Fun Fridays: A Fortunately Stylish Girl

It's your good fortune (har, har) that I couldn't decide between the two items featured here today. One's just good plain fun, the other stylish and fun, but it's my hope you enjoy both of them equally. Befitting the 'fun' theme, you can snap up both goodies for yourself or a friend for under $15. It's almost like being a little kid sometimes, here in my head...

*ahem*

First up are these terrific fortune cookie earrings from Juanita Tortilla. Yup, fortune cookies. Everyone seems to love cracking these cookies open, nibbling on a few pieces, and reading their fortune; lately, I've been seen them pop up covered in chocolate with sprinkles or chocolate chips on them. Made of felt, these $6 earrings are available in clip-on as well as for pierced ears, and can be made for you in just about any colour you like, from the classic cookie colour to red, purple, yellow, green... I can't imagine putting these on and being bummed out for long. What a fun thing to wear!

Fortune cookies are an icon in Amrican culture, but I never really knew the history about these fun treats until I tried finding out this afternoon. The giving of moon cakes, made of lotus nut paste, are used to celebrate the New Year, harvest, and other special occasions. In the 13th and 14th century, when China found itself occupied by the Mongols - Mongols who didn't like lotus nut paste, as it turns out. When the Chinese patriots started planning a revolution, they decided the best way to transmit messages to fellow revolutionaries was to replace the yolk of the popular Moon cakes with secret messages instead! As the Mongols didn't like the lotus nut paste included in the cakes, there was no fear of the message falling into the wrong hands. As a result, the uprising successfully ran the Mongols out of China and paved the way for the forming of the Ming Dynasty, and the tradition of using cakes to pass messages along was born. Tasty and useful - what could be wrong with that?

Today's fortune cookies may have first appeared when Chinese '49ers exchanged biscuits containing cheerful messages with one another instead of the traditional Moon cakes, which were obviously much harder to create during the conditions of the gold rush. The biscuits became popular, and as the Chinese settled into the San Francisco area 'fortune cookies' became nearly ubiquitous. There's a lot of debate about the true origins of the fortune cookie, to tell the truth, and they may have actually been invented by a Japanese American in San Fran, but none of this changes the fact that to most people, fortune cookies signal Chinese food and good times.

(Interestingly, fortune cookies were mostly unheard of in China until 1993, when Wonton Food Company started making the cookies in China - but sales didn't do well at all, and the factory was shut down. The Chinese don't really like sugar, feeling that too much of it dulls the palate.)


Now, these aren't even a wearable item, but they're so fun I decided to feature it anyhow. It's difficult to find a keyfob that's not tacky, cheesy, or boring - but Leslie Ann Black of Black Bags has solved that problem for us by offering these sophisticated key fobs featuring old Vogue pattern fabric! Definitely an improvement upon the stuff you'll find at the drug store (or wherever one buys key fobs these days), these $7 fobs are 4.5" x 1.25" wide sewn fabric firmly attached to a silver ring for your keys. (She has several styles, including fairy tales, graphic designs, and this sweet bluebird fob, which I think is going to be my favourite.) Having one of these hanging from my keychain instead of a boring plastic fob with a snarky remark on it is far more my style!

Finally, yesterday I gave you a heads-up on crafters doing some wonderful charitable things for the families of the VT victims and a fellow crafter, Alison Gordon, and forgot that one of my favourites, The Pebble Collection, has a whole set of designated items from which the proceeds will go directly to Alison of The Sampler. Sorry about that, and do check out her beautiful work.

Have a great weekend!