Pondering Japanese Wedding Boats

The festive tree "orbs" are finished.....they were inexpensive to make, but if I were to sell them in the retail market, I would charge an arm and a leg for them! Just FYI: chicken wire can cause scratches and puncture wounds that kill!

I had to sit on the floor to make them. In fact, I also have to sit on the floor to wrap Christmas gifts. I think I may never stand upright again. When did it get to be so hard to sit on the floor??

Anyway, it was like wrestling a wet cat trying to form the rectangular sheets of chicken wire into round balls. You definitely need a good pair of wire cutters and if you happen to have a basketball laying around - that helps, too (in case you forget exactly how to form a round shape)! Some HELP would have been convenient. Martha was there, on the floor, with me. She quickly realized what a tangled mess the chicken wire job had turned out to be and she declared,
"I have recognized that my skill is in the light-wrapping part".

The "light wrapping part" takes 10 seconds and doesn't involve wire cutters.

We had a goal of 8 lighted tree ornaments. We made 5. My skin and hands can't take the pressure of 3 more.

I am kind of proud of them.


They look so insignificant and transparent and average. But they have made my scraggly, dormant crepe myrtle look like a Japanese wedding ship floating in Tokyo harbor....poetic, eh?

Sigh. I can see them from my kitchen window. It was worth the pain(s).

In theory, I have a husband who might lend a hand with these types of projects. I couldn't possibly begin to explain what an oxymoron it is to use you know who's name in the same sentence with lend a hand.

He is a basketball coach - it is basketball season - the world as we know it has stopped turning - he keeps his clothes here - eats an occasional meal -uses the phone after hours to call in scores and such - doesn't understand the artistic significance of lighted tree orbs that you have to make sitting in the middle of the floor.

Say what? Yeah, I am talking to you! Er, about you! Is there a problem? How 'bout those tree ornaments, honey?

As my gurlfriend, Jenny would say.....Peace like a river....

Now, can someone help me up off the floor?

~J