kusudama-rama

[wombat1138]

...okay, I have to admit I was wrong. When I first got Tomoko Fuse's latest book, Floral Origami Globes, I wasn't very impressed by it and considered returning the thing, due to the tedious prospect of having to make at least 12 identical 2-piece modules for every finished kusudama. However, once I stumbled onto the concept of mix'n'match color schemes within each kusudama, I was hooked.

And now I have beads all over the floor that desperately need to be put away before tomorrow, when the cleaning lady sweeps through and the wombat-consort comes home from his trip, and I can't stop making kusudama. See, I've got all these odd pieces, and I think, "Well, instead of trying to rubber-band all these modules together, it'll be easier for me to make a few more so I can just assemble the entire kusudama and store it that way." And then I space out and fold something the wrong way, or grab the wrong color of paper without noticing it, and then I've got two *more* modules that need to be paired off and matched up, and then *another* kusudama needs to be made, and...

(I have no idea wtf I am going to do with all these kusudama. Maybe put them into a box and eBay them off that way. I managed to get rid of one this morning by using it as a space-filler in a box of jewelry. They're breeding like rabbits. Halp.)

Comments

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's pretty; I don't think I have the pattern for that one anywhere.

I've got pix of various kusudama-type things at the link in my previous reply to eeedge, though none of them is the traditional type with a large number of conical segments sewn together through their points at the middle of the ball; instead, all of mine are hollow polyhedra of some sort, some held together with glue and some without.

The one in your pic vaguely looks as if it might be one of those, but otoh the very regular shapes make me think that it may also be a modular dodecahedron of some type, with twelve pentagonal faces connected... somehow. I also suspect that it may require pentagonal paper to be specially pre-cut to achieve the fivefold symmetry; sometimes it's possible to partially mimic that sort of shape when folding from a square, but these look too precise, with no immediately obvious signs of some of the petals being doubled up to hide some extra layers.

ISTR a mention from somewhere in RK when Aoshi gives a kusudama to Misao, but I have no idea of the exact context, much less what it looked like.