I wanted to get a good picture of Nicole, Scotty, and Dakota together - a family portrait. As we were walking to the festival from the parking garage, I got this cute pic of the three walking hand-in-hand.
The Cherry Blossom Festival is held every year at Seattle Center because it is the home to thousands of cherry trees donated to the city of Seattle from Japan. As we walked to the festival, we could see the Space Needle framed in the branches of the cherry trees. Last year all the cherry blossoms had already fallen off of the trees, so we were lucky to be able to view the blossoms this year.
Again this year they had the booth that dresses people in yukata so that people can take pictures of themselves looking Japanese-y. Never a fan of this booth, they do a terrible job. The umbrella the girl is holding actually has a very large hole in it. Surprisingly there were very few people dressed up in yukata. Actually, there were few people at all at the festival, compared to past years. I only saw two other people walking around dressed up: a toddler and one young lady. Nicole and Dakota had been approached many times by people asking about their outfits and where they could get one!
After eating, we went to the Fisher Pavilion, where most of the cultural displays were at. We first admired the many Ikebana flower arrangements.
This one was my favorite, since the cherry blossom arrangement fit very nicely with the theme of the festival.
Some shodo calligraphy.
These are Mizuhiki Zaiku by artist Haruko Shimizu. Mizuhiki is stiff string made of hemp, and is used by samurai, geisha, brides, etc to tie their hair in top-knots, and also tied in pretty knots to adorn cards and presents. These are massive art pieces made from tying the mizuhiki string into complicated decorations, like the samurai helmet.
These are Zokei Bonsai make by Setsuko Evans. I took lessons from Setsuko Evans and have made a few of these trees myself! Zokei bonsai are fake trees, made with wire, rice paper, and silk. They give a realistic beauty, without the fear of killing a bonsai tree!
A beautiful set of armor. At this display was a nice katana as well, and a set-up to demonstrate blade sharpening.
Some kimono were on display. Uchikake wedding kimono hanging up, and some dress-forms wearing kimono. There were dressing demonstrations held to show the complicated skill of putting kimono on.
After seeing all the displays in the Fisher Pavilion, we went outside and enjoyed the beautiful International Fountain. This is one of the coolest fountains I've seen, set at the bottom of a giant bowl with powerful water jets and even fog effects.
Kids and adults loved getting soaked on such a beautiful day, or playing games of running from the random jets of water. You can hear Scotty at the end of the video, "haha! Suckers!"
Dakota's fan says "festival".
I got this candid shot of Nicole as she was setting down her bag on a rock to get her picture taken. It is one of my favorite shots because of how natural it is.
Lovely photo of Nicole, taken by Scotty. The fallen petals on the ground create a lovely scene.
My favorite, a natural, candid shot of Dakota.
Beneath the trees are many plaques and engraved stones with special messages or meaningful quotes.
And the paving stones for the sidewalk under the cherry trees are made of tiles commemorating donations, memories of people who have passed, or drawing made by children. I spotted one that says "konnichi wa", hello or good afternoon in Japanese.
The obi is a deeply pleated tateya that normally is a solid rectangle, but I spread the bow out using pins to hold it open. I like what they did with the hairline on this doll. It's painted in the back to give a natural look.
The kimono is not removable. The obi is sewn on and can not be removed. The obi is the unfortunate feature. It looks as though they attempted to do a fukura-suzume bow and failed miserably. Also, there is no obi-age. After the release of this doll, the did a remake to sell exclusively at Walmart. Looks the same but with a white kimono instead of pink, and she has a purse instead of a hagoita (battledore). Originally sold for $70, but so few were made that now I can't find it for under $1500. I'm not a die-hard collector, and the quality isn't worth looking into it.
So, that's the collection so far. I hope to start adding kimono Jennys (Japan's version of Barbie) to my collection, and maybe some Licca-chans.
Its a very florescent, Hawaiian-looking kimono. The collar is very narrow and the sleeves are sewn closed all the way around. The kimono actually does have a ohashori fold, but its so small that it always hides under the obi and is thus a usless feature when they were making it. Not to mention the perma-bent, robot arms. Obi is white with gold cross-hatch pattern, obi-jime is orange and gold. I actually like the obi-age, it's a sparkly pink netting, and looks like what girls where on modern kimono. The obi is tied in a sad, droopy tateya bow.
I bought the kimono/obi only for $7 at a doll show and I added my own shamisen and hair accessory and dressed it on a vintage Barbie remake. The kimono has gold wisteria pattern and the obi is white with gold cherry blossoms.
The kimono is lined in white in the sleeves and skirt portion. The obi is tied in a tateya bow and is attached using a snap closure, rather than velcro like most others.
If you remove the kimono you will see that there is a white full-length, sleeveless juuban. (Please don't remove the kimono unless you know how to put a kimono on yourself, neatly. Otherwise the Barbie will look sloppy if amateurishly redressed.. Also, there is a slight amount of clothing adhesive used to keep the kimono dressed neatly, undressing her will loose the benefit of that adhesive.) The juuban also doesn't have a true collar, but isn't well noticed when dressed completely. She also has 2 belts underneath. One is for padding, to soften Barbie's curvy figure, and the other is an elastic date-jime under the obi to keep the kimono neat and slip-free.
I found the fabric as clothing at thrift stores. The kimono and under kimono is from Chinese silk robes, the obi is from an Indian top. The bear is from ebay. :-) 
A closer view of her face. I don't really think she looks anime-ish - but rather like shes from that movie Dark Crystal. These pictures were taken on my cell phone at work, you can see my Puffy Ami Yumi poster in which they are wearing kimono punk-style - their kimono are the only reason I have the poster! I've made more kimono since this one - mostly yukata. Her first yukata was a lolita yukata - with a short puffy skirt!
One day browsing the thrift and antique stores in my area I saw that many porcelain dolls are similar size in the shoulders, so I thought their pretty dresses may fit my Haruka, so I picked up some cheap broken porcelain dolls from the thrift store that had lovely dresses. Here is the first find:
Poor quality picture, sorry! She's underneath a shelf at my work desk flanked by some Japanese temari balls I've made (I'll share about those later). This only picture I could take on my crumby phone that showed any detail to the pink baby doll dress.
Other than the lolita style yukata, this is the first lolita-ish dress I got. That day I took some pictures outside. Here she is sitting on a grassy hill. In such a short baby doll dress you can really tell how long her legs are. 
I tried to get some good pictures of her standing next to a rock, but the lighting wasn't working on my cell phone.
I have some more outfits that I've taken off old broken dolls that look good on her that I have yet to photograph. Last night I worked on altering a very fine dress. I found this one at the Crossroads Doll and Teddy Bear show at the Puyallup fair. Its an antique dress for French dolls, I believe it is a reproduction. I saw the bonnet and was reminded of the Japanese sweet lolita look that I'm so drawn to and I had to get it, despite it's expensive price tag. I'm glad I got it! This time she has a curly blonde wig on that I took off a porcelain doll that had shattered. The wig is too big, but the bonnet keeps it on her head.
