Technical Difficulties

My accomplishment for this week is that I have taught myself--with the assistance of no fewer than three internet sites, plus an odd little Japanese book I got for $5--how to fold origami cranes. (I also found this really quite cool page about making edible origami.)

I am so pleased with myself it is not even real.

Origami cranes, of course, have become symbolic of the wish for peace, and that's what I find most meaningful about the December celebrations (whatever it is you and yours celebrate this time of year): the wish for peace. I am not yet ambitious enough to contemplate the senbazuru--the Thousand Cranes--but you never know.

When I was a baby, one of my mother's friends made me a crib mobile of origami cranes. It was very fragile and did not survive my infancy, so I have only the vaguest--and possibly specious--memories of it, but there are pictures, and my mother tells me I spent a lot of time "talking" to the cranes. I love the idea of it, and my memories of it, sketchy and dubious though they are, and I am really delighted by the idea that when my friends have children, I can make them mobiles in turn.

And--good lord and butter, the wonders of the internet--Sara Jayne Cole has a website, wherein you can see what she's gone on to do with origami (including cranes!), in the past 33 years.