Saturday, December 16, 2006

xmaskwanzika craft--the pomander ball!

our friend s throws the greatest parties. the food is always delicious! the decoration? impecable. and to top it off, she always has a fun activity planned for her guests as well!

her party tonight was no exception. s provided the supplies for us to make pomander balls!

i was unfamiliar with pomander balls until s's shindig. apparently, they originated in the middle ages and were used to mask unpleasant smells. (i don't need to elaborate about the unpleasant smells do i? good.) also, there seem to be many different ways of making them (with different fruits and spices, with utensils, with glue??, etc). we simply forced cloves through a small citrus fruit. so it was fun and satisfying.

anyway, here is the first pomander ball that i made. it's a fairly simple design and was pretty true to s's sample that was provided.



leff made a cute smiley pomander ball. happy and fragrant! mmmm!



and here is my second attempt. pac man. because, well, i think in 8bits a lot of the time. (it's quite embarrassing.)



this had to have been one of the most fun craft activites that i've ever completed at a party. it was simple enough for the noncrafters to pick it up quickly but still open ended enough for those who wanted to make something more complicated. plus they smell wonderful! i cannot wait to make more of them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

woo! 8 bits rule! especially in citrus!

also, I don't know what the unpleasant smells were - were they poo? were they?

santos. said...

i remember making some pomanders that only have a few cloves in them and they kinda rotted instead of dried all cool and shrivelly. the more cloves there are, i think, the less chance of it getting moldy. but that can be cool, too :)

r4kk4 said...

you're an 8 brit, pip! haha! double woo!

no, the unpleasant smell was asparagus pee. asparagus was used as a staple crops in the middle ages, er, because, uh...there was a potato famine? and, uh...the dust bowl had made growing conditions difficult.

or so the story goes. um, in certain circles. ;D

i was wondering whether or not the would mold, chotda! i kept thinking about dried limes and thinking that there was no way the pomander balls would shrink like that.

i'm sure mine will be all nasty in about two more days. HAHA!