Himotaba

I am so far behind with blog posts, it is almost a year since I finished Himotaba, my phase 5 Japanese embroidery piece. Cords are not general popular with JE students but I like their rhythm. When I first came across, Japanese embroidery, this was the design that drew me in so I was looking forward to stitching it. 

It took me about 5 months to complete but in that time I reworked many of the cords to get more practise. I found the blue cord, which uses the wicker technique, the most challenging to stitch. In the design, this cord goes round a very tight curve early on and it was difficult to keep the balance of the two sides of the stitch. 

I also found the cord end fade outs difficult to achieve. Even after many attempts, I was still not sure they look natural enough but in the end I came to the conclusion it was time to move on.

Kyoto Workshops

I was attracted to the Colouricious trip to Japan because it included a selection of workshops giving a taster of Japanese crafts. Our first workshop in Kyoto was a calligraphy class. The class was held at a women's organisation - I would like to think it is a Japanese version of the WI. During the class we concentrated on the kanji character for happiness. This was my first attempt at calligraphy and I must admit a found the technique of using the brush difficult.  I was given a lot of help by the teachers, which probably means my technique needed a bit of work. We had several practise runs and then we given a nice thick piece of paper for our final attempt. Similar to a Japanese embroidery class, the teacher asked us to meditate for a minute to slow our breath and calm our minds before applying the brush to the paper. I think it must helped because my last attempt was much better than my practise runs. That's not saying much though!

We visited the same women's organisation again the following day for an ikebana class. At the start of class we were given some guidelines on design and how to use the kenzan, a metal plate covered in spikes, used to hold the stems in place. 

My selection of flowers looked like they came from another planet, so they made for quite a quirky display by the time I was finished. I enjoyed the process of focusing on each stem as the arrangement came together and would like to have another try some time in the future.

Once all our arrangement we done we headed upstairs to try on kimonos. Looking back at the room, it was interesting to see the variation in the arrangements.

After an introduction talk, our hosts took us in small groups into a changing room to pick out the kimonos and obi we wanted to wear. We were dressed in under kimonos and wrapped tightly around the middle before putting on the kimono itself.

I picked out a teal kimono. The red obi must have been a suggestion from the Japanese ladies because it is unlikely I would have chosen such a contrast on my own.

It was fascinating to see the other ladies on the appear in their kimonos. It was such a change from everyone's normal casual appearance. You can see a video of the group here.

Our tour leader, Keiko, was dressed in a beautiful pink kimono with deep sleeves, which would traditionally be worn by a young girl. Once we were all dressed up, whe entertained us with a traditional song and dance.

While we were dressing up in our kimonos, our ikebana displays were arranged as a flower show in the classroom downstairs.

Personally I think our efforts were not bad for a first attempt but I wasn't brave enough to ask for constructive feedback!

I think the purple flowers in my arrangement were alliums. Serendipitously, I visited at the Chelsea Flower show this week and managed the see the amazing allium display in the show marquee.

That's given me an ideas of planting some alliums for myself but we need to get the garden a bit tidier first.