engineering mounting method for a very large Art on sturdy cotton canvas

We have a giant Marimekko fabric panel which we used to just have attached to the wall with thumbtacks, but then I got the bright idea of putting it over a stretching frame, so we ordered one. Well, that worked great except that it needed washed and ironed, so I had to take out all of the staples with a flat-head screwdriver and a pair of pliers yesterday. The frame was perhaps a bit large - the margin of fabric on the sides was problematically scanty in one direction, which meant more staples.

This is over a meter in both directions - I think it's 125 by 130-something perhaps - which seems to make those poster-hanger bars (that have a bracing bar only on the top and bottom, not the sides) a bit impractical, I think, even if I made them myself, because it's so large wouldn't the weight be problematic?

But I think having a removable frame would be desirable.

I've seen a frame that worked like this before, much smaller, that was designed for stretched canvas for painting I think, but held the fabric taut simply by its being wedged between two pieces of frame on the back. I think this would have to be a product designed specifically for the purpose though, and I haven't turned up anything but some sort of advertising banner system by searching. One could alternately probably make one, but I feel like this would involve maybe more carpentry than I could do without a bunch of preparation? You could have two frames that are designed to nest together with the fabric between them, for example, but I think the wood would have to be deeper than the stretcher frames we have right now (which is maybe ½ a cm deep). Or alternatively, a truly solid wooden frame with crossbraces could have a channel carved in the back and you could fold the fabric around to the back and push it into the channel. I'm dubious about this amount of work though, especially because a thick wood frame in this size would be awfully heavy.

Maybe I can use thumbtacks or upholstery nails instead of staples? At least those are a bit easier to remove, right?

I saw a neat trick someone made with a much smaller frame - a sturdy wooden frame with no backing and no glass, and she mounted a bunch of magnetic metal strips around the edges of the opening on the back and attached a silk scarf to them with a bunch of little magnets. (I think with a silk scarf it would probably be better to leave the backing and the glass on, usually, at least if you care what happens to the fabric. Scarves are small. I would never consider putting a huge fabric panel like this behind glass, but it could be held up with magnets of some kind... provided one had a. a solid/sturdy frame (sturdier than the stretching frame I think) and b. sufficiently strong magnets (I don't think the normal strength ones would be adequate, although I haven't experimented of course).

The other option I've encountered is mounting a series of clips to hold the fabric directly to the wall or onto some sort of stable base - anywhere from one at each corner to regularly spaced along the top or two or four sides, depending on the fabric and the clips. I don't think command adhesive strips would be adequate or desirable in this case, but there's always the possibility of putting these on a piece of a stretcher frame (we already have an extra) or just getting another one (they aren't very expensive, considering the size and material).

Fun fact! If I HAD wanted to use foamcore board I would ALSO have had to mail order it. I did that once before, to get a huge foamcore board to mount Wax's 6000-pc Sistine Chapel ceiling puzzle on. The largest size anybody appeared to have in stock in Turku was about half the size I needed for that. It's not very sturdy and permanent compared with a wooden frame, but on the other hand thumbtacks + foamcore are much easier to reposition.

Nero Wolfe doppelgangers

Agatha Christie has a couple of stories where she obviously revisited an idea later, resulting in two very similar stories, such as "The Plymouth Express" and "The Mystery of the Blue Train" or "Triangle at Rhodes" and "Evil Under the Sun". I've just encountered the first near-repeat of this type in Nero Wolfe with "Man Alive", the 1st of 3 stories in the collection Three Doors to Death, which is strongly reminiscent of The Red Box. It's funny that it's a short story though, since usually writers rewrite earlier short stories as novels, not the other way round.

The Moulting Season

Yesterday I spent a while grooming Japp, who is an extremely chill bun, but he enjoyed himself more than usual. He often seems to be bored, though not really disgruntled, and of course, it's easy to annoy a bunny during grooming because they get insulted whenever you touch their chin, chest, belly, or hindquarters. Depending how forgiving the bunny is feeling and how much he's enjoying himself, he can be soothed into overlooking varying amounts of attention to or around these areas provided I'm apologetic about it, but usually Japp is a bit more apt to hold a grudge, although he's not as touchy and sensitive. Possibly his coat is itchy with all the shedding, or maybe I just caught him at a friendly moment, but he made a lot of mildly approving little clucks and allowed me to remove what was, for him, a staggering amount of fur, mostly by gently pulling it out with my fingers. He did get mad enough to wriggle and kick a bit at one point when I ran the comb over his butt, but then he forgave me when I spent an extended time finger-combing his scalp and ear tufts.

Also he's a natural model and simply knows what the camera wants. We ended our grooming on a mellow note and he was happy to stick around for a photoshoot before jumping down. Here he is posing with his discarded fur, which, however, was initially in a pile bigger than he is, but has been rolled back and forth a bit for easier handling here.



His stunning and [comparatively] shrewd little eye and a rear view to get the full benefit of his coloration (he's got three colors, unlike Rowan).

I did groom Rowan today, but I didn't get any pictures because he was uncharacteristically grumpy about it so I let him go after a little while and he just wanted to sulk.