It’s always delightful to see people trying out the patterns I designed. It got to be the best reward for people publishing free patterns just like me. I tend to wonder whether one can understand what I put in the patterns. The worst scenario would be no one wants to try it. It’s especially the case for the scissor cover pattern, which is just not the usual type of patterns that would attract many.  Therefore, I was thrilled to see Ankitio’s scissor case. Thanks, Ankitio, for making it so nice for me! Same goes to the one who makes better clover than I did.

To be honest, money is never an important issue for me. Having a supportive family, I am certain I won’t be starving, even when I was not able to support myself. Although I felt ashamed from time to time for making much less than my college friends, I am usually satisfied as long as I have source to cover my living expense, which is lower the average given my hobby of crafting and recycling.

Therefore, it was a little weird for hubby to see me making the dollor sign.  It must remind him of programming rather than money for at least one minute.  I was working on this is the nice piece just because I spotted from Makezine. (Again, people from Makezine have much better tastes than those from Craftzine although they are supposed to be close. ^&^) The dollar sign is indeed an interesting but not so complicated shape for knotting, so I made my own version, a necklace, from the leftover cotton threads from the owl project. Red is always the lucky color for Chinese. I hope it could attract some more money for my friend who has to financially support too many people.:)

I would’ve listen to my friend who suggested quite a few times that I should not give my husband handmade items as gift as most people/men don’t appreciate such things. I always hope I may be able to make something right. My friend’s proved true again. This little anniversary gift has been lying on the desk unmoved for weeks. I tried not to look at it again as I don’t wanna to recall how much time/thought/effort I put in it. It’s all my problems.

It looks cheap, is it?

It could be extremely frustrated when computers break down one after another. As a result, I need to move my stuffs 3 times during one day. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to deal with such a Guerrilla situation. The bright side is that the shared hard disks are working alright. In order to cheer myself up, I kept folding while waiting the computer to finish the work for me. The ball above is again designed by Fuse Tomoko. It’s from the 107th issue of the Origami Tanteidan Magazine. Assembling the model was not very pleasant, but the picture came out surprisingly great. It might also be a sort of “no pain no gain” thing, I guess.

Another piece I finished is this blue star, which I learned from a flickr contact. It’s very different from the models I’ve made. However, the origin of this design is unclear.

When it comes to accessories, I usually go for bracelet, or necklace in some rare cases. I don’t wear earrings at all and hate to duplicate things. Both prevent me from make earrings for a long time. I finally got motivated when I found out one of my friends (LH, in case someone might know her) only has one piercing. The pattern was pretty random. I can see myself making a lot of these in the future if there are more customers….:D

I have to admit, given such a large amount of cute modular origami designs available, it’s pretty easy to become addictive. The modules are always rather simple to make while reading, listening to music, watching TV or even exercising with Wii-Fit. Although I’m not familiar with the word icosahedron at all, it seems I kind of have a thing for shapes like this. It’s probably the symmetry so attractive to me. I don’t think I am sensitive enough to notice the golden ratio rectangles hidden inside it. This model is also designed by Tomoko Fuse. Surprise, surprise!

I don’t know about the others, but it’s generally more challenging and more time-consuming to prepare handmade gifts for those who do crafting themselves than for the others as the standard and the expectation are always much higher. I would rather withdraw the craft project if it is not going to the right direction. This happened now and then and it’s why my good crafting friends are not getting gifts so often.

On the other hand, if I am lucky to crack the challenge, some pieces would come out really great. I’ll consider this macramé owl one of them. Except for the bittersweet frustration due to this project, I probably made a good bet on this one since Bec, the current owner, seems to like it.

Bec is the first person here to have craft-related conversations with me. It’s a little sad that she’s leaving here so soon. On the bright side, I’ve got one more place on my “to-visit” list. I’ve been thinking of something for her since she told me her plan. It’s also one of the reasons I put up a poll last month. I probably had too many options in that poll so that the results were still not significant after 2 weeks. And, to my surprise, macramé is the first option that reaches 2 votes. The reason I had the option was just that CraftyPod’s review of the book Micro-Macramé reminded me of some good old time. The votes are probably not from Bec, but she used to told me owl is one of her favorite animals, so I decided to make an owl for her with macramé, which could be a good surprise.

After the project planning, I spent a few more weeks on research, or more precisely, in searching. Olly the Owl provides 3 free patterns. There are quite some macrame books having owls on the cover, but none of them really fits my imagination of a cute owl until I saw the Japanese book やさしいプロセス 新・マクラメの本. The little owl on the cover is perfect. Still, I couldn’t resist to add my own touch to it, because the owl both of us are familiar with has two triangle ears!

One more trivial thing about the owl. I was going to use a tree branch I collected from the forest here but Mr Y warned me about the very strict immigration rules in the southern country. Pool Mr. Owl, he can only stand on a fake stick.

when Mr Y and I was waiting at the clinic this morning, I had my favorite Ai Akikusa(秋草愛)’s book with me.

The little bookmark was soon revealed and then the following conversation started:

Y> Ah, it’s a moo card!
T> Hmm…..no, that’s my handmade bookmark.
Y> Yeah, but you’ve got “Moo” on the card.
T> Oh, yes, that’s cow “moo”.
Y> And, it’s almost the same size as your moo cards.
T> Oh, yeah…..but…..
Y> Maybe a little longer….did you get inspiration from those moo cards?
T> I don’t think so. It was way back before our first move, more than 3 years ago. It should be older than moo.com…..
Y> So, did you dream about it? Like Allison in Medium?
T> ………

It’s nice to take a look at some old projects, but I really didn’t expect the conversation going this way. Now I am totally aware that there is a so-called “TV-kid” close by.

Here’s the picture of the scrunchie I finished …… hmm …… in July. It could be a bad sigh that I am getting lazier and lazier and I barely have new things to show, but it could also be a good sign of a possible return. We’ll see.

p.s. I have got my first moo mini-cards and I love them.

I had plan to start more projects and finish them all but there’s no way to predict someone’s sickness. Hopefully, Mr Y will be fully recovered soon. What I can show you is what I had a month ago: quite a few modular origami pieces. I have posted the tutorial for the piece above last time and here comes more:

The jitterbug unit designed by Tung Kem Lam is probably my favorite among these models. Although the original website is not longer available, there are several video tutorials on youtube. It’s very important to know that the 20 units are not all exactly the same. Some tutorials did not point this out. It took me a while to understand the model thoroughly.

One of the latest designs from famous Tomoko Fuse(布施 知子), the modular origami master in Japan, this model can be found in issue 115 of the Origami Tantaidan Magazine (折紙探偵団) published by Japan Origami Academic Society.  This ball only contains 12 units, much less than the others I have tried, but it is definitely the most time consuming one. The module assembling is a little tricky from my point of view. I didn’t follow the instruction carefully enough at first to leave one corner unfolded at the last step. As a result, the assembling is almost a nightmare. Luckily, I always try to put a few units together before going on. After fixing the first 3 units, everything become much easier. In a word, there must be a reason for the master to design in a certain way.

This green ball is made of the well-known PHiZZ units, only 30 of them. The unit itself is a little boring even though the pieces with hundreds of them are quite beautiful. I am just not ready to make more than 30 pieces.

I like the white ball a lot. It is somehow too fragile to be thew like a ball. The module was designed by Bennett Arnstein and Rona Gurkewitz and published in the book 3D Geometric Origami. It starts with a triangle rather than a square. I had a great time preparing these triangles. I cannot deny that I prefer equilateral triangle to any other shapes. There’s also a clear tutorial on Youtube.

BTW, the black background seems to work the best for this type of photographs.

I’ve been quite into modular/geometric/unit origami recently. One of the reasons is that I’ve got a box of notepads in 7 colors. There’s nothing better than modular origami to use the colorful paper. In addition, the folding of small units is usually simple, so I can do that while watching TV or doing some other things.

I still don’t have the camera to take pictures of what I finished, but I can certainly show you the tutorial I’ve followed. This tutorial has been in my tutorial collection for years and naturally became my first choice to start with. I like the simplicity of this model. It has no extra creases or edges on any faces. All creases are hidden. Mathematically speaking, it’s a perfect great stellated dodecahedron! Believe it or not, mine looks way better than the ones in the tutorial, except for the one with LED inside!

I finished a small project last week, but I was not able to document it as the project was a gift to a friend leaving here last week and our camera won’t be back until 2 weeks later. Although I usually stop crafting when the camera is not around, this gift project somehow brought my craft mojo back. I am a bit eager to start a new project. The question is which one. You probably know I don’t like working on more than 2 projects at the same time.

Please help me with this difficult decision, my dear friend! You can choose more than 1 items.

Here comes the Simply Lucky Clover Bookmark Pattern~

It’s great that I can still find the old instructions I drew over 3 years ago on making fringes for crocheted bookmarks so I can recycle it!

I promised my friend Nadiya to make her some clover bookmarks last summer, but I only managed to send the bookmarks at the beginning of this week. A few days ago Nadiya told me she had got the bookmarks so I can finally reveal the picture here. In the picture, together with the pair of bookmarks I sent, the big fat clover coaster on the left top was my first attempt.  I sort of liked the shape and the veins on that piece. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep these features on a smaller pieces. At then end, I came up with a totally different version, which is surprisingly simple.  Half a year has passed when I finalized these two simple bits. Then, it took me another half a year to deliver them. I felt ashamed.

I’ll trying to write up the pattern now. I’ll be more motivated if there are any requests….;)

I got my first pair of shining embroidery scissors from Metz back in February. Since then, I’ve been worried about the cute sharp tips being damaged under all kinds of circumstances, not to mention things are falling off my desks almost everyday. I figured it would be nice if the scissors, especially the sharp tips, are better protected. And that is the source of this crochet project.

It took me one night to make this case, but quite a few month to finish writing/drawing the pattern. There is almost no cutting involved, but it is a little tricky to make. Here is the Scissor Cover Pattern. I would extremely appreciate if anyone is willing to try out the pattern. I am sure there are a lot of errors in this pattern. Let me know if you find some.

Pattern