Kitsuke practice

Yesterday I had a day off, so I did a little kitsuke practice.

First I tried blue iro-tomesode with peacock feather-obi, because that's what I'm going to wear to the theatre next week. I used 2 towels for padding and I watched the kitsuke-dvd by Ichiroya (pressing play, pause, go to mirror, go back to tv, press play again, and so on...), which helped a lot.


Then I tried the black-pink komon with my new juban. It's a perfect match sleevewise, I'm so happy that I got it. And I also got my pink obijime and obiage.

Next time I'll use a trick Misuchi mailed me for a perfect collar, hopefully it will go well.

Waiting...

Finally I've found a juban with sleeves long enough for my black-pink komon!












And I've also bought some more accessoires:
2 Hakata silk datejime








an eri sugata collar, or easy collar








an obi-clip, always handy








a set of 2 eri shin, 3 koshi himo, an obi-makura, an obi-ita with straps and a kohrin-belt







and last but not least a pink obiage & obijime set to go with the same black-pink komon.

New musubi: Tsunodashi

But with a hanhaba obi instead of a 'normal' obi.

It took a couple of times to get the length of the tesaki, or the beginning of the obi, right. At least 3 times I had the obi wrapped around the dummy's body and make the actual knot, and when I wanted to make the tsunedashi I came to the conclusion that the end of my obi, or the tare, was to short to finish the tsunedashi.
But, practice makes perfect, or almost, so after a few times I got the right length on both the tesaki and tare so I could finish this musubi.

The result is a very cute tsunedashi musubi :-)

Dummy duet

Finally I dressed both my dummies with kimono. Because I have just one accessoires-set, I dressed one of my dummies with my wintery komon and hanhaba obi, and one with my pretty orange furisode. For the komon I tied the obi with a clamshell musubi, but when I already dressed them I found some other musubi for hanhaba obi on the IG-forums. Maybe I will try one these musubi later this week. We have a party later this week, and one of our friends gave me the second dummy, that's why I dressed them.

On the furisode I tried to make a fukura suzume, or mandarine duck, musubi. I figured out that it's really difficult even on a dummy, so it must be really hard doing this musubi on yourself (and yes, there are people who can!). So for a first try I think it's not thàt bad, but the wings of the musubi are a bit big, and they remind me a bit of Mickey Mouse's ears haha...

(very late edit: on this link you can see how it this musubi should be)

iro-tomesode with peacock obi

Yesterday I changed the komon my dummy wore the last 2 or 3 weeks into my blue iro-tomesode because I wanted to know how it would look if I combined it with my orange peacock nagoya obi. Oh, and I had my first try at padding! Because these dummies have a very small waist, I had to use 2(!) towels to pad out the waist.

Do you think this is a good combination (colorwise, themewise, seasonwise) or do you think this combination is better?

I also wanted to dress my second dummy, but I realized that I only have 1 accessoires-set for kitsuke! So now I have to try and look for a juban (but first measure the sleeve length), obiage/obijime-set and an accessoires-set that I can order at 1 seller, to save money and shipping costs.

Dummy number 2

Today finally my second dummy arrived at her new home ^_^
Hopefully I will have enough time this weekend to do some kitsuke on her, so my first dummy might not feel so lonely haha. I want to try if my blue irotomesode matches with my orange peacockfeather obi. I'll try to post some pictures!

This new dummy I got from a friend who temporarily stalled some of her stuff at our place, and also this dummy. So when she came to get all her stuff I already said to her, if you don't use the dummy anymore I would love to have it... And here she is at last!

Zori

The last year and 4 months my boyfriend worked at a firm that also had offices in America, Isreal and Tokyo. And a few months ago one of his Japanese colleagues came to one of the offices here in Holland. So my boyfriend knew this colleague and asked him a favour. He asked him if he could take a pair of zori with him...

And here they are!