Iron Craft Week Three

I was so excited when I saw the title for this week's challenge on Iron Craft--Just bunt. I was thinking baseball and you know how fanatical I am about baseball. My world came to a crushing halt when I read the description--bunting and garland.

I have to say--I am not a big bunting fan. When I think of bunting, I think 4th of July and those red, white and blue streamers and swags, etc. When I think of garland, I automatically think about Christmas and stringing popcorn and/or cranberries and then the ants that get attracted to such live edible decorations (at least in Texas where I grew up).

I was actually going to skip this week due to a lack of imagination and a backlog of custom orders. Then, I got a shout-out and then boasted that Thing1, Thing2 and I were going to represent the male crafters of the world--I felt a little pressure to come up with something.

I decided to revisit the tradition of 1000 cranes. In Japanese culture, it is good luck to receive 1000 folded origami cranes. Usually, 40 cranes are tied on a single string and you give out 25 strings. Most people add a few extra cranes just in case someone miscounted. A newer tradition is for families to give new parents 100 cranes to hang over a baby's crib. In this tradition, 9 strings of 11 cranes are suspended from a larger crane.

(Here you can see the detail of three of the different strings of cranes. Glass beads are used to keep the cranes from sliding down the string. Traditionally, three separate types of beads are used on a 100 crane project--pewter, brass, and pearl. Each signify a traditional wish for the child).

Here are my cranes hanging around my bulletin board.

I apologize for the spooky lighting for these pictures. It looks like an Alfred Hitchcock movie but I couldn't get a good picture without the shadows.