Master Folder December 22, 2008

I finished my Christmas knitting!  It’s all done!  Ha ha, take that knitting gods! I have 2 days to spare.  I wonder if I could cast on another present…  Maybe I should be quiet, I don’t want the project that I’m blocking to suddenly spring free of its pins and shape itself into something resembling an orc’s butt.  That would be very bad, given that I’m head over heels in love with the thing.  Maybe Lowell won’t want it…

 

I actually haven’t been knitting too super much these last few days.  Oh sure, I’ve been knitting a lot by Muggle standards, but I’ve been doing other things as well.  Mainly wrapping presents, remembering presents that I forgot to buy, then purchasing and wrapping those presents.  And there’s been the normal, fun family hanging-out time (which for me often includes knitting but slower.)

 

Last night, I tried to rectify my sad lack of Christmas tree ornaments (which was today further rectified by a trip to the mall) by trying my hand at paper folding.  Specifically, tea bag folding from this tutorial on Folding Trees.  Tea bag folding came from Holland and can make some pretty cool looking things.  I printed out some tea bag paper from this site and started folding.

 

 

 

After I “mastered” the basic fold, I tried some others from this site.  The instructions are not always clear, but careful examinations of the pictures can lead to success (but not always.)   This is the Easy Star Fold, which was indeed easy.

 

 

Soon, being who I am, I got tired of tea bag folding even though it was pretty fun.  Really I got tired to cutting out the tiny squares. There’s really only so much cutting I can do at one time, even with a rotary cutter.  So I tried paper wishing stars, also on Folding Trees.

 

 

Also a lot of fun, and certainly a lot faster and involving less cutting than the tea bag medallions.  These stars are made with scrapbooking paper, cut 3/4″ thick for the big stars and 1/2″ thick for the small stars.  Pushing in the sides is not as easy as the tutorial suggests, but I got the hang of it.  I threaded some of the stars together with some beads to make ornaments.  I think I like the stars better than the tea bag medallions, but that may be because the scrapbooking paper is so pretty and rich.  I probably should have printed the paper on the good setting, not the save ink setting!