Hiki arrives and another win.

My waterlily hiki arrived yesterday!
She's beautiful and with only a few, light marks of make-up around the wrists and a few yuzen blotches but she's in great condition.
A little card also came with it but I can't read it so I wonder if you know what it says:

There is also a tag o the hiki, can anyone read that too?
Seen here in my Flickr stream

Sorry for the bad photos... But you should be able to see the writing clear-ish-ly. Hopefully...
I haven't received anything from customs about paying an importation tax yet... Hopefully I don't get one but it should come in the mail in a week or so I'd imagine.

I also did actually win that mystery Miyako odori from the other day.
Because i was using JAC and last time I used them the bidding ID was JAC*something* I expected it to be the same again but it was kon*something* this time so I got all confused, but I won it!
How bout that... It surprised me greatly cuz I honestly didn't think I got it... Anyway...









Yamatoku has heaps of ko-fursode on ebay atm.
I honestly don't know anything about wearing hakama but they totally rock my socks especially when they are worn with riding boots, Meiji era school girl is a great look.
So in the back of my head I've been starting to put together this years Sakura Matsuri festival outfit, first off it was this pale green houmongi in all shibori, then there was this purple all shibori furisode and now I'm thinking could I wear hakama and ko-furisode?
Last year there were some girls in hakama doing... forgive my ignorance but martial arts doesn't float my boat so I don't pay any attention.
I really only know of girls wearing hakama for graduation and for performances of whatever description so is it ok to just wear anything? Is the a Time, Place, Occasion rule for wearing hakama?
I'll go and see what info I can find, not that they were many people there last year wearing kimono, mostly yukata and people in hakama doing... kendo? Something...
The Sakura Matsuri festival is located in Cowra, NSW and I plan on going this year as well so if you're in NSW, somewhere near by its a great day and I might see you there :)

Movies and what's new.

Went to the movies last night and saw Prince of Persia last night.
I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it, but I did.
Usually action movies aren't my thing, but I like knife throwing rather than bullets so it suited me fine.
What I really want to see is Get him to the Greek. Looks funny as.
I also really want to see Toy Story 3...
Which is funny in itself because about a year or two ago I didn't like any of these main-stream, pop culture, dumb movies, I stuck mainly towards quirky, international films.
Speaking of quirky international films I have seen a few more lately.
Nathalie...
I've seen this a few times, not by design tho, it just seems to be on.
I can't say its the best film I've ever seen, good example of the realities of love, not always black and white.
4months, 3 weeks and 2 days
Hmmm, not that exciting...
7 virgins
I only saw the beginning half of this...
A friend of mine
This was one of the Daniel Bruhl movies that I mentioned before.Good movie.
Black book
I quite like this.
Curse of the golden flower
One of my favourite movies.
Eight miles high
Interesting.
Ferpect crime
I think I've seen it.....
Four stars
I really liked this one, it was funny and a fun film.
I served the King of England
Aww, poor guy, always trying to hard to be a part of a group that he'll never get into.

Enough of that...
I didn't win any of my shibori kimono.
Again I'm bidding on a Miyako odori programme, undated again... Just to make things easy for me...
But because another Crescent Shop member has bid on it I can't bid on it using Crescent Shop, so when that happens I use Japan Auction Center and it hasn't registered my bid yet... What? How does that happen?
I'm not happy. I've only used JAC once before and I didn't have any trouble with it and that was for my sha maiko hiki so there was more money than the odori programme.
Why hasn't it gone thru? My bid is more than what the auction is at now, I don't understand why its not working...
I'll stop my whinging now...

Damn my crappy small-town post office not being open on Saturdays...
I was tracking my water lily hiki thru the post and it said it'd reached my post office on Friday, so Friday after work I rush down the street to get it... Alas... It hadn't been put in my box so I'm eagerly waiting for tomorrow so I can check my post office box after work... Yay!

I don't have anything else to say...

Its wet today.

So I'm staying inside in front of the fire.

I went to Zumba again yesterday and nothing hurts today, yay!
They were talking about doing two classes a night but we wouldn't be able to make both classes, we can barley make the one!
There's just a bit of traveling involved.
Ok, picture my town in the center, then off to the left (an hour away) is orange.On the right side of my town is Cowra (30mins and where the classes are) my friend works in Orange, finishes at 4.30, has got to drive home, change and do other little jobs before she can leave so we're lucky if we get there on 6 (usually a bit after)
So when the instructure said they'd do two classes we were hoping for a 6pm and a 7pm class, just to make things easier, instead they made it a 5pm and 6pm classes -_-
Not happy Jan.

Whats else...
Searching YJA and I found this cute little kanzashi, I don't know if its trying to represent a real flower or what.
It actually reminds me of the time I tried to make a fuchsia kanzashi






Oh my Gosh!!!
I love this website ikuokaya! That link will take you to the kanzashi page.
They do have heaps of other stuff and that's probably where I'll buy a maiko obijime and obiage from.
But, kanzashi, these are available for the month of June:













They are all amazing.
Last month for May they had an amazing pink wisteria up... for $540USD... Which would've easily been almost $700AUD once you convert the currency and add the international postage *cries*
They also have these cute pinwheel kanzashi towards the bottom of the page, I'd really like to get them too, I think they'd be really cute to wear with yafuku as well as kimono.
Next month they should *hopefully* have pampass grass up!!!
Here's an example of pampass grass kanzashi for maiko
I bet they'd cost an arm and a leg too. *le sigh*
I think I'll ask Crescent shop for a quote on the maiko kanzashi for this month, they should get back to me in a few days.

Nope, they got back to me today, which is really fast.
Anyway, those cute little umbrellas are 13400 Yen and those flowers are 10500Yen and you can choose a colour if you'd like.
I didn't get a quote for the combs tho, but the red maiko comb looks easy enough to re-create.
Looks like the comb is covered with red chirimen fabric (?) then wrapped with silver thread and the tsumami petals and fan are just placed on top. Easy.
I even have a comb I could try it on... It was originally covered with tsumami petals but they were really old,dirty and one side looked like the tsmami had been shaved off so I pulled everything off it months ago, intent on re-doing the whole thing but I go out of my kanzashi kick so it never happened.

Kimono and obi for sale, again.

Ume haori

Bamboo komon

Black sakura komon

Blue komon







Brown kiku obi

Navy nagoya obi

Purple swirl obi








Yeah, some familiar things.
I've got a few more things in the "I don't like these anymore pile" then its into the "too dirty to wear, best for crafts" pile then possibly into the "I can't decide whether I like these anymore" pile, that's gonna be tricky.

Maiko postcards from 2009

This set of postcards are from the 2009 Kyo odori programme of the Miyagawacho district, which is my favourite.


So here is the set of postcards
And here is the 2009 Kyo odori








It's really nice to see the colour version of the maiko photos.

In other, terribly exciting news:
I sold the kurotomesode and 2 piece yukata obi from last week's ebay listing, yay!
I think they're going to a good home in Melbourne :) and its nice to know there's some more people in Australia that wear kimono, spreading the love!

I made a caramel slice topped with chocolate today because I had the-most-amazing caramel slice a few weeks ago and have been addicted to them ever since.
I wasn't too happy with the one I made, the base didn't work, the caramel didn't taste right and didn't set and the chocolate topping was too thick :(
Oh well...

Details.

Now that I actually own a real maiko han'eri I'm going to give embroidering my own a shot.
I've just bought some white han eri off YJA to try with.
Honestly seems simple enough.
On closer inspection the gold thread seems to be flat gold paper.
I don't know what it is.
I bought some gold thread stuff from Ryu months ago, can't remember what they called it but it's nice and shiny and should do the job fine.

I tried to get some detailed photos on Flickr with measurements if anyone else wants to give it a try too.



I've finally taken the plunge and will get my water lily hikizuri shipped from Crescent Shop.
I've been putting it off for a few weeks because with Australian customs/importing place if the value of the item is over $1000 then you get charged a fee or tax or whatever they want to call it.
My co-worker got me some info about it, because he buys guitar off YJA and they sometimes cost over a grand he guesses the fee will be about $250 so I let it at Crescent shop for a few weeks to put aside money for that.
I can't wait to get it!
Hopefully it should be here in about 2 weeks if it doesn't get caught up in customs

Zumba and bidding opponent on YJA.

Myself and two of my friends went to our first Zumba dance class in the neighbouring town.
Oh my Gosh... my calf muscles don't thank me.
Perhaps it was just the style of the teacher but the workout was really only on the legs, not much work was done on the core or upper body.
Then again I haven't done any physical exercise since high school... so I'll be going back next week and hopefully in a few weeks I won't ache so much.

I swear everytime I bid on an odori programme on YJA I come up against this one person.
Here's my list on how I feel about this:
a) Pissed off cuz I really wanted that one!
b) thankful that clearly they go to a collector ( i hope)
c) wanting some way to contact this person so I can say I want X odori programme so let me have it, please (highly unlikely)
*sigh*
I bring this up because right now I'm bidding on some odori programmes and this person is also bidding...
They are two Miyako odori. They don't have dates tho.
The one I got cheap (cheapish) look like it may be 60's?
The other one looks similar to a 40's one I missed out on a few months ago but that's only a hunch.
Grrr. The other person just outbidded me on the-what-i-think-is-from-the-40's programme, and without a date I'm going to let it go.
There's an awesome all shibori furisode on ebay atm and apart from hikizuri I haven't bought any kimono or obi in months.
I'm hoping to spoil myself with an all shibori some time this year.
I haven't bought any normal, wearable kimono and want to get my wearing kimono wardrobe in good quality.

Anyway, back to the odori programmes:
Whenever I lose an auction I make sure to save the photo of the cover of the programme, I'm thinking, with permission of some people, trying to compile a list of District, year, and the cover photo of each programme so if someone comes across an auction that doesn't have the programme dating ( like i have above) they might be able to track the year.
Just an idea, plus it'd be interesting looking at how the cover art evolves over the years.

Anyway, I must be off to bed or I'll be very cranky tomorrow.