Furisode Rebirth

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Rebirth for two reasons; first of all, this stunning furisode features a motif of hōō, or phoenixes. Secondly, over the past couple of weeks I’ve had to rebuild the back end of this blog essentially from the ground up, so please be patient if things aren’t looking or working quite the way they used to. I’m still trying to find time to get everything back to normal.

If you spend any time in the tech spheres, you likely heard about the recent PHP vulnerability situation. Since all of WordPress runs on PHP some malicious actors took advantage of the exploit to seize control of a number of established tools and plugins, leading to someone using the back end of my blog to generate absolutely absurd amounts of traffic. This massively slowed down not only my own site, but other sites that I share hosting with. Thankfully the issues have been resolved, but I’m still fussing with things and using newer, safer plugins in a lot of instances.

It did seem like a good time to feature this absolutely breathtaking piece though. I styled it in a relatively standard modern furisode style, with lots of metallic gold and a fun take on a fukura suzume obi-musubi. This piece is also absolutely enormous, with the longest sleeves I have ever seen. I had to raise the mannequin by about eight inches because they were dragging on the floor. I might have to try wearing her myself once I get back to Montreal, because she is very much Giant Woman sized.

I still have an increasingly late Halloweek post to put up, a fun little book review, hopefully I can get that done this weekend!

Items used in this coordination

Spooky Scary Skeleton Spectre

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This Skeleton Spectre tsuke-obi from Another Date Night had been calling my name for months. I finally bit the bullet and bought it with the intention of doing something for Halloween, so here we are!

I paired it with the rose motif komon I got recently, since I feel like it ties in beautifully with the roses on the obi, and as an added bonus looks a bit like spiderwebs from a distance. The haneri is actually a piece of quilting fabric I bought and I could not be happier about how perfectly they match! I just love how at first glance it looks like a nice and subdued normal outfit but when you look closer it’s a whole bundle of spooky elegance.

I hope you’re having a fantastic Halloween!

Spookybana

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Welcome to ~spooooky weeeek~. I originally intended it to be spooky month, but unfortunately life got in the way as it so often does. Instead, you’ll get lots of Halloween-themed content leading up to the weekend!

First up, Keith found this incredible stoneware hidden at the very back of a shelf at HomeGoods and it was the perfect vessel for a creepy arrangement. I knew I had some gnarled driftwood branches I fished out of Lytle Creek over the summer. Then I found these deep red-black sunflowers and a matching dahlia and the stage was set.

Typically I aim for natural lighting as much as possible to focus on the natural beauty of the flowers I’m working with, and normally I would never leave dropped petals in the photo, but in this case the high contrast and dramatic shadows work so much better than sunlight would have. The arrangement calls for it.

Stay tuned for more eerie offerings in the coming days!

Birthstone Ensembles – October – Opal

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Now that I’m settled in California, I have many things to share. First up; October’s birthstone, opal. Originally I was going to go with pink tourmaline, thinking it would be the easier option — and in fairness, it would have been — but then this beautiful, softly iridescent obi arrived. I loved the sagara-nui (or french knot embroidery) on it and knew it would look lovely with this pastel bokashi tsukesage that also has sagara-nui on it. What I didn’t expect was how much the two together would end up looking like a white opal. With that, the plans for tourmaline were thrown aside and this beauty was assembled.

I had to include detail shots of the incredible embroidery, of course. I love how subdued and elegant this coordination is, while still feeling a bit youthful thanks to the bunny and the girly colours. In retrospect, I do wish I’d found an actual opal brooch or something to use as an obidome, and really I should have been doing that for this whole series, but hindsight is 20/20.

As for the rest of the month, I have some fun and slightly spooky things lined up!

Items used in this coordination