I don't normally kitsuke - dress in kimono Japanese style - but on Saturday it was pouring it down with rain, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I have in a few fukuro obis, bought for display - they normally hang from a couple of short poles in the living room. So here are my first attempts at tying the classic taiko musubi (the kimono throughout is my new brown meisen with holly leaves from Kofudo). In all the pictures on this page, the white obiage is a length of kimono lining, heat-set into shibori pleats, and my 'makura' throughout is a pair of balled-up socks.

Orange Showa fukuro obi with pine motif. The green cord is a curtain tieback and the turquoise band is a three-colour sequin trim from the 1960s.  This silk obi is very soft and pliable and is comfortable to wear - very typical of Showa obis. 

Cream and gold Showa flower and stream obi. The green cord is the same curtain tieback, while the obi dome is an enamelled and rhinestone 1950s brooch from my collection of vintage costume jewellery. This obi is rayon and the back section is quite slippy and soft, but the front is very stiff because of the amount of gold brocade, so overall the effect is stiffer than with the orange obi. 

Green obi with flower kikko. This stunning emerald green obi is a modern one and very stiff and bulky. Probably the most uncomfortable obi I tried on this day, paradoxically, I like its look the best, perhaps because of the bright colours.  The purple and silver braid is vintage Indian, and the obi dome is a 1950s spider brooch.

Cream Showa obi with pink and jade matsu. This obi is another soft Showa one and this time I tried wearing it without a makura at all, as I wanted to keep it on for the rest of the day. The cord is another curtain tieback, the gold braid is some modern sequinned organza ribbon and the obidome is a big gold Sun brooch. I changed the white obiage, which is a bit blah, for a brown and black silk one, which matches the kimono better. 

I kept this obi on for the rest of the day and found working in a chair wearing this surprisingly comfortable, though as I sat crossed-legged sewing, it dug into my ribs a bit at the top. Overall, though, I've found these obi perfectly comfortable for moving about in, bending, doing the housework, eating, etc.

They are, however, murderously difficult to tie, so I have ordered a couple of Nagoya obi in the hope that they will be easier. 

Hitoe are unlined kimono and they're a comparative rarity in modern kimono because the majority of people who now have kimono made only ever have one or two, so they tend to have the high-end type of furisode/tomesode with linings.

However, vintage hitoe kimonos are fairly readily available.  Nevertheless, searching for hitoe hasn't been high on my list of priorities. Perhaps I was put off by my first experience - a rare failing from Yamatoku. When it arrived, it was so filthy and faded that I had to take it apart for the fabric. Even then, it was mostly unsalvadgeable.

But back to this one. It's rare, says the vendor, Kofudo, and is either Taisho or Showa in the Taisho Roman style, and combines two of my favourite things: meisen silk and yabane pattern. Yabane is one of the most ancient patterns to be found in kimono, dating back to at least the Heian era (794-1195) and it's a stylised arrow feather or fletch. For centuries, it was equally to be found on men's kimono - it is, after all, a warrior symbol. Sometimes you find tiny yabane on garments, tightly packed, sometimes they're elongated to almost the length of the garment and sometimes, as here, they're just enormous.

I hadn't noticed until I'd already bought it and someone pointed it out, that the shading on the yabane is really pretty on this kimono. It's actually turquoise, not as blue as it seems in the pictures, and there are also lime-green bits that don't show up at all in photos. The combination of grey and black is also very subtle and attractive.   

When this kimono arrived I was made up - it's gorgeous. Really crisp, taffeta-like meisen (quite different from the pink one with cross-hatching) and only 390g, which is lighter than several of my yukata.

The juban, hardly visible, is just a sweet little polyester one that a vendor gave me with another purchase, and as an obi I'm wearing a length of rayon crepe kimono fabric with urushi chrysanthemums. 

The obi stay is my 5in deep one and it's very comfortable. Over it, I wrap the fabric front to back, then back to front, tie it in a knot, wrap it to the back again and knot it in a loose, floppy bow that lies flat enough that I can work at my desk. 

The kimono is very comfortable and smooth to wear, and the 18in-long sleeves stay well out of the way when you're typing.  

So this is me today in France in about 23 degrees and a high wind, having just taken off my tazuki cord and pinny (I was cooking lunch), and shod, although you can't see it, very inelegantly in Crocs (increasingly necessary after my foot operation last year). Time to invest in some tabi and zori, I think...

I bought this bit of obi fabric on Ebay last week for a couple of dollars and it arrived in the post yesterday.

My plan is to cut it in half lengthways, join the two bits together and add a velcro closure, to create a datejime-style obi that looks like a fukuro obi from the front. Then I can add ties and scarves, etc, but there won't be a big knot at the back, so I can sit in a chair easily. I also often wear a haori at home anyway, so with that on, it will look quite normal. 

It turned out to be fabulous fabric when it arrived. It's rayon brocade and the brocade threads at the back were immensely long. I cut them off to use in fabric-making, as there are lots of gold and silver threads among them.

Will post a pic when it's done.