What is this paper folding art?

Here are some pictures of the paper folding art that my MIL has recently gotten into. She learned to do this from someone in Taiwan. She cuts paper into smaller rectangles, then folds them into triangular shapes that get nested together to create shapes such as swans, baskets, strawberries, vases, etc. She likes to play around with different color combinations. She has several books with instructions on how to assemble these into different shapes. I have no idea what this art is called. The books she has are written in Chinese which I can't read... and even if I did, I probably wouldn't be able to translate it into the English equivalent.

When my MIL is not cutting paper into smaller rectangles & folding them, she spends her time doing cross-stitch. She makes lots of cute things to frame or for pillows, towels, bibs, clothing, and other items. I did a little bit of cross-stitch while I was in college. I never really got into it much, it is very hard on the eyes looking at all those tiny squares on the counted cross-stitch pattern. But I suppose I could do stamped cross-stitch instead...

Some people might argue that knitting is hard on the eyes... it really isn't too bad, and there's always the option of using lighter color yarn and thicker yarn. Stitches are harder to see on darker yarn. Good thing I don't knit with black yarn! I do have some black yarn in my stash, just haven't gotten around to using it. Although it is easier and quicker to knit with heavier weight yarn, I have found that I prefer to knit with fingerling, sport, or DK weight yarn. I've never knit with the thinnest weight, lace weight yarn, but would love to try knitting a lace shawl someday. Of course I envision myself getting the lace weight yarn all tangled up as I rewind the hank into a ball. One of these days I'll invest in the Mama Bear Yarn Swift and a ball winder. Knitting with fingerling weight yarn feels like it takes forever to knit anything ... it requires more number of stitches to get the same area of knitting. The heaviest weight yarn I will use is worsted weight, I don't really like knitting with anything thicker than this.

I've found that I prefer traditional yarns more than the novelty yarns (fun fur, eyelash, etc) which are the current fad. I find it very hard to see my stitches using these novelty yarns, this makes it very difficult to fix problems or recover from dropped stitches. I love superwash wool yarns because they are machine washable & dryable. Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of these. After superwash wool, I prefer yarns of natural fibers, such as wool, alpaca, silk, etc. Of course these yarns tend to be hand wash, dry flat.

One of these days I will knit with mohair. I hear it is a pain to frog, so I'm in no hurry to give it a try. I'm just waiting to find the right variegated kid mohair yarn for a project I have in mind.


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