ALTERNATIVE USES FOR STOCKINGS

Just this morning, as I was watering in the garden, I noticed a bud of Haemanthus coccineus had appeared. Last autumn I had divided an overgrown pot of this plant, given to me by a neighbour. I planted three bulbs in the ground and two in pots. I am looking forward to seeing how or if the rest of them will have survived the move. The snails love the leaves. I am hoping the rough eucalyptus mulch will deter them.

At the beginning of the week the Sogetsu branch held its AGM and first meeting/workshop for the year. The workshop was lead by Toula and Betty Karanikolopoulos. The subject was to make a sculptural form using wire and panty hose. I have not done this exercise before, though I was assured by more senior ikebanists that they had done the exercise some years ago. 

Many of us used coat-hangers as the most readily available wire in most households. After a preliminary failed trial, I wound my coat-hanger wire around a ceramic cylinder and then stretched it out to make a  helical spiral. I had bought some 'knee-high' black stockings and threaded them over two spirals.

As this sculptural form was created from obviously man-made material, I decided to use agapanthus flower heads with the seeds removed. They seemed to be more in keeping with the sculptural form I had made. However I was not happy with the result and thought it looked quite awkward.

     

I re-worked the arrangement at home in a different vase with an improved result. The result is really a 'basic upright' arrangement from the Sogetsu curriculum.

Below is one of the demonstration examples from the workshop. It was done by Toula and she has cleverly inverted the obvious way of managing this exercise. She created a wire spiral and then, after putting her nylon stocking tube within it, has attached it to the wire with fine threads. The result was very beautiful and created a delicate interplay of colour and layers of translucence.

      

Above is a close-up view looking through the pink stocking tube.

In this image you can see a side-on view of a tube of stocking that Toula said she '...painted with faux alcohol inks...(she made)...scribbles with permanent markers (Sharpies) and then...brushed methylated spirits on the scribbles to get the water colour effect.'.

Now you know what to do with those old stockings!!

See further images from the Sogetsu meeting workshop.

Greetings from Christopher

25th February 2017

THINKING ABOUT SHIN

I resumed my Melbourne classes recently and my student Marisha created her first Nageire arrangement (basic upright style). We were both pleased with the result.

She has used the Australian native, pomaderis, and two white dahlias in a pale blue ceramic vase.

At home last week I spent a long time struggling to arrange some hydrangeas. The hydrangeas have been splendid this year and I wanted to use them in a mass before they start to deteriorate at the end of summer. 

Because the flower-heads are large, I used a big open bowl by the Daylesford potter Petrus Spronk. However, although I was using a large vessel I found that more than 3 flowers was just too big a mass and I couldn't make it work. I came to the conclusion that I needed a contrasting material, with a good line. So, I started again, beginning with a large philodendron leaf that had a beautiful yellow colouring as it aged.

Beginning with the leaf as a shin * (principal line) I found it much easier to use the hydrangeas to form a mass that contrasted and balanced the shin.

Subsequently I made another arrangement by making a mass with the remaining hydrangeas. The one at the back on the left was the most intense of the blue hydrangeas and I liked the way these colours worked with the large vase by Graeme Wilkie.

Some years ago the late Brenda Thorpe, a well regarded ikebanist who was a fellow student with me in Elizabeth Angell's class, made a massed arrangement in a long narrow ceramic trough. She commented that in such an arrangement the vessel became the shin line. I think that idea applies in the case of the arrangement above.

This week Ikebana International, Melbourne Chapter, held its first meeting for 2017. Follow the link to photos taken at the meeting.

Greetings from Christopher
19th February 2017

* The character for shin can be translated as 'true' or 'pure'.

COOLING WATER

Friday was lovely day to take a walk in the Iron Bark Basin nature reserve, a little west of Torquay. 

In the mid-ground of this photo is the nature reserve, with Pt Addis in the distance. The round-about path takes about 35 minutes to reach the clifftops from this view.

When we got there a paraglider was floating overhead on the updraft above the cliffs. It looks so serene, but not if you have a fear of falling.

Along the track we passed a couple of pink Hyacinth Orchids dipodium roseum. These ground orchids were just a little past their prime.

They are among the most spectacular ground orchids in this area.

Back at home, a flock of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos were making a lot of raucous noise as they chewed seeds of the New Zealand Mirror Bush coprosma repens in the garden next door. 

In the photo above this cockatoo is in a eucalyptus.

*          *          *          *          *

At Elizabeth's first class for this year, the exercise was an arrangement in a glass vessel.

My colleague Pearl, used a gymea leaf and three lemons. She has used a small section of the leaf to hold the main leaf against the side of the vase. 

I used three stems of fennel and a bunch of pink berries from a Peppercorn tree schinus molle. The fennel stems are braced across the vase. I have deliberately spaced them unevenly and left a space at the bottom. Also, the berries are placed asymmetrically. I particularly like to make this style of below water arrangement in Summer for its cooling appearance.

Greetings from Christopher
11th February 2017

OUT AND ABOUT

This weekend we visited Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne, in the Victorian Goldfields area. As we walked around Lake Wendouree we met these black swans, which were not 'a-swimming', but looking for food from humans. 

The last few days have been rather warm, in the mid 30s Celsius. We've come to the mid-summer month and because we have not yet had excessive hot weather, the summer flowering plants are at their peak.

This photo shows the 'herbaceous border' in front of the original Directors House in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

I am very impressed by this particular garden display, and well aware of the large number of hours it takes to create and maintain. 

    

One plant that caught my eye was this large mass of 'goldenrod', solidago, a native of North America that I first saw in the New England region in 2014. I have a couple of plants in my garden for the first time this year. However, they have not flowered.

Certain eye-catching Australian native plants are also flowering at the moment. The Black Bean tree, castanospermum australe, above, is actually a little past its peak. 

However, close up the flowers look spectacular. Another particular favourite of mine is brachychiton discolor.

In the photo above, the dense canopy of flowers has been photographed at a distance, because it is surrounded by other trees.

Here you can see a beautiful cascading branch with a lot of ikebana possibility, were it not in the Botanic Gardens!

I was able to photograph one flower close up. The flowers are a delightful soft pink and very fleshy.

This week's ikebana is otherwise unrelated, except to say that this hydrangea is just past its peak in our garden and soon likely to be burnt if there are a few consecutive days of hot weather. The vase is by Graeme Wilkie of Qdos Gallery.

Greetings from Christopher 
5th February 2017