Once a month a kimono - March

This month has been a busy kimono month for me! I've worn 4 kimono this month:

  
  
Seeing these outfits together makes it difficult to choose a favorite of these 4...

The light purple iromuji with peach hakata obi I think is very classy and good if you go to a tea ceremony.

The same light purple iromuji with a different obi. Fun to see how lighting makes colors different ^_^.

Crème komon with colored cartwheels and a black-red hakata obi. This kimono feels great and is a good size for me.

The orange furisode will always be one of my favorites, simply because it's the first kimono I ever bought, and through it I've met Misuchi.

I guess my winner for this month is number 3! What do you think?

Sakura Matsuri - more pictures

You can find pictures of Sakura Matsuri here, and I'll update if I have more. But I can't resist posting a few here...

Sakura Matsuri 2012

The city of Amstelveen hosts a Sakura Matsuri every year, but unfortunately that's mostly on a weekday. Until this year! This year it was held on a Sunday, so perfect for our Kimono de Jack NL group to go ^_^.

We had a great turn-up, and at some point it looked like we were the event instead of the sakura. When we were taking pictures near a blossoming sakura-tree, even press-photographers were taking pictures!

It was a lovely day with lots of sun, the Matsuri was great and nice to see members of our group again and meet new ones. Let's hope next year the Matsuri will be held on a Saturday or Sunday again...

More pictures
Pictures from Linda

Going to Kodo

Tonight my boyfriend and I are going to see Kodo at the theatre. We've already seen shows of Yamato and Tenko, so I'm very curious about this show.

You've already seen my outfiton one of my dummy, but I've actually never worn this kimono. But instead of the big red shibori obiage, I've picked a pale pink with bits of shibori (a gift from Misuchi). And, just as used on the dummy, a black obi age used as a date eri (tips about putting a date eri between a juban an kimono collar are most welcome ^_^).

I'll let you know about the show ^_^

Nihon Buyo

I'm so late with posting this, sorry!!! Tuesday march 6th Misuchi, her boyfriend and me went to see Nihon Buyo in Amsterdam. It was amazing ^_^

In total we saw 3 kind of dances, a modern dance called Senoo, a Kabuki-like dance called Awamochi and the main dance, Sekidera Komachi. The last dance was performed by Nishikawa Senzo (79 years old!), who has the title of Living National Treasure of Japan!

All 3 dances were beautiful, but Awamochi I liked best because it was the most traditional dance. The dance performed by Nishikawa Senzo was also beautiful, but his movements were so subtle, too subtle for me. The dancers of the first dance wore very pretty pink ro komon with purple sakura leaves.

And we were not the only ones in kimono! It was kimono-spotting at the theatre ^_~ Not many people were in kimono, but we saw at least 5, at that was much! There was a very old lady, in a greenish kimono but with an obi that looked like it had lace on it, very sweet.

Next week I've got 2 events for kimono! First is a performance Kodo, Taiko Performing Arts Ensemble in Eindhoven. Second is the Cherry Blossom Festival in Amstelveen, at the Japanese Park. Very looking forward to both events!

Unexpected kitsuke

Why unexpected? Well, I thought it was going to be a normal Sunday, without any kimono/kitsuke. But we heard that an aunt of my boyfriend was coming, and I knew she wanted to see me in kimono. So, I did some kitsuke after all today... :-)

   

The kimono is an iromuji that I bought in a pack of 6 iromuji from Ichiroya. It's a lovely light purple and it's got a beautifully woven pattern of leaves and streams. I paired it with a peach hakata nagoya obi (bought from Bangasa Kimono) and a purple obiage/obijime set. And that turned out really pretty!

Every month a kimono - February

  

For my personal challenge Every month a kimono - February I put on the kimono that was on my dummy in January, the beautiful purple early Showa komon I bought from Ume Bloom.
I tried to pair it with my purple-pink-silver fukuro obi and with my silver-birds fukuro obi, but somehow I really like the obi I'm wearing it with on the pictures.

If you look closely, you can see that I've got 3 collars... The first layer is a tsuke-eri, because the second layer is my juban. This juban, a lovely red vintage juban, doesn't have an opening to put an erishin in... So what I tried to do is give the juban some 'grip'(?) with the tsuke-eri.

What do you think of these 3 layers, is it okay or do you have an idea how to do this otherwise?



For my dummy I tried a different obi on my only furisode. The only combination I've made with this furisode, is with the silver-birds fukuro obi. The obi I paired it with on my dummy has almost the same orange, but is very bold. Please don't look at how the obi is on the front! I've made the fukura suzume musubi with a biyousugata, but I calculated a tiny bit wrong. But main question... What do you think of the combo? Is this an option for Holland's Cherry Blossom Festival?