*Gasp* Not A Kimono Post!

2012 is the year all my friends are getting married, I've already been to one wedding and the other three will be in april. As these friends are all bengali I've decided to go and buy myself a wedding outfit. Thanks to a friend and three hours later I managed to find two outfits for £60!

 This one is a salwar kameez (I think), I really like this one. The colour and the trousers especially.

This one is a lengha choli, I personally like this one but everyone I've shown it to HATES it. I don't know why maybe it's because it's a dark colour and weddings are supposed to be bright. Who knows? I think I'll be wearing my red wig for this outfit, I think the green and red will match very nicely.

I am now prepared for all the weddings I'm going to attend this year. Crap, I forgot about shoes................

Massive Kimono & Obi Sale

For Sale, a set on Flickr.

I've nearly finished photographing all the kimono & obi I'm looking to sell off. (phew) It's amazing how time consuming measuring & taking pictures can be. Anyway I've upload the stuff onto my flickr account.
All the kimono are wearable (minimal staining) unless stated.

Youtube Tutorials

This month I've finally got off my arse and did what I've been promising to myself for about a year now. I've always wanted to make some youtube kitsuke videos and I finally did it this week. I went to Isla house and spent a few days recording how to tie obi, and here is the result.

Part 1:

Part 2:

This knot is called a kamifusen (paper balloon) and it's tied using a hanhaba obi. I'm quite please with the way they turned out.

Project Kuro

I find it quite funny that I don't have a kurotomesode in my collection, I have a maiko obi but no kurotomesode.( Cos you know I'll get more wear out of a maiko obi then a kurotomesode!) It's usually what most people buy when starting out in wearing/collecting kimono, I guess it's due to them being cheap and abundant on ebay. Anyway I've never really liked the look of kurotomsodes, not for any particular reason I just find them a bit blah. Also after finding out that you unless I'm going to a wedding and a close member of the family, you can't really wear this anywhere else! Talk about a one time wear garment, no wonder there so cheap and abundant on ebay. But in order to 'complete' my collection I need a kurotomesode.
You know I've been telling you about my wip's and how I should get a move on with them, well this is one of them. I bought this bolt from Ryujapan years ago with the intention of making it in a kimono, hell I even bought some doura bolts to line the thing. However life got in the way and it's been languishing in wip purgatory ever since. In a effort to get try and make a dent in wip hell I've decided to make this my next project.
As you might know I have sewn a hitoe (unlined) kimono however I have never even attempted to try and sew a awase (lined) before or anything that requires me to match up patterns. So this is going to be my baptism of fire and I'm going to document my process here.
This is the bolt I'm going to make my kimono from

Kinda shitting myself in case I make a mistake but if I don't start now I never will, and like they say 'fortune favours the bold'!

Various Buys

These have been my kimono purchases over the past few months.

I've been on a mens kimono buying spree, the two sets above fit someone between 180-185cm tall.

I finally bought a uchikake, yay. 

Tatoushi 2.0

I've been neglecting this blog for some time now, it's time for a post.
 For a while I've been thinking how to add a window to my tatoushi so I can see what I have stored in it. Buying business cards for a collection as big as mine can add up, so I thought this would be a better and cheaper alternative. Anyway here's the finished product.

I think it turned out o.k, the only problem I'm having at the moment is how to sew the bias tape around the window neatly.
That's it for this post.

It's Been Too Long

Damn, looks like I haven't updated this blog since January! Looks like I"ll have to fill you in on 3 months worth of info :(

January
Went to January's Kimono De Jack at the Barbican, had fun and met a new member.

February
Another Kimono de Jack, this time in Birmingham. Went to cadburys world

March
Kimono De Jack in Manchester (see a theme here?)
You can check out the pics and what we did on the Kimono De Jack UK blogpage.

Which brings us to April. April has been a busy month for me and we haven't even finished the first week yet! What makes this month so busy? Kitacon. For a while now me and the girls have been discussing a kimono based venture, like dressing people up and photographing them. We were thinking where we could do such a thing and we all agreed we should tour the anime conventions. So back in October Isla contacted Kitacon regarding us becoming dealers and lo and behold they had space for us. We decided it was now or never and booked two tables, one for kanzashi and the other for kimono/ kitsuke. Well that was the plan anyway. Now were up to February and we haven't even decided what kimono we're going to use for the photo shoot! We had a big meeting after February's KDJ to plan what we would be doing and charging. After 4 hours we pretty much had most of the details sorted out, like pricing and what kimono/ obi to bring. Liz suggested we just bring the fancy ones like furisode and kakeshita/ uchikake and she was right, everyone that dressed wanted to wear the furisodes.
About 2 weeks before me/Lyuba and April/Liz tool some photos for the photo book to show what they could dress up like. If you want to know more about that you'll have to go to Lyuba's blog.
While I was at Lyuba's house we decided to have have a clearout of her kimono collection, you know so we would have some stock to sell at the con. After 3 hours she had 30+ pieces on her to sell pile ( that eventually went up to 60+), I wasn't going to bring anything to sell at the convention because I couldn't carry it all however Lyuba kindly offered to take it up to kitacon in her car! Once I had that offer I went nuts on my collection! I don't even know how much stuff I had but I know It was two boxes that weighted 15kg each! and I still have some more stuff at home!
Fast Forward to Saturday 1st of April at 6am. We all woke up in time but spent so long getting ready (ie putting on make up) that we we're nearly late for the opening of the dealers room. After piling our stuff into the cars, we set off for the Birmingham Hilton where the convention was taking place. After a few hiccups regarding where the dealers room was and parking we finally found the dealers room.
O.k I'm going to cut the story here and continue later, I'm getting tired.