My lesson assisgnment for my Sogetsu ikebana class tonight was to do the lesson on intertwining materials. I was given some palm and zebra grass and a single hydrangea bloom for color. It started out great and I worked on weaving the palm and after some work almost had it finished, but then I could not remember how to close off the end to keep it from unraveling. That’s when it unraveled. All that work gone in seconds, my sensei was really happy to see the work in progress and she encouraged me to do more work this summer to practice and perfect my weaving skills. So with a bit of class time remaining I came up with a quick alternative that worked, a loose woven piece that I could “float” the hydrangea on. It’s not what I started out to do, but it worked . Now I have to spend the summer working on leaf manipulation and weaving, something I had already planned to do and now I have a directive from my sensei to do so.