Who’da thunk it?

Ok, ok, I know that no one actually thought this would happen, but there are more cranes today than there had been before. Lex had asked (a while back) for this to get done by the holidays (those in december) this year. And I think that I will take that urging as motivation. All I need to do now is keep on going…

Feel free to share your encouragement… I could probably use it!

So things haven’t been so good on the Folding Front…

Life, as it always seems, does it’s best to take whatever project you have for yourself and shake it to see what will fall out. And this time, folding is what fell out. Work (thank goodness I still have a job) has been a scramble to keep things afloat, and so, as I so frequently do, I proceeded to ignore my folding for more immediate gratification of computer games, movies, and just sitting around doing nothing when I am not at work. But perhaps the long weekend (4 whole days off in a row) will do something to re-invigorate me and let me stabilize my footing. Of course, Evan has actually been doing art over the summer, and that acts as a prod, if nothing else. Lex has still been doing her own thing, but slowly as life plays with her similarly. But I though that while I was sitting here in the coffee bar, I would at least update my little pet project. So, hopefully, things will keep rolling in the proper directions and sometime in the next few months there will be more pictures and more info as the 600 grow and multiply. Until later…

Travel talk

So I am sitting on a plane flying over Nebraska and I figure, what the heck, let’s write for the blog. (I really like being able to do this on my iPod.)

So, with the recount at 600, I have brought paper with me as I travel out to see the family. I don’t know if I will be able to do anything with It, it all depends on the nieces and the folks. Bit I will try.

Speaking of trying, I am traveling for the first time in almost ten years without a laptop!!! So far, it’s not too bad. Certanily nicer on my back. This somewhat from waiting for the birthday present to be shipped and just not wanting to lug the work laptop around any more.
(a bit later on)

So here I am. It’s nice to see the family and take a little time with them. The. Neices are about as cute as you can get and did great turough the Passover sedar we had last night. It’s nice to see them here at their house rather than under the stress of travel as I have done in the past.

Well that’s enough for now. Perhaps more to come, but maybe not too.

A quick recout

Reminiscent of some previous presidential and political elections, I took some time to re-organize and recount my progress along the road to 1000 cranes and lo and behold! I was off in my previous count. Currently the count stands at 591 cranes (I was bad over the weekend and didn’t pull up to my standard multiplier of 5 when stopping.) So apparently, with all the excitement and stress going on in my life, I can’t count my own hash marks on my storage containers. In retrospect, I think I was looking at 25 hashes as 50 hashes and counting it that way (if only I could get the bank to honor my account the same way!) So I am not quite so far along as I thought. But this isn’t really a set back, just a reality check. Evan has been rolling the mounting around in his head (when not concentrating on school work) and Lex is forever supportive in spite of her feeling poorly. I am choosing to take this as a looking forward, feeling good about the future type of thing, rather than a stumbling block, I messed up kind of thing.

Progress takes time. Much as I would like things to happen instantaneously (and I have come to realize that as I have aged, my patience has become shorter and shorter rather than longer, gotta work on that one) it takes time for everything to happen as it needs to. We don’t get to have what we want right away, and the waiting makes most things all the sweeter to attain. As a society, I think that we are in the process of forgetting this. Too much instant availability and effortless reward makes us lazy, impatient, and selfish. We all need to (and that is a HUGE generalization) take the time to really appreciate the things we do have, and consider those things we want as well as what we need to do to get them. The times we live in require it more and more of us each day.

An Evening of Folding

So I sat there last night, my normal plans canceled, and folded a few more cranes (now close to the 700 mark, getting closer every day). I sat in the living room with Lex and didn’t really pay attention to the TV, which was on, but bits and pieces still filtered through. Of coures, the

Just a quick update…

Time goes on and I now have broken the 600 crane mark.  Not suprisingly, I have found that the more cranes I make, the less space it takes to store them.  I just started on a 200 sheet box of papers and using this blog as a device, we’ll see how long it takes to get them all done.  I think that this blog itself, now purposed as a forum for me to document the progress of this project, will help to keep me a little more focused on these folding projects.  While I may be capable of doing a lot of things, procrastination is a well known vice of mine, with less than 400 cranes left to go at current,  we’ll see if that stumbling block crops up it’s head, and how long it will take for me to decapitate it.

Progress to Date

I am inspired to now capture my current status with the 1000 crane project and imortalize it not only in words, but also in pictures.  So just for my own amusement, here is a shot of the first 300 cranes made (a picture somewhat inspired by recent film trends, I must admit.)

 

The first 300

I was just too amused by this prospect not to do it.

However, the current count is now at 570 or so and they look more like this:

Cranes in storage

Kept organized in boxes, waiting for mounting and thier bretheren to take form out of paper.  I have a seemingly endless supply of papers to fold and while I have not taken much time lately to do it (outside pressures keep seeming to inspire me to sit and essentially do nothing) I am going to continue.  Perhaps I will hit Evan up for a frame for mounting and give him something else to do over his break.

That’s about it for now.  More to come at some point.

1000 Cranes

So, last year around October, Lex says, you should make 1000 Cranes, the origami blessing for a holiday present.  

That is how it all began.  Now, in march, I am still not done.  Like with all things in life, it got put off, postponed, and then shoved in a closet.  Forgotten for a short time, the over 300 cranes I had folded sat, gathering dust in a box until just recently.  An aquaintance asked me about how the cranes were going after watching me fold some flowers for an art project and I was reminded of those poor lonley birds, waiting for their 700 or so companions.  So I dragged them out of the closet and started folding again.

I am going to use this forum to follow this process:  folding, mounting, hanging, all the way to the end. It might even be therapeutic.