Some days the ikebana arranging is not so easy, today was one of them. I worked on one design for about 90 minutes, and by the end it looked tortured. In fact it had been. I tried to get the materials to bend to my will, all the quince and other branches had been inserted and taken out and moved and put back in over and over again. It was like trying to make the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit into the wrong place, and I should have recognized it after the first half hour. My lesson for today was to learn to not force things and to simplify when needed. So I instead chose a different container, painted trifoliate orange branch and a stem of anemone and did something very simple. Lesson learned.