After a long trip southwest of DC I arrived late last night at my parent’s house. I was still debating on whether I should have delayed the trip by a week, but it was already planned and I went. Timing is everything, a huge storm hit Washington,DC last night downing trees and power lines and causing a power outtage to a large portion of the the city. My neighborhood has no power and probably won’t for another 5-7 days, and my internet/cable provider had fiber optic lines cut and their service is down for a while. So had I stayed I would have had no power or internet and this project would be disrupted for a while. Instead I am in the mountains surrounded by lots of trees and plants material. In the next few days I’ll start trying to do some surveying of what I want to use and make some notes and maybe some sketches (and doing my best to avoid the bear that has started showing up here looking for food). For today my ikebana is in a self made vessel with grasses and hydrangea from my mother’s garden.
Archive for June, 2012
365 Days of Ikebana-Day 348
Friday, June 29th, 2012
365 Days of Ikebana-Day 342
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
Today I did a little more work on braiding palm leaves, this time with phoenix palm. It has a very small leaf, interesting to work with but I think the areca palm I uesed a few days ago works much better. However I did learn more about how to do the braiding, so I will call it a success. Now I just have to buy some areca palm plants to I have plenty of material to work with.
365 Days of Ikebana-Day 340
Thursday, June 21st, 2012
Earlier in the week I promised my sensei that I would continue to work on my weaving and leaf manipulation practice. Today I used the only palm leaf I had to do this piece for today’s ikebana, not perfect but still a pretty good start. With the woven palm leaf I used a stem of crocosmia from the garden (hooray for a color other than hot pink!) and made this piece I really like. I had to work quickly to do the photo because the temperature in the studio was 104 degrees (down from the 107 earlier in the afternoon, both temperatures were with a fan on).
Tomorrow I may go get some teepee or palm to try some more weaving, I still have a lot to do!









