Christine bought me a book on wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept concerning finding beauty in imperfect, old, repaired or broken things. There’s a lot more to the concept but that’s it in shorthand.

In an early chapter, there was mention of Sogetsu, which is a school of Ikebana, Japanese floral art, or flower arranging, a strong and ancient Japanese tradition.

It reminded my of my mum who, for a large part of the 1960s arranged flowers competitively. This activity was a big part of all our lives then. Towards the end of the 1960s, I remember her being very keen on arranging flowers in a Japanese style. It was all about simplicity and a flowing shape. Not being able to find the sort of vases that she felt would allow her arrangements to have the maximum impact, she made some by melting old 78rpm records in the oven and shaping them by hand. The smell was dreadful.

A quick search in Pinterest revealed some lovely examples of Ikebana and I found that I had to get up early this morning to paint one.

The vase is overworked and I dropped a blob of water on the stem and had to do a bit of repair work, but I’m reasonably pleased with this.

We went for a bike ride this morning, along the Grand Canal to the 12th Lock close to Lucan. Training, really. Nice weather for it although the outward journey was predominantly uphill, against the wind. That made the homeward journey very pleasant, however: downhill, with the wind at our backs.

This is dreadful but I’m putting it here anyway because it doesn’t matter. It’s supposed to be the 8th Lock. This is the best bit of it. The stuff I cropped out was really pretty poor.

Later, I made a macrame bracelet out of hemp. I didn’t pay enough attention to the arrangement of the black and grey cords and so their distribution is uneven and a bit haphazard. Pity. But it’s wearable.