image description: a ceramic coyote with pale grey and tawny fur painted on. the coyote is posed in the middle of stepping forward, smiling with its eyes closed.
Things suck right now. Who wants to join me in making paper crane chains? You don't need any special tools or artistic talent, it gives you something to do with your hands, and you end up with a pretty chain of paper cranes that you can either hang up, or throw away without feeling too wasteful. And if you do join me, post pictures in the reblogs! :)
Tools you will need: needle and thread, a pad of post-it notes, and sharpies/markers/crayons/etc. of your choice.
You can design your post-it any way you like - you can even draw a picture or write out a text. I usually make a simple pattern with around 6 colors. Start by just drawing a pattern - it can be simple or detailed, random or symmetrical, cured or angled - then add each color, line by line, until you fill the post-it.
How to fold a paper crane: https://savingcranes.org/learn/origami-cranes/
Additional pictures and commentary from me below the cut (skip if you already know how to fold a paper crane).
When fold it into a triangle with the pattern face up (so that when you fold it, you're looking at the back of the post-it). Then, fold hotdog-style with the pattern face down (so that when you fold it, you're looking at the side that you colored).
If you are having trouble visualizing how to fold along all creases at once, start by unfolding the note and the gently folding partway along each crease - it should start to collapse in the right way.
When forming the kite shape, make sure the open sides of the square are at the bottom of the kite. The little triangle at the top of the kite is going to form the body of the crane. The part you are folding will become the wings, tail, and head, so you will need to be able to separate them.
This step - pulling the bottom corner up to the top corner to create a thin diamond - can be tricky the first times you do it. It can help to think about how what you are doing connects to the final crane. You are unfolding one side of the kite and then pulling the top - the loose portion - up to form a thin triangle. This will become the wing. The bottom portion of the diamond is going to become the head and tail.
Also make sure you only unfold and then refold each side individually. It can help to think of this as two symmetrical pieces of paper - a top and bottom - that are connected along the bottom and along the middle crease. Although they are connected, you need to fold each "piece" of paper separately. You can see in the second picture below how the part that you folded up to the top is going to become the wing.
Once you have repeated the process, you have two wings at the top of the diamond, and we will fold the bottom of the diamond into the neck and the tail.
If you are having difficulty forming the creases at this stage - especially because of the size of the post-it - you can use the edge of your marker to press firmly along the fold you want to crease.
Again, it can help to think about how what you are doing is connected to the final crane at this point. The bottom portions of the kite are the tail and the neck, but they need to separated from the wings so they can be flipped up. You are folding the wings in half so that the tail and neck lie flat, one on the bottom, one on top, facing you.
Once the tail and the neck have been flipped up, they need to be folded in half again to form two thin limbs, and the wings unfolded.
To pull the neck and the tail away from the wings, gently pull the top of the neck/tail away, then pinch at the bottom where they connect with the wings to form a crease. Finally, gently pull the wings away from each other, and the body should inflate to create a tiny crane! If you need to, you can gently press down in the center of the body to flatten it. If you want to, you can also shape the wings by pinching the edges or curling the tips up or down.
I have decided that I am going to make a crane "bead" curtain to cover the awkward little half-window that I never open. This will be frivolous and time-consuming and serve no purpose, other than the idea makes me happy.
A side effect of this project is that I am going to accidentally find out how many unique sharpies I own. (For each crane I used a different color to draw the initial design, and I am slowly cycling through my whole stock.)
My final for the first year of my fashion and textile course :] fossils cardigan featuring living fossils like coelacanth and lots of dinosaur bones. Big love letter to palaeontology and natural history. Got super into my knitting machine but I wasn’t very adept with it yet so I sort of crocheted around the edges of my pieces and sewed them all together, and crocheted some edges/ribbing. The buttons are handmade from polymer clay. Used some second hand gold yarn I found in a charity shop and a whole bunch of mixed variegated wool together. My most ambitious project yet I completely just did not speak to people for that final month I was working on this 😭
Some close ups:
And my watercolour paintings this piece was based on:
I finally finished this sweater I’ve been working on since November! The first picture is the sweater before blocking, and the second picture is all blocked and finished. I’m very happy with it, and thanks to the disappointing weather in Germany, I’ll even get some wear out of it right away! Can’t believe I knit an entire fingering weight sweater.
The pattern I used is the saskie sweater by saskie&co. The pattern does provide some optional bust shaping instructions but no neck shaping. I added some short rows at the back before separating for the sleeves, and I omitted the bust shaping because I don’t need it. Pretty regular knitting pattern, I’d appreciate more neck shaping but the colorwork chart is just so cute I forgive it. The yarn is meilenweit extrafine merino sock yarn by lanna grossa.
Today's adventure: walk and cycle with the adventure dog!
So once before I tried putting his royal furriness in the dog trailer, which was too much all at once for him (and me tbh, he's quite reactive which is a lot to manage by myself).
So this time me and Brodie's servant (as they call them self!) had a plan. First we'd take Brodie on a lovely long walk, to tire him out.
*then* we'd stick him in the bike trailer and try a fairly short cycle along an empty road to see whether he'd settle.
Mission success! We were a bit concerned that he was too hot, but when we got going I guess the wind helped cool him down. He had a lovely time lying down sniffing the air (he does the same in the car, and whines at you until you wind the window down for him). Tentatively he didn't notice/care about the few dogs we passed, or the cars (they all passed wide and slow, or stopped for us to manage), so yay us!!
Hopefully we can have more adventures like this when my diary has free time...
Silly lil zine about me and my spindle (except I didn't even have the content for all the pages - further ideas very welcome!)
Image descriptions: quick folded 8 page zine made with pencil and paper, with a few sketches of a top whorl drop spindle to illustrate the text. Text:
Dropped Spindles
Favourite ways to drop my spindle: 1) spin it in the wrong direction, 2) remove structurally important blade of grass
Favourite ways for it to land: 1) spins on its end like a top, 2) rolls in a circle and comes back up me, 3) at least I can pick it up because I am wearing TOE SOCKS
A couple days back, I went out on a quick overnight camp with my hab. Oh boy did I need the green space time!! I'd been saying I needed to get out for a while, but had not realised just how wound up I was until I was in green space and could breathe again!!
It was a quick 3 mile trip out (2 miles to reach the edge of the suburbs, then an easy up and over hill). Before I had gotten used to walking we were done!
There was a bit of a mix up where the pub I'd found didn't actually serve food, but luckily there was another close by (and we checked before leaving the campsite, so no harm done!).
On the way back after dinner we spotted these caterpillars
Overnight I'd been expecting to sleep really badly (I'm in the UK and this was during the latest heatwave), but it was the best night sleep in a while🥳 which was good because we kinda accidentally ended up hiking 7 miles back in the morning 😂
This was maybe 50 yards and very difficult to get through! There were some tree branches I had to duck (lower than that!) to avoid hitting with my rucksack. I intend to message the council about it, but first I'll need to check which council so it's going to be a bit of a faff!
We also saw even more of those caterpillars!
In the end our second day ended up being 7 miles, somewhat by accident! We just decided to keep going around and making it longer, which messed up my plans for the rest of the day, but it was such a nice day, it was worth it!! We also had lunch at a lovely little cafe near mine, which was very fun :)
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
titsay
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
