoe. But with it being as hot as it was, I went ahead and wore hitoe this past Saturday.

This hitoe komon has a geometric design, and I paired it with a simple green and cream hakata nagoya obi. The accessories are a purple and orange obiage with wisteria embroidery and a lighter purple obijime.

Thanks for looking!

Blue and blue!

We had a casual tea ceremony practice last weekend, so I opted for a fairly casual ensemble. I usually am not a big fan of monochromatic ensembles, but I liked this combination of the light blue striped edo komon with the darker blue nagoya obi with karabana motif. It's not totally monochromatic due to the pale pink obijime, white chirimen obiage, and zori with brown hanao, but you get the idea. 

My husband is getting better and better at doing these photos, and he decided that I should do a dance pose for one of them, so here's a "bonus":

It's from a dance I've been learning called "Nozaki Kouta". I'm still very much a beginner, so my apologies if my pose is not great! 

Lastly, I've got several conventions coming up, so please be looking for some more kimono and geisha henshin photos soon!

Butterfly Komon

I FINALLY DID MY TAXES! Since I got married this last year, I have put off doing my federal taxes since I knew it would be more complicated (and I do them myself). I finally bit the bullet and did it this past weekend, so I rewarded myself with this komon that I have wanted for a while (just the kimono, not the obi and accessories on the model):

I'm likely going to wear it for hanami this year - unless it gets really warm and I have to do the usual early switch to hitoe... I may tough it out no matter what! Now to figure out which obi and accessories to use with it!

Hanami 2013

Last weekend was absolutely beautiful, and the sakura have finally bloomed, so we went hanami at the Memphis Botanic Garden. My friend Heidi got the opportunity to wear her new pink kimono. She's 6 feet tall, so we aren't able to make an ohashori, but it was pretty nonetheless. My sister let me dress her, and she did things a little Western style by wearing white strappy sandals and a big pink floppy hat! ^_^ Josh also wore kimono - his pale blue kimono with hakama. I wore my black sakura houmongi to blend in with the trees XD. We had a picnic in the pavillion and even had some onlookers take some photos of us! We had a great time!

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