corrugated cardboard

Lately, I've been making etegami that makes me feel like I'm back in kindergarten. That's a good thing, because too often I find myself trying to make "refined" etegami, forgetting that the infamous etegami motto is "clumsy is good." Making etegami from corrugated cardboard has wonderfully clumsy results. I will be sharing more details in the December issue of the Etegami Newsletter, which is scheduled to come out next week. Stay tuned!

the mole and the earthworm

A Handy Mole 

Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

A handy Mole who plied no shovel
To excavate his vaulted hovel,
While hard at work met in mid-furrow
An Earthworm boring out his burrow.
Our Mole had dined and must grow thinner
Before he gulped a second dinner,
And on no other terms cared he
To meet a worm of low degree.
The Mole turned on his blindest eye
Passing that base mechanic by;
The Worm entrenched in actual blindness
Ignored or kindness or unkindness;
Each wrought his own exclusive tunnel
To reach his own exclusive funnel.

A plough its flawless track pursuing
Involved them in one common ruin.
Where now the mine and countermine,
The dined-on and the one to dine?
The impartial ploughshare of extinction
Annulled them all without distinction.

illustration friday (haunt)

from the last stanza of "The Raven"

chateau de davidson

This is the birthday etegami I made for my daughter who has a birthday this week. She was born in 1978, and her name means "princess."

moby-dick 2

moby-dick

This one is for my son. He is currently absorbed in reading Moby-Dick, the "Great American Novel" by Herman Melville. It's heavy stuff, but has plenty of material to inspire etegami.

illustration friday (sky)

the words are from the poem of the same title by Emily Dickinson, which starts out:

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and You—beside—