Lacy tablecloth made from sweetener packets

Becky Stern sez, "I made this cafe tablecloth using packets of Splenda, Equal, and Sweet'n Low, plus packing tape. I gathered the packets while getting coffees. I still need help coming up with a title for the piece, though."

Artificial Sweetener Tablecloth (Thanks, Becky!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Art and Design • Coffee • Food • Funny • Happy Mutants • maker

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Anonymous

Title it: Sweeter than you.
it just works.
kababok

Diabeetis
BubbleDragon

“Whatever happened to the sugar bowl?”

And for that matter, a tin of hot cocoa powder? The stuff seems impossible to find outside of individual packets now!
Takuan

“Twenty Pounds Underweight and the Bastard Still Hasn’t Shown Up”?
glitchveggie

@ Phos

Methinks thou doth protest too much. I don’t know if anyone else sees your comment the same way, but it looks to me like you’re putting down Stern’s work so you can brag about your own creativity – which is apparently so frequent that you treat it as commonplace. The straw dino formed itself! People were amazed! Oh, but you threw it out at the end, so everyone else should do the same with theirs.

Either way, perhaps you /are/ a brilliantly creative person (I’ve never built a T-Rex out of straws) but that doesn’t give you license to assume that everyone thinks, or should think, the same way you do. According to the post Stern has during her everyday routine taken objects usually overlooked and, instead of throwing them out, turned them into something unusual. BB posts things like this frequently, it serves as a useful reminder to look at things from different angles instead of confining ourselves to intended shapes and functions.
arkizzle

Phos..

If you have an issue with the moderation of your comment, take it to the Moderation Thread.

Otherwise, accept that your comment was mean-spirited in tone and content. Next time, discuss the thread politely or move along to something you find more interesting, rather than trying to teach the featured artist a lesson.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

I love the tablecloth. She’s arranged the packets to look like one of those characteristic 1940s-1950s teacloth designs made of hexagon-based crocheted medallions. She’s even got the right color range.

Glitchveggie @25, please don’t be alarmed. We’re not being unfair to Phos. He’s had a 75 m.p.h. head-on collision with not one but two rules in the moderation guidelines: almost an achievement, considering how broad those are:

Q. It’s obvious that you won’t tolerate anything but supportive comments from brown-nosers and yes-men–right?
A. I’ll venture a guess that you responded to a new entry on Boing Boing by announcing that it was hopelessly lame and boring, and then came back later to discover that your comment had disappeared.

Q. Yes! Why did you remove it?

A. This is another one of those questions that has multiple answers. … Second: because frequently the “I’m so bored” thing is just attitudinizing. There’s a whole big internet out there, and it’s full of people who, if they don’t like what they’re currently reading, move on and read something else. They don’t post about how bored they are just to have something to say.

Third: maybe that entry just isn’t your thing. It could be someone else’s. Why drag down their conversation?

And:

Q. What’s likely to land me in your bad graces?
A. Since you’ve asked, here’s a nowhere-near-exhaustive list …

6. Jeering, sneering, condescending, or one-upping when there’s been no provocation. Telling people they’re naive idiots for caring about whatever-it-is. Like the “I’m bored” pose, it’s empty attitudinizing, and it’s remarkably unpleasant.

I’m not happy. Phos is normally a lively, incisive commenter who doesn’t have it in for any targets more sentient than Comic Sans. Tonight he’s being Mr. Denunciation Guy. I don’t know; maybe someone ran into his car.
Jeff

How sweet.
Takuan

hah! I get it now! Yer doin’ a performance art piece now, right?
SamSam

@ Phos:

You tell someone their work is not “worth oohing and aahing about” and to illustrate why you write seven paragraphs showing off about how great and artistic and zen you are, “oohing and aahing” all over yourself.

Becky’s tablecloth is neat — Boing Boing editors think so and so do several people in this thread. If you’re so jealous that her work is on BB and your isn’t, maybe you should take more pictures of your dinosaurs. If you’re too zen to do so, maybe you should get over yourself and not put other artists down.
glitchveggie

Although I disagree with everything else Phos has to say, I do have to agree with Phos on the devoweling part in that I fail to see how his first comment was devowel-worthy.

Sure, it’s a blatant ‘this sucks’, but they’re not wholly unsubstantiated in that he does give his reasons – even if I think they’re in fact a veil for something less straightfoward.
arkizzle

“We say nice things about its preciousness because we’re polite, or something.”

Wow, slating the featured artist and projecting motivations onto the commenters.. You can make it a hat trick by complaining about the flavour of the free ice-cream too, and then we can all have a drink!

Go on Phos… I know you have it in you.
Quiet Noises

@ Phos:

If you have no passion, interest or pride in your work, it will show. People who don’t have that attachment to their own work are unemployable. Point final.
Takuan

if people aren’t replying to your “points” you should entertain the possibility they aren’t worthy of reply. Why not try another way?
Phikus

My title suggestion: Quantum Sweetness.
Takuan

and might I remind everyone that it’s tough to go on stage with anything. Be hard enough on the performers and soon you have none. Sure, if someone presents something that’s clearly a deliberate insult with malice aforethought; throw rotten fruit. But if it’s just something you don’t happen to much care for, why not wander over to the next stage? Up to you, what kind of climate do want to create? Myself, I side with the risk-takers, the artists, the performers. Why not go on stage yourself? Phos, you must have a photo of your T-Rex, why didn’t you post to flickr and invite all to have a look?
mamayama

“Saccharin Lace” has a nice rhythm to it.

Calm down, Phos… just because someone wants to name something they’ve made doesn’t mean they’re developing delusions of pretension. Not everybody thinks about their ephemeral creations in the same way you do…and often a name is just identification.
Takuan

so you aren’t going to show us any of your work?
radiostar

Name it “SWEET LACED” you know all the sweeteners are all laced with something that will kill you! if your a mouse or you eat way to much of it!

But enjoy it with you coffee you only live once!
Anonymous

Aspartame and old lace
arkizzle

In before the sweetner could be feeding the starving millions.
howshouse

Excellent piece of work. I own a home decor blog- HowsHouse.com- and there are some DIY posting on the blog. Care to share the steps with my readers? This is a really cool piece and it’d be a great conversation piece in anybody’s home really
bekathwia

@HowsHouse – Sure. Step 1: arrange packets how you like them. Step 2: tape them together (both sides of the joint). Step 3: cover with vinyl and enjoy! =]
Phos….

Jealous?

Ha!

My “T. Rex” was crap, too. I thought I made that clear. An idle 9+ hours worth of fidgetry. If it had been extraordinary, I’d've figured out a way to get it out of the pub. See? I don’t just knock other people’s creations. While others at the pub were marvelling, I was thinking to myself that what I was doing was about on par with a summer camp popsicle stick birdhouse.

To paraphrase Phil Hartmann from his brilliant Frank Sinatra “Duets” sketch on SNL:

“I got chunks of “art” like that in my stool.”

It’s grown-up refrigerator art. We say nice things about its preciousness because we’re polite, or something.

I’m an unapologetic iconoclastic curmudgeon and I don’t expect people to like what I’ve said, or think like I do. It’d be a bloody boring state of affairs if that were the case.
Phos….

Dr Bcky…

Jst bcs smbdy tks tm t mk smthng dd, nd jst bcs t shws p n hvly-trffcd blg dsn’t ncssrly mn t’s wrth hng nd hng bt.

Y md t. Y’r prd f t. t’s knd f ntrstng. Gv t t smbdy nd mk smthng ls. r thrw t n th trsh nd mv n t smthng ls.

Th dmnd thng dsn’t nd nm. sbmt tht t’s nt vn wrthy f bng nmd.

mk sht lk tht jst bcs cn’t NT mk smthng whn th FSM pnchs m n th brdbx, thn thrw t wy, bcs th ttrbt f ts phmrlnss s prhps ts bst qlty.

Example:
I spent about 9 hours at my favorite watering hole building a 12 foot long, 7 foot tall “wireframe” representation of a T. Rex. On the spur of the moment, I invented a simple way to assemble flexible and structurally robust joints by press-fitting together drinking straws and swizzle sticks with bent paper matches and plastic sandwich swords.

The pub was crowded, but I was given room, and the bartenders and wait staff kept bringing me supplies. People watched and marveled. I didn’t even really know what I was doing; it seemed to almost generate itself. I was just the guy sticking plastic and paper together in a form that started to look like a T. Rex.

A bunch of customers (many who often leave early) stayed way longer than they had planned because of what I was doing, just to watch it develop.

At 2:20am, I was fagged out, and done with the soda straw dinosaur. The bar was closing. I couldn’t fit the damned thing in my car, so I just tore the thing apart and threw it in the trash can.

The people who stuck around ’til the end were incredulous that I’d spend so much time on it, then throw it away.

My attitude was a great big “Meh.”

I was inspired that time, and many times before that. I trusted my instincts to be similarly inspired again soon after that.

THAT’S the point. Trust yourself and your creative instincts. And know that not everything you do will be magic, even if it shows up on BoingBoing.
Rezpect

Sweet! (sorry couldn’t resist)
andyhavens

Name idea: “Artificial flowers.”
AirPillo

Little cancer flowers :)
JJR1971

Bloom of Carcinogenias?
Takuan

poor Phos, I hope one day you will come here to show us something. Don’t be afraid.
Banksynergy

I have a horrific vision of the future where this tablecloth is discovered by ants…
Antinous / Moderator

Phos,

You were disemvoweled for being rude, not for the brilliance of your opinions. Take your tantrum elsewhere.