Closing Time

365. A Star Concert

I had spent a lot of time contemplating possible projects for the very last star. Somehow, nothing would seem right and I had some serious doubst wether I would find the time and energy to make something big. All worries ceased, however, when a very unexpected solution presented itself about two weeks ago...

This is not a star I made myself.

This is a star which is just happening on ist own.

This is a star I actually paid for.

This is a star I travelled over 200 km to see - and hear.

This is a man who was made a 'star' by millions of people around the world.

This is my reward:

It was already in the process of buying my ticket that I realised the day Leonard Cohen played in Berlin would be the final day of my year of stars. I had at some point long ago decided that should I - during this year of stars - go to a concert of a 'star' of some kind, I will let it count as that day's project. So, all of a sudden, I was presented with my final star - and I consider this one a very worthy ending.

364. Tracking Stars - Going Home

(I apologise for the bad quality, but the file would have been way too large otherwise...)

363. Funky Purple Travel Star

Okay... this project is really coming to a close quite soon...

I've been thinking a lot about this, lately. What's certain is that I'm not going to continue with daily stars, neither am I going to jump right into the next project. I honestly need a break.

But I had an idea how I might take something with me into the "life after 365"...

I painted a little wooden star I had still lying around, and will now carry it around with me and take some pictures of it in special (or very ordinary, everyday) places whenever I feel like it. Also, it's particularly great to make one right now as I'm just about to leave for Ireland and two weeks of - possibly - traveling around... (And I'm not one for garden gnomes, really) So, lots to see for this little star:

It's about the size of a €2 coin and thus not ideal for taking pictures in front of famous large landmarks or the likes, but it'll do somehow. At least it's easy to take around and needs no careful packing. :)

362. Transformed Flower Star

When buying my new backpack I went for a women's fit version - and those were marked with some funny little flower on what could have been hair ties. I just cut a bit off the edges and got a (somewhat speckled) star:

361. Comb Teeth Star

For years I've had this little white comb - always stuffed into some bag or pocket - until its teeth started falling out:

360. Tomato-Centred Carrot Star

I met with some friends to work on a project - but before we got started we had a lenghty brunch, including these carrots and tomato:

359. STAR Backronym

358. Silica Star

Preparing for my upcoming hiking holidays, I bought a lot of stuff lately - a lot of which containes those little white bags with pearls of silica gel to keep the moisture out. I don't think I had ever opened one until today:

357. Mosaic Star

A few days ago, I discovered my tiny little mosaic stones in a box with old crafting material. A great opportunity to redecorate an old wooden mirror frame:

Those stones are tiny - really: 3 mm squares... This is the entire frame:

 

(more decoration to come...)

356. Runic Star

Having developed an interest in ancient Germanic culture and language some years ago, I also spent some time learning about different runic alphabets. At least I know the phonemic values of most of the runes. I also know that they had more meaning than simple letters - and that there are innumerable interpretations today on what they might have meant and might mean today. I'm not sure in how far I'm interested in that - it definitely stops with trying to tell the future... Anyway, I did remember some of the meanings and wondered wheather there was one associated with a star…

There was: The rune named thiwaz (most of the time) is associated with the god Tyr as well as the polar star (amongst many other potential meanings). It basically looks like an arrow pointig upwards, and I used it as pattern for a star and eventually carved it into a large wooden stick (which is usually lying on my window sill and serving as windowstopper every now and then):

355. Stone Strokes Star

I had big plans for this star, but non of them worked. What remains are two little stones I had wanted to use - and to just draw with one on the other:

354. Bottle Caps Star

Barbecue in the park and a little picknick on the street outside a concert venue afterwards. There were LOTS of bottle caps around... Photoshop helped to turn the four caps of our own bottles into a star:

353. Sesame-Surrounded Star

No star on Friday, so I made two today. Number one, while roasting sesame seeds for making tahina:

352. Fairytale of the Wandering Star

Oh, yes! I've always wanted to do this! I wrote a fairytale about a star. It took me a while, and it's scribbled on different sheets of paper, mostly. I haven't found the nerve to type it all out, yet, so I'll have to update this post some time soon...

351. Bone Cracker Star

Um, no, I didn't break any bones. But on my wild quest of creating new food and recreating food that I found elsewhere, I made these little guys today:

I can't help it, they really do look like bones...

350. Translucent Plastic Bottle Star

I always thought it should be fairly easy to cut a plastic bottle open and turn it into a star. Turned out it really is:

349. Remade Fruit Gum Star

Yesterday, my friend gave me this absolutely smashing examplar of fruit gum:

I really wanted to somehow incorporate it in a project, the only problem was: it was already a star...

So, today, I dissembled it and then reassembled it to make a different star:

348. Typha Star

As a child I was actually scared of these large brown spikes... It was tempting to touch them but I never dared. Yesterday, at the lake, there were bits of those spikes lying around and I was finally brave enough to pick them up and mess around with them:

 

It looks amazing when they pop open and the seeds unfold by themselves... I didn't manage to turn those into a star, but still they definitely need to be documented:

347. Identified Stars #2

Almost half a year ago (well, minus 1 month), I was out with a friend and a star chart in some dark hills of Southern Germany to identify constellations in the winter night sky. Two nights ago, I repeated the project with some other friends on a dark hill rather in the middle of Germany. It took a while to get the map ready, but here it is now:

It was an amazingly successful enterprise: 24 constellations identified plus one very bright star from a 25th, two planets, the milky way, quite a few shooting stars - and not even a moon to interfere.

346. Irish Star

Well, the time has come: I will finally go to Ireland! It's been a long, long time I've wanted to do this - and it's been a long, long decision-making process... until yesterday. Now, I'm over the moon! :D

Since I realised my year of stars will be over just before I leave for this fantastic island, I had to insert a little Irish star in advance:

345. Kunitzer Eierkuchen Star

I missed another day, so I used a star from today as I made several:

Once a year, the little village nearby (which is actually part of the town but every now and then they feel quite independent...) holds a little 'pancake festival'. The women there have a very traditional and very secret way of preparing pancakes, and on this one particular day they will stand in a screened kitchen area outside (so no one may spy on their secret methods) and bake hundreds and hundreds of those for visitors. You order your pancake, you get a number, and you wait for about 2 hours... It's madness really! But they are special, no doubt. They don't look like your ordinary pancake at all, and apparently they are deep-fried... But the insides taste like pancake - with lots and lots of eggs. :D

 There's no way anyone will ever tell me how they are made. But maybe, one day, I'll find a way to recreate them...

345. Wisdom Tooth Star

Alright, I suppose this one is not for the squeemish, so you might want to refrain from scrolling down...

After one week I can say my wisdom teeth operation (at least the first half) is officially over as I had the stitches taken our today. But now I've got two rather large teeth lying around. (I simply couldn't resist when they asked me whether I wanted to keep them. :D) What to do with those little buggers? The little grooves in one of them already made for half a star, so I only needed a bit of liquid eyeliner to complete it:

Yes, I do realise this is a little weird...

'How was your day?'
'Why, I redecorated one of my wisdom teeth with a star of black eyeliner. What did you do today?'

343. Star Dominoes

Every now and then, when I go shopping, they hand out these useless little collectibles at the counter - mostly stickers of some sports team or other. Last time, though, it wasn't stickers but dominoes... Oh well. I mean, really? At least those stickers can go flat into the little albums that come with them, but dominoes? They may be said to be more useful than stickers, but aren't they actually even less useful than stickers until you've got at least half a game complete? Okay, I'm not going to go any deeper - this is a whole new field of philosphy for me and I feel like walking on thin ice here...

Anyway, I eventually put them to some use and scraped off the original design to redecorate them with stars:

342. Triple-Brocken Star

Today was the first time I've been to the 'Brocken' - the highest peak in Northern Germany and according to many legends the place where the witches use(d) to meet on Walpurgis Night.

My friends and I spent quite some time philosophising about the name ('Brocken' in modern German could be translated as 'boulder') and eventually found our own explanation as we were climbing over hundreds and hundreds of large boulders: the hill's entire surface seemed to consist of 'Brocken', so why not just call the whole thing exactly that? I was quite intrigued by the idea of honouring our ascent by making a star out of tiny 'Brocken' lying on a larger 'Brocken' on The 'Brocken'...

Of course, the real origin of the name - while still being uncertain - has absolutely nothing to do with all those boulders lying around...

341. Sticks and Stones - Roasted Plum Star

Yes, well... What is it with the strange titles lately...?

I wanted to roast a plum above our little campfire tonight and had to use four sticks and stick them around the stone inside the fruit to keep it from sliding around too much. It ended up looking a bit like a star if you want it to:

340. Scarlet Starlet

Backdated for order's sake: I missed one, so I had to catch up on it after having returned from another road trip.

This one is a tribute to the 'Perseids', a meteor shower which had its peak around this weekend and gave some friends and me a wonderful opportunity to sit by a fire, staring at the night sky and watching shooting stars.

The moment I had it assembled, the 'Scarlet starlet'-line of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Otherside' got stuck in my head and I couldn't resist: hence the title... ;D

339. Star Garland

Yesterday, we were having a Christmas party.

Yes, it is the middle of August, but hey, in Australia they celebrate Christmas in summer every year! The idea had developed among some friends a while ago, now we finally found the time. (Even though the weather was actually a bit cold for 'real' summer...) I made a star garland for dcoration:

As you can see, we even had a tiny little Christmas tree to put our presents under. (And an advent wreath, a reindeer, lots of candles, biscuits and chocolate, baked apples, sweet bread, Christmas songs, and - of course - glogg. :D)

338. Cold Packs Star

Ah, things were looking so well for my teeth yesterday, but rather bad this morning. So I spent another day on the couch constantly cooling my cheek with these guys:

Fortunately, it seems to have helped. :)

337. Almond-Milk-Pudding Star

Finally, this is the actual star for today:

Yes, I know, it looks somewhat disgusting... But don't judge a star by its... well... consistency. It was my first shot at almond milk pudding and it tasted rather delicious. Plus, it's very easy to eat with just one side of the mouth. I'll try to work on the appearance next time.

336. Star Staves

It came as quite a surprise that I should never have thought of this before:

The song is 'If It Be Your Will' by Leonard Cohen, and to me it's one of the most beautiful songs out there. It's been on my mind a lot, lately.

335. Star Flags Star

This is one of those ideas I've head very early but never found the patience to work on. Now, that I'm somewhat confined to my couch for a day with a swollen and aching jaw (wisdom teeths removed...) I finally finished collecting all the national flags that contain a star and assembled them into one huge star:

Notes:

1. I chose a five-pointed star because that is by far the most frequent depicted in all these flags.

2. It's not really visible anymore, but the template in the background was a star-shaped map of the world (similar to this one).

3. They are a total of 69 flags and are of all the countries recognised as independent by the UN / recognised as independent by at leas one member of the UN:

1.      Abkhazia

2.      Algeria

3.      Angola

4.      Australia

5.      Azerbaijan

6.      Bosnia and Herzegovina

7.      Brazil

8.      Burkina Faso

9.      Burundi

10.  Cameroon

11.  Cape Verde

12.  Central African Republic

13.  Chile

14.  Comoros

15.  Cook Islands

16.  Cuba

17.  Democratic Republic of the Congo

18.  Djibouti

19.  Dominica

20.  East Timor

21.  Ethiopia

22.  Federal States of Micronesia

23.  Ghana

24.  Grenada

25.  Guinea-Bissau

26.  Honduras

27.  Israel

28.  Jordan

29.  Kosovo

30.  Liberia

31.  Libya

32.  Malaysia

33.  Marshall Islands

34.  Mauritania

35.  Morocco

36.  Mozambique

37.  Myanmar

38.  Nauru

39.  Nepal

40.  New Zealand

41.  North Korea

42.  Pakistan

43.  Panama

44.  Papua New Guinea

45.  People’s Republic of China

46.  Philippines

47.  Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

48.  Saint Kitts and Nevis

49.  Samoa

50.  Sao Tome and Principe

51.  Senegal

52.  Singapore

53.  Solomon Islands

54.  Somalia

55.  South Sudan

56.  Suriname

57.  Syria

58.  Tajikistan

59.  Togo

60.  Tunisia

61.  Turkey

62.  Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

63.  Turkmenistan

64.  Tuvalu

65.  United States of America

66.  Uzbekistan

67.  Venezuela

68.  Vietnam

69.  Zimbabwe

I also found explanations of the meaning for most of the stars. I may add them to the list at some point...

4. I left out all those flags that show a sun (without an acutal star) - they would be another 15.

334. Purple Starfish Bowl

The papier-mâché pieces have finally dried and today I turned one into a purple starfish:

333. Paper Cranes Star

I have absolutely no idea how many paper cranes I have made in my life so far - I may well be past the thousand… I use to make them out of every kind of paper I can get my hands on, whenever I'm just sitting around somewhere. They also tend to be left where I make them (lecture halls, dinner tables, anterooms, parties, …) They also decorate almost every present I'm giving to someone. All in all I assume that less of my cranes stay with me than don't. Still, I've got a box at home where I collected all those that would turn up in various corners of my room, handbags, pockets, pencil cases, and god knows where. I try to keep track of their number but it only ever works for so long. So, eventually I shall have to count them again - which I just did. These are 409 paper cranes:

… plus/minus two or three - I didn't double-check.

If you like paper cranes - or if you don't just yet but feel like you might - check out this beautiful project!

332. Fig Star on Fennel

Star-making has never been as irregular as over the past five days... But anyway, here they come:

A very delicious salad with fennel, figs, raisins, and cream:

331. Judenstern

Today, for some reason, the subject of Jews during the Nazi regime came up several times independently. I had long since thought that this is a very notable star which should make people stop and think - and that it should be included in this project. Seems like today is the right day:

All the time while making this I've been pondering things I could write about it - I ended up with nothing. The only words that kept repeating themselves in my head were 'Please, no. Please! Never again...'

So, I'll say no more.

330. Cocktail Menu Star

I spent a night out with friends celebrating that the first of us had basically just finished university. Of course, there was some delicious food and drink involved.

Surprisingly, I don't think I ever used a menu to make a star before:

329. Black Paper Napkin Star

This star was late again:

I think it's high time that I finally took the 'daily' out of the 'project' and made it a '365 stars in 365 days' - so close to the end but I can't really manage otherwise. But after all, I'm playing by my own rules here, so there's no reason why I couldn't change them if they become inappropriate.

328. Gross Grey Papier-Mâché Star

Finally, my papier-mâché experiment! For weeks (if not months) I collected all the newpapers to get enough for some sculpturing - having no idea how much I actually needed and thus ending up with WAY(!!!) too much... But now it has fulfilled its purpose. (At least I hope so: I'll have to wait a few days for all the stuff to dry before I'll know how well this worked out...)

Among other things, I tried to make a star-shaped bowl (or at least a base for one):

I'll probably get back to it in a week or so.

327. Moneygami Star #4

Nope, I'm not ashamed of using the same technique yet again - I'm having too much fun with it.^^

This is one of the most beautiful moneygami stars I found:

 side 1

side 2

Well, there are other really beautiful designs using eight or even twelve notes, but I don't have that much money just lying around... I live in the wrong country for that kind of thing...

P.S.: I was lucky enough to find instructions for both stars on the same website:
Star 326
Star 327

326. Moneygami Star #3

I kind of paused yesterday. So I made two stars today - which turned out to be fairly simple as I discovered so many instructions on how to make stars out of dollar bills and finally went through the trouble to find out whether they would work for five euro notes as well (seeing that I have collected some of them again).

This one is made from a single note:

 side 1

 

side 2

(I just had to use a flash for the second picture to bring out the sparkle of that holographic security band. :D)

325. Star-Making in Reverse

Sometimes in life I seem to be running against a wall and I try everything to get through but I can't. Today, I stopped the fruitless efforts and changed into reverse. So, here is the making of a star in reverse:

324. Little Green Paper Star

Yes, I have made these before. This is an emergency star, made last week and dedicated to 'CampusCouch':

323. 'Nut Star' Tea

This is some creative problem solving: I made some tea, and that tea was called 'Nuss Stern' (nut star), so in a way, I made a star...

322. Sourdough Bread Star

Okay, after so many late stars and catching up, this one was actually made early - meaning: yesterday. But it was such a great opportunity I couldn't let it pass:

This bread did not only get a star for decoration, it actually became my star of self-made bread so far: My very first real sourdough bread (I cultivated my own little sourdough starter baby :D) and it turned out fantastic!

321. Bell Pepper Star

Today was easy: When making my salad for lunch today, the bell pepper strips almost automatically formed a star - I helped only a little:

320. Name Star

Oops, I forgot my star again... Looks like there was too much else to think about yesterday. So I'm playing another game of catching up...

Since yesterday was my name day, I thought I'd keep it simple and appropriate:

Here's to you, Maria Magdalena!