Venus

Lest you think I've not been highly productive lately, let me show you my second origami FO for 2007.
This is a kusudama, from the 1990 book Kusudama: Ball Origami by Makoto Yamaguchi (one of my all time favourite origami books). Made for a sister-in-law's birthday on the weekend, since she always admires a similar one I made years ago for our mutual mother-in-law.
It contains 40 individual cone-shaped units which are joined by thread to form the ball shape. The resulting ornament has a very sturdy and pleasingly dense composition.

A rant starts here:
I have just been forced - FORCED! - to switch over to the new blogger. I didn't want to. Frankly, I don't care about all the new features, I was perfectly happy with my old features. I don't want to add labels! (Does anyone actually use labels? I never do - but maybe I'm a minority of one.) I'm perfectly happy using keyboard shortcuts for editing - I don't need no stinkin' drag and drop functions! But the main reason I didn't want to switch is that my so-called Google account log-in (my email address) is just so darn cumbersome. I hate having to enter the whole thing all the time and I don't like change and it's all too hard. Will someone please write and tell me everything is going to be ok, or maybe I should switch addresses, but that'll be even more change and I'm just not ready to face that.