8TH DECEMBER 2025

Hello all,

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you kind people, who took the time to email me with condolence messages. I apologise that I haven't been able to reply to all of you personally. Apart from dealing with the grief and organising mum's funeral, with all that that entails, my sisters and I, having spent 24 hours at our mother's bedside in hospital, picked up whatever bug she had and became very sick indeed. Then followed a week of antibiotics and every conceivable cold medicine we could get our hands on. It must have been a particularly virulent strain. We're only just getting back to normal.

So, onto ikebana.

At our last class I had set for the advanced students the theme 'Using Both Fresh and Unconventional Materials'. In this exercise it is important to have the unconventional material be an integral part of the arrangement, not placed on it as an afterthought or a decoration.

Mine is the arrangement at the top of this post. I found some rather unusual packing material which was flat and quite firm. However, I tried dampening it by spaying it with water and it became pliable, allowing me to shape it and, then, when it dried, it kept its shape. It was a dull, brown colour, so I sprayed it blue at the top and white underneath. I liked the contrast of the blue against the yellow of the vases. The fresh materials were chrysanthemums, oriental lily and xanthorrhoea.

I had more of the packing material and wanted to make another arrangement. This one reminds me of the collars worn by the aristocracy in Elizabethan times.

Lei used carboard ribbons in two colours, which she joined together and swirled around two matching vases. Her fresh material was geranium.

The net in Nicole's arrangement is one used by florists and it has enough body to sit up, allowing her to place a rose underneath it. She added another rose together with some leaves on the outside of the net. 

Vicky's unconventional material was the stand, which she used to hold the vase as well as a shape which she repeated with the equisetum. She also fed the equisetum into the tubes of the stand. The single cosmos was the focal point.

Often prolific, Vicky made a second arrangement, this time using thick rope, equisetum and a geranium flower. Somewhere under all that is a ceramic container.

Lucy used the same type of cardboard ribbon as Lei in a swirling pattern in and out of the arrangement. The colour of her zygopetalum orchids worked very well with the colour of the container and the ribbon.

Cymbie started with a circular, metal container and added the stem of a heliconia. She created a ball shape with this polystyrene material which she placed at the top of the stem. She, then, repeated the shape of the container further down. She finished the arrangement with the addition of a geranium flower.

I had mentioned in a previous post the workshop we had with Master Instructor Ms Reito Oizumi, using washi paper. Cymbie was unable to attend so, in class, I gave her what I had left of the washi paper and encouraged her to make an arrangement. Below is her piece, using the flower she cut away from the stem for her previous arrangement.

And whilst I'm on the subject of Ms Oizumi's workshop, I'd like to show you how the arrangement I made then has changed after three weeks. If you look closely, you will see that the Siberian dogwood has sprouted leaves. You gotta love nature! She is indomitable and always finds a way to return and thrive, no matter what.

Original

After three weeks

Wendy's class theme was 'Composition Expressing a Movement'. She chose 'cascading' as her movement, using weeping willow and strelitzias reginae in a tall, ceramic vase.

Bye for now,

Emily