A pentagonal stellar knot tied in red, white and blue in a tribute to the flag colours and stars. Since I wanted the colours to remain in the same order as they went around the knot, the ears could not nest as is usually desirable in a ribbon style multi-strand knot. Instead the colours cross as shown below. Knowing this would happen, I had planned to cut the ears when I started thinking of the design. Once cut, it was both less and more than I expected as the cut ends were more chaotic than I was expecting, although down near the body of the knot the doubled colour alignment from the front and back layers was… well, I’m still trying to decide how much I like or dislike it. 8)

A maple leaf for Canada Day. What can I say, maybe next year I’ll knot a beaver or a moose. 8)

So, about halfway through, I ran out of the copper wire I was using. I could have gotten more, but I had a spool in the same gauge of magnet wire, which also happened to be reddish. Reddish, festive and xmas-y, although it wouldn’t go very well with the green and purple I was using before, so I changed the base cord colour to white. I was going to use some pink too, but forgot as I got into the flow of construction. The final knot including the hanging thread is in the picture to the left, and to the right is the knot in it’s gift packaging (little organza bags from eBay).

As usual around the winter festive season I start thinking of stars and snowflakes. I had an 8 pointed star/flower in mind that I had prototyped last year, but as I developed the idea (add more bling/zing), it had less of a star aspect to it. I still think it’s quite ornamental though, and simple enough to put into production considering a late-ish start (teacher gifts for 3 kids including a whole host of extracurricular activities, even missing some that finish in early-mid December still leaves 12-14 teachers/coaches).

The Cherry Blossom Festival is a strange event with no fixed date. It’s not even like a solstice or something related to the lunar calendar, it’s when the cherry blossoms decide to fall on a given year. Vancouver’s Cherry Blossom Festival is officially designated as March 28 - April 24, at least this year (2009), but on my street, the flowers hadn’t fallen even by the last day of April. That said, it’s entirely possible that the trees I had my eye on weren’t cherry trees at all. My grasp of things botanical is fairly weak as befits the owner of a black thumb of death.