New Items No. 21

Some time has passed now, since I last wrote something. I have been quite busy learning for my exams. Tomorrow there will be my last exam for this year. Than I will have some more time. Also to post a bit more. I will be helping out at the European Iaido Championship this year. And for the party I’m planing to wear wafuku. I’m working on a Obi which will just fit perfectly to the theme. But no spoilers yet.
In the last months I bought some new Items. After that, I will start saving again. But for now. Let me introduce you to a full shibori awase kimono. Looking closeup you will see, how amazing this is. It all handmade and for winter the best thing to keep you warm. The next kimono is a baby blue silk awase houmongi. I liked the color and the size was just perfect for me. So I really wanted it. It is nice and shiny. The flowers are peony which will make it good to wear in May.  The silk weave is rinzu, which is always quite shiny and soft.
I bought also new obiage, you never have enough of them. A pink, red , white, white with purple dots and a pink/light green one. The white one is for my tomesode, of which I haven’t taken pictures yet. But usually you wear white obiage and white obijime for tomesode.

And now we come to the obi. I wanted to buy more obi. So I found more obi. Starting with the nagoya obi. I found a really beautiful hakata obi, made of silk , in nice colors. It was sold a bolt and when I got it, you could see, that it had been sewn before. So I got my needles out and sew it together again. It is a hiraki obi, which mean it is not all sewn together, only the otaiko part is double.
Than I found a red one with pine trees and some flowers and a off white bamboo leafs and arrow heads obi. Both are quite lovely. On the white one I’m working just now. It has some visible stains, which I try to cover with some embroidery. I couldn’t see the stains on the picture because it was still stitched together. It seems to be never used but got the stains from being stored it in a not dry room for a long time.
The next one is a gold fukuro obi, for my furisode. And a maru obi with water mills. Which I thought, are quite unusual. From far they look a bit like snowflakes. I’m looking forward to wear all this stuff. I just hope for a meeting.

New Items No. 20

And here they are. The new things I orderd in the last months and which finally came. First my new striped hakama. It a umanori hakama , which means that the legs a separated. Not, like the    andon type, which is like a skirt. The striped pattern for hakama means it is a more formal type. I bought it for Iaido to wear with montsuki. When I judge I will have to wear it. So now after passing my yondan, I will have judge at taikai. I’m quite happy with it. even so it is a bit to wide for me, but that I can change.

Second it a obi I saw, and thought: “must have, must have, ….” And well here it is. It is really nice and I love it. Just lovely.

Third is a bag I bought. It is off pink and it is not as small as the other ones I have. It is really nice. It looks brand new.

Fourth is a haori, which seems a bit small , but the color is nice. A shibori silk one. And because there was enough fabric  left in the seems i could make it long enough for my arms. 

New Item No. 19

Woho, my new tatero komon is here. It is synthetic and after trying a stain remover pen, I noticed that the stains are removable. So it went into the washing machine and, tada, clean ans like brand new.  Uuuuh I’m so happy. Of tatero me “standing ro” which is simply that the stripes are going up and not horizontal. Ro is that gauze like fabric for summer. The pattern is quite small and in case you don’t recognize it, it is supposed to be distant mountains, which is a summer motive. I’m looking forward to wear it with my pink refurbished ro nayagoya obi. Of which to speak. I haven’t talked about it yet.

Okay,I got this nice asagao (morning glory) ro nagoyaobi with some major stains. I tried to wash it, but the stains stayed and the fabric got thinner. Because I thought it is a bit to thick to be a summer obi I removed the inner layer and replaced it with some modern stiff and thin fabric. And I got some nice lace, which I colored in blue to hide the holes on the side. But I now I realized blue wasn’t my best choice, cause after that I bought a great ro kimono and the color combination simply does not work. But now I got another kimono which fits ! Yeah.

At the moment I try to save some money for a big trip to an expensive Iaido/Jodo Seminar in Summer. Well, I really try. But I finally found the right lining for my tomesode and there is still a fabric bolt on the way, on which I’m really curious, because the seller didn’t roll of the whole motive , so there might be some surprises. And the other thing is that I can’t do much sewing at the moment cause there are lots of exams at the moment. Oh oh and I will do post on my present I got from my boyfriend.

New Items No. 18

They are here. My new things. I bought two obi just after Christmas. I want to buy  more obi now and less kimono. I think my collection is already quite big and includes a variety of colors and themes. So now I want more obi that I can match with them.
The first is a Nagoya Obi with a sea – mountain motive. Somehow it reminded me of home, only at my place there are no mountains. It has light peach cream color.
The other is a yellow fukuro obi with dark red cherry blossoms. I simply liked it, and thought it will well with a lot of my kimono because of the color.
As I just said, I don’t want to buy so many kimono anymore, but when I saw one kimono friend selling some of her items I couldn’t resist. But I have to say it really fits to my collection, because I don’t have one yet in that color. I don’t have pictures of it yet. I just can tell you , it is dark blue with sakura blossoms that looked like they are woven into the fabric. I think it will go well with my light blue nagoya obi, with which I had an “no-match” issue so far.
One more kimono is on the way… yes, but I don’t have the color yet. 😉

New Items No.17

Lots of things happend in the last… (oh gosh really) 13 Moths… *coughs*… Well, I found a boyfriend, wrote my magister thesis and finaly got my Diploma,, I couldn’t  find a job, I moved to Brunswick (Braunschweig) , where my Boyfriend lives , I started studying again , computer sience , and I’m now in the middle of that.

In the mean time, I had not much money und not much time to buy lots of stuff for my hobby. And the the other thing is, there is not kimono club here, with whom I could meet up and dress up.  Hamburg Kimono Club is a bit unbusy, too, but when they meet up  again , I will try to go there , too.

Some things I bought. But in one year it is really not much.

New items No.16

I haven’t been writing anything in the last months. I have been really busy with my master thesis and Iaido. And on top of that I found my dream man, who does not live at my town, so I drive every weekend to his place, to see him.

Well, of course I still ordered here and there some new items, so I will start of with the Obijime.

Second I got a new furisode, with which I fell in love the moment I saw it

and for matching reasons a fukuro obi

here are some tsuke obis, on which I got my hands on

and some nagoya obi

and a hanhaba obi

and a pair of geta

a ro kimono

and a new haori

Tatami geta

My latest projects were these tatami geta. You can wear them everyday with komon and tsumugi kimono. So they are not for formal event, but geta are never anyway. I bought these geta for a few bucks. The hanao were totally wracked and they looked quite used in the whole, but nothing else was wrong with them. I removed the tatami and lacquered it newly. I made new hanao and here you go. They look as good as new. I do love geta and I will collect as many as I can. There are lots of crazy once around which had all a reason to look like they look. The type I bought here is one of the old style ones. You often find them with some lacquered painting, called maki-e , on them. Mine had some stripes on the side, but they were only stickers. I removed them, because here and there the stripes were gone. I hope I can wear them soon.

New items No.15

yes here they are my newbies. I do had stole, but they look good with kimono. I won two of them at an auction. They are made of polyester velvet, one it black with red polka dots and on it wine red with flower on it. They keep you warm when it’s chilly. Why do I hate stole? Well, usually they are made of the same fabric as your dress or something similar which means thin synthetic fabric, which does not keep you warm, because there is no lining and it will slip all the time from your should and make you freeze. It never stays at the same place and you always have to keep an eye on it. Really stupid invention.

My other items is are obijime in pink with black-golden parts, a bright blue one with light blueparts, a one side violet other side white one and a green round one with some thin strings in pink(for furisode)

Than I got my first Ro obiage, in pink. (Summer weaving)

and some han eri in light blue, red with sakura and in royal blue. (Which you sew on your juban instead of the white you can have other nice combinations. )I have some more made of normal cotton fabric. It really is a nice contrast.Oh and a bright red date eri (fake collar)

These are all small things which make the whole hobby really fun. The combination of all these little things can sometimes be really challenging, especially if you don’t have the colors you need just in that moment.

Union jack Obi

When I was home the last time I had the sewing machine employed the whole weekend. I was planning a new obi. I got this really nice fabric from the store. It had big union jack woven into it. F or the last year I wanted to have a union jack obi. I had seen one at the “kimono hime” magazine and told myself that I really need one of these. So when I saw this fabric in the store I couldn’t do anything but buying it. This is my second obi I made myself. I make ready tied obi, because you don’t need one row 3,4m length of fabric. You can cut it up the way you need it and in the and you tuck the seams in a fold and no one ever will see it. The fabric is so stiff that even didn’t need something to stiffen it up. So when I was done sewing I was really proud and happy. When I do my next obi I will do a “how to” documentation and will post it here. It is really not difficult.

New items No.14

Here we go again new items. And this time they are actually brand new. I ordered to a friend in   Japan some things from rakuten and she send it with economy SAL and shipping to me. The first parcel came last week. I had to go to the tax office but luckily I didn’t have to pay anything. I the parcel was a yabane Kimono a purple hanhaba obi , a light purple hanhaba obi with kitties in it and some koshi himo. Well that’s a lot and I’m really happy. I wanted a yabane Kimono so badly and when I found this for a cheap price and these nice colors I couldn’t resist. Originally I wanted to buy it as set. They sell Kimono and Obi sometimes as a bundle. But when I wanted to order it, they only had the big bundle with Zori on sale. I didn’t want these Zori so I searched for the kimono and found it as single option and found in the same shop an obi that was similar to the one I they would have sold with the bundle. Koshi himo are the ties you need to dress and you can never have enough of them and lately some went missing. That’s why I ordered some more. The second obi with the kitties belongs to a kimono-obi bundle I bought, but the kimono is still on the way, and it will take some time till it’s here. I can just say one thing about it, more kitties. Why did I choose this complicated way ? Because rakuten shops only ship with EMS which is a saver way but costs double as much. If the Yen get’s a bit weaker in the next months I might ship with EMS but for now it hell of expensive.