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The above is a Level 1 Menger Sponge constructed from 20 structural units made from 6 business cards each, plus exterior paneling, for a total of 168 cards. The unit was assembled, as always, without any glue or other fasteners. A menger sponge is a fractal cube created by dividing each face into nine squares and then removing the center square. The complexity of the sponge increases as you repeat the process with each of the remaining squares on the face, and then the squares left from that process and so on.

A very tiny kangaroo About three inches high Hopped up to me one afternoon And looked me in the eye “Why hello Roo, how do you do?” I asked the little guy (He had no pouch Which is how, you see That I knew that the roo Was a he and not she) The roo and me, we drank some tea As the afternoon rolled by We lay in the grass and watched the clouds

Rating: 3.5 May 10, 2010 Noodler’s Shah’s Rose is an aptly named ink – I’ve had roses in my garden this exact color. It is a beautiful dusky pink, just slightly less purple than a true magenta. It is highly saturated, and I recommend shaking the bottle before using to make sure that the dye has not settled out. It exhibits moderate shading in wide nibs, but is extremely consistent in fine nibs.

The fine folks over at Fountain Pen Geeks held a giveaway, and I was the lucky winner. Included were a large Moleskine sketchbook, a vintage bottle of Skrip red ink (review forthcoming), and a vintage Esterbrook SJ pen. Dan Smith, one of the administrators of the Fountain Pen Geeks, even included a lovely handwritten note of congratulations. As befits a true geek, he even noted the ink that he’d used to write it: Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo, which is a lovely greenish blue-black.

The 10th Carnival of Pen, Pencil, and Paper is being hosted by Julie over at Whatever. Stop by to read through a great selection of posts by all your favorite fountain pen and ink bloggers. My Iroshizuku Yama-budo review is featured in the ink section.

FEED is a book about living with zombies. More precisely, it is about living in a near future where zombies have appeared and the world has entered into an uneasy equilibrium with them. The protagonists are young bloggers who are chosen to cover a presidential campaign; for them, the break that propels them into the big leagues - and a step up from poking zombies with sticks on camera. The author, Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant, paints a convincing and thorough picture of life after the Rising.

Rating: 4.5 April 28, 2010 Iroshizuku Momiji is currently my favorite ink of all time. I’m a big fan of red ink – though most people consider it too hard to read on an extended basis, I’ve never had an issue with most of them – and Momiji is currently at the top of my list. It is a deep red ink that falls on the bluish side of the spectrum.

This modular origami star was folded out of 30 uncut sheets of origami paper and assembled without any glue or other fasteners. The individual units are slotted together on the outside of the model, which makes it a wee bit easier to assemble than the kusudama I folded a couple of weeks ago. Like the origami box, this model was designed by Tomoko Fuse. It took approximately three hours to fold all of the individual units.

This origami box was folded from 8 uncut sheets of paper: 4 double sided (lid) and 4 patterned (base). The box was assembled entirely without glue or fastener of any sort, as the four units for the base and lid all slot together to form a structurally stable unit. The completed box measures about 3 inches square. The box pattern was created by the celebrated origami master Tomoko Fuse, and can be found in her book Origami Boxes.

If you’re at all like me, and you have limited time to surf the internet, but unlimited curiosity, you’ll inevitably come across articles in your daily browsing that you’d like to read but just don’t have the time for when you encounter them. There are a number of less than ideal solutions to this problem. I used to bookmark articles with the intent of reading them later and would end up with bookmark overload.