GiGi gave me quite the challenge - to take a kimono and use the garment in a traditional-looking scene, almost like a holiday magazine shoot. This is the best I could do during finals week and readying for our trip to Japan with 19 teenagers on Sunday. It's not traditional looking with my being "wee" and all, but I used our Japanese maple in the background and a mossy perch like you'd find at a Japanese temple. The kimono haas great sentimental value to me. My host mother from a homestay in Hokkaido years ago helped me indigo dye a bolt of cotton kimono cloth. I came up with the design, and we went to the river to wash out the dye before a team of older "obaachan" came over to handstitch the yukata.
