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Lately I've haven't been doing kitsuke that much, but I have been making pictures for my photography-course.

This one I had to post. It's (still) Red on one of my dummies.

Red tsukesage combo 2 & 3

This weekend I tried my red tsukesage with the black & white obi Misuchi gave me. It could work, but I think the kikko hanhaba works better. And what works even better than the kikko hanhaba, is the reverse side of that same hanhaba! That has a light brown color. not the same as the flowers, but a bit darker. After I had Red (that's an easy nickname!) on, I dressed my dummy in it with the reverse side of the hanhaba, and that is a perfect combination.

One thing I also noticed is that the tsukesage is a bit too small width-wise. I don't know if you can see, but the back seam is too far to the left. I did this because otherwise the frontpanel ends at the middle, and I find it prettier when it's more to the right.

All I need now is a trick to keep the frontpanel more to the right when you have no ohashori. I have to keep pulling it to the right. But I really do love the kimono!

Finally a kimono closet

Long live IKEA!!

Finally I've got a kimono closet. Not a real tansu unfortunately, we don't have the space and I don't have the money yet, but probably in the future there will be one...

Because I have a few days off, and so does my boyfriend, and the weather wasn't good enough to tour in our cabriolet, we decided to take a trip to IKEA. Yesterday I went throught the catalog a final time to see if there actually were drawer-closet that had the size of a tatoshi, and there actually were a few.

It has 4 drawers.
The bottom one now holds my kimono...






The middle one holds my juban, zori, hanhaba obi, purse and a few more kitsuke items...






And these 2 little drawers both hold obi. The left drawer also has my obiage, obijime, haneri and a towel for padding...






and the right drawer has, beside obi, the rest you need at kitsuke (obi makura, obi clips, koshihimo etc.).






And here it is with my kimono/kitsuke books on top of it.

I'm sure I will re-arrange it very soon, but now I just wanted to store all my kimono-goods in it.

Accessoires

Things you can never have enough when you're 'into' kimono, are obijime (obi-cords) and obiage (obi-sashes). And again Misuchi 'supplied' me with a few more ^_^
Although I've been able to use my green and darkpink obijime/obiage sets, with almost all my kimono surprisingly, she gave me 6 obijime and 3 obiage.

She also gave me 3 obi; 1 black & white of which I think may be a good combo with the red tsukesage, 1 bright blue obi with red flowers (Misuch got the same obi but that black instead of blue, of which she said we both just have to wear it at the same time) and a beautiful brown woven obi also with flowers. This last one has a very rustic look, very pretty and it will look perfect on my black & brown kimono.

With these last 2 kimono I've come to a humble collection of 9 kimono. And I have to say that I really need a kimonocloset. Unfortunately it will not be a real tansu (maybe in the future when I have more money and very important, more space), but there will come a nice closet with drawers especially for my kimono!

Red with golden-ish flowers

This red tsukesage, also awase or lined, with golden-ish flowers I also got from Misuchi. The color is such a beautiful red, almost bloedrood as we say in Dutch, which translates as as red as blood. Personally that's one of my favorite colors.

And... it's the first kimono that combines with my kikko hanhaba obi! I've had that obi for I think almost a year now? No, since just before Christmas last year. But I haven't been able to wear it with a kimono because it didn't match any. I almost thought about trading it... luckily I didn't!

I tied the clamshell musubi, but unfortunately the back of my kimono is a bit wrinkled. But still, I like this kimono also very much.

Do you think this hanhaba obi is a good combination?

Frontpage!

Something very different and not kimono... Last week I made a pretty picture of a lily that we have in our garden. The photo turned out to be very good.

On a mac-oriented Dutch forum you can send in pictures for their homepage, that changes every 2 weeks. And this week that picture is my lily!

Olivegreen kimono

2 Saturdays ago I went to visit Misuchi, and had a great time. We talked about kimono and other things, and we also visited the Japanese antique-shops where she works. It was very hot and sunny that day, but it didn't interfere with us having fun! Because I did some things for Misuchi's art-site she gave me this beautiful olivegreen kimono, a tsukesage if I am right (still struggling with kimono and kitsuke glossary), with little carts on it.

She knew that I had an orange nagoya obi with a (royal) cart on it, and hoped that it would match this kimono. And guess what? It's a perfect match!! It's even a bit too long. The first time I had it on, my ohashori was actually too long! These pictures I made the second time. To make a shorter ohashori I tied the koshihimo not just above the hips but more on my waist.

I am so happy with it, it's just a gorgeous kimono.


Thank you Misuchi!