gurdymonkey | Break's almost over, back on my head (Reply)

So, I attached a sleeve (including seam finishing on the inside and hemming of the outer edges) and a collar today. I have one more collar to attach.

Each collar is 75" long. Each collar works out to about 12 and a half feet of hand stitching. THAT'S why it takes so long, particularly given the properties of the herringbone silk the uchigi is made of.

This is neither a complaint nor a - OK, you caught me, it is a boast. Because given the choice, I'll take hand sewing over machine, any damn day of the week. It looks better, it feels better, it wears well - especially the way I finish my seams, no nasssty sserged bits, my Precious.

I was kind of hoping to do the false layers for a yuki-no-shita kasane in time for Twelfth Night, but I'm not sure I have time to cut and dye what amounts to a crapton of bias tape and get it assembled by next week. It'll still be gorgeous as-is, it's just going to be less formal.
And after Twelfth Night, I need to get going on dyeing and assembling a pair of jinbaori, not to mention mon-ifying the Cynaguan Swan and painting it on the back of each.....

EDIT: The uchigi is done. Giving my hands another break before the last bit of collar on the uwagi, which is mostly on except for about the last 25 inches or.

THAT was interesting. I screened the last of the Kurosawa boxed set, starting with "Sanshiro Sugata II" this morning and I just finished watching "The Most Beautiful." "Sanshiro II" is more martial arts adventures of the hero, somewhat uneven, but reasonably entertaining, if predictable. The print they used was pretty beat up, but as advertised, it's a very early work and we're probably lucky to have what we've got.

"The Most Beautiful", filmed in 1944, is Kurosawa's contribution to the Japanese War Effort. Filmed in semi-documentary style, it's about the Flower of Japanese Young Womanhood, doing their bit to Destroy America and Great Britain (it says so in the script!) making gunsights and military optics. There's marching and singing and corporate speeches, there's begging the house mother to let you keep working when you're sick, there's coming back to work on crutches, there's staying up all night to recalibrate two-days' worth of lenses because you mislaid one and some brave Japanese soldier might die because of it. , And yet, even through all the propaganda and jingoism and girls who seem almost too good to be true (or were they simply very, very Japanese?) , there's genuine humanity, the guard who teases the girls about tanuki haunting the garden, the tears in Watanabe's eyes as she stays to inspect lenses instead of going home to mourn her mother, the affection of the dorm mistress for "her" girls. Definitely interesting for what it is.
Ironically, the woman associated with the famous "We Can Do It" poster passed away this week.