Ikebana Class!

I attended my first Ikebana class! It was so much fun and I was so lost! The instructor spoke a lot of Japanese and not much EnglsSih. But one of the girls in the class would translate for me. Most of us were learning the rising form of the Ohara school. There are lots of formulas and schools in Ikebana. Some of the tips that our instructor gave me was each flower has a feeling and that less is more. There is a subject and an object in the arrangement. The pampas grass is the subject and the orange chrysanthemums are the object and they are supposed to talk to each other.

The woman in the blue shirt is our instructor. The way the class works is that we start off arranging the plants first. When we are done she comes around and we watch her adjust and moving things around and give explanations. After she does that to everyone's, we take them completely apart and try and arrange them again. When we are done the second time she'll come around and make more adjustments. I should have taken a picture of hers. It was so dynamic and alive. Maybe good Ikebana means it have this wild twisting energy. At least this is what it feels like to me. I'm gonna go back two weeks from now. I need to find a vase and scissors though.

The first and second arrangements. I made the mistake of cutting my plants a little too short in the beginning and that kind of hampered the whole thing. There is a lot of math in this process. I took it all apart to take it home and then put it back together. The problem is that the chrysanthemums grew in funky directions to get to the light so the arrangement looks nothing like it used to. I'm going to have to ask about this.