Thursday, May 4, 2017

Kodomo no Hi (こどもの日) 2017

I put together this ensemble in honor of kodomo no hi (こどもの日) tomorrow. The kimono is pink cotton seersucker, and I made the matching hanhaba obi and haneri out of cotton nursery fabric with a pattern of baby ducks. It's a rather lightweight ensemble, but our weather has been around 80 degrees F (about 27 degrees C) for the past few weeks. This was also my first time doing musubi with a sanjuuhimo, but I'm happy with the result!


Friday, April 7, 2017

Hydrangea Yukata and Too Small Heko Obi

Today's kitsuke was a lesson in problem solving! I ordered a heko obi for this yukata, and the dimensions were listed incorrectly. Instead of the adult size that was listed, I received a child's size... It was a good buy so I figured it was not worth returning. At first I thought I might just use it as a puchi-heko obi or even for fabric, but then I decided to see if I could find a way to tie it. One of my favorite books (ファブリック帯の本) has many ways to tie heko obi, including using long scarves, so I modeled it after those musubi. I also used a hanhaba obi tying tool (kind of like biyosugata but for hanhaba) to help provide support. I hope you like it!


Thursday, April 6, 2017

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.



Monday, March 20, 2017

The Return of the Immortal Geisha Forums!

I am so excited to hear that the Immortal Geisha forums are finally coming back online! While the Facebook page has definitely been nice in many regards, the forums served as a wealth of knowledge, and it will be nice to be able have people add to that knowledge bank again. Here is the official message that former members received a few days ago:

"Good Day Everyone,

We are very excited to announce that after a 2+ year hiatus, the Immortal
Geisha Forums shall be re-launched!

Monday, January 23, 2017

30 Weeks Pregnant Kitsuke

For most of my pregnancy, I have avoided doing any kitsuke - even for practice. With hormones making me generally not feel well for a good amount of the time and (of course) an ever-changing body to deal with, it just felt like too much. However, this past weekend, I had a good reason to try to get dressed in kimono. It was the annual local Japanese food event, "Oishii Japan", and my tea ceremony group was asked to do a short presentation. The outfit I ultimately ended up choosing was not something I would usually wear for tea, but I went with it considering it was a casual event, and I had a limited number of things that still fit and would be comfortable enough. 


Wednesday, December 28, 2016

2016 Recap

I apologize for the long hiatus on this blog. 2016 was a pretty bad year for me kimono-wise just because I didn't have the ability (surgery and really rough 1st trimester of pregnancy) or the opportunity to wear them as much as I would have liked. I made a small collage of the outfits I wore or styled.


The most pervasive theme I notice is that I focused more strongly on casual outfits. Cottons and tsumugi were favorites, and bold obiage were used to make the kimono more youthful and modern. There were a few colored haneri and tabi uses early in the year, but since most of the later occasions were more formal or for tea ceremony practice, I stuck with mostly white. As usual, I pretty much stayed away from vintage and kimono hime. (They look great on many people, but just not on me!) The loudest outfit by far was the playing card yukata that I styled for a fashion show in July. It really can't be seen in the photo, but there is a small silver dice obikazari, and the obidome is a roulette wheel. The last kimono I wore this year was a blue shibori hitoe kimono for a shamisen performance. Technically, it's a pregnancy kitsuke since I was 13 weeks at the time, but I wasn't really showing then so fitting was essentially the same.

Unfortunately, I don't see myself posting too frequently in the coming year as well due to having a baby on the way. I hope to have at least one pregnancy kitsuke to show before it's all over though. And who knows? Maybe I'll have some cute baby kitsuke in the future in addition to my own!

Thursday, June 30, 2016

June Chanoyu Okeiko Weekend

I got a lot of practice for tea ceremony last weekend! We had a big group class on Saturday, and then I had a private lesson on Sunday.

Saturday's outfit: 
Pink ro komon with kikyou, cream Nagoya obi with hyotan, purple summer obijime, mint summer obiage, summer zori from Calen Blosso