Origami

So, I'm following the directions for beginner's origami, and I'm happily folding away, when suddenly I realize that what I'm holding in my hands does not resemble what I'm supposed to have in my hands so much as it resembles an origami boulder folded by retarded simians. Oh, it resembles a butterfly, but where the paper is supposed to be in pieces, it's in one, because I opened the fold out, instead of pulling the point straight down, and who can follow all those directions that are just a bunch of two dimensional pictures anyway? It looks like a diamond, how am I supposed to know what's going on back there. Hey, at least I'm lucky enough to have figured out where I went wrong.

So I unfold everything, and start over again. Unlike my life, in which I just sit back and say "where did I go wrong now?" and it's not as if I can go looking for the directions to show me where I should have folded point a to point b instead of point c.

Even more frustrating is when I've made something before, and when I go to make it again, even following the same directions, I cannot figure out how I got it to go the right way. No clue. I do what I thought I did before, but obviously, it's not what I'm supposed to have done, because I'm sitting there with a bird base that refuses to do anything, instead of the halfway made dragonfly that I should be holding.

Now that IS what my life is usually like.

When I get my origami paper, I usually separate it into two piles. Colors I like and colors that I don't like. Colors I like are purple, green, blue, red, black, gray, and yellow. Bright yellow, and only because it makes some pretty origami stuff, normally I'm not a fan of yellow. Any metallics also go in the 'good' pile.

In the meh pile go all the browns, the oranges, the peach, the lime green, and the pink. These are the papers I use to fold anything new, that I'm not sure how to make, so if I'm gonna fuck up a paper, it's not one of the really nice ones, it's one of the narsty brown or orange ones.

One set of papers I get are tie-dyed in different colors, and I put the purple/blue/green ones in the good pile, and the brown/yellow/pink/orange/red ones in the meh pile. One of these papers has yellow corners and pink and red in the middle, and the butterfly I folded from it actually looked nice. My first run peach tulip in a lime green leaf/stalk also came out well. Yay me. The brown tie-dyed ones make good piggies, mice, and koi.

The metallic, two-sided paper that I get (actually, I think it's the only two-sided paper in the store. My craft store has a horrible dearth in the origami paper department, and I'm too frikkin busy (yeah.. busy. busy sounds better than lazy, no?) to either make my own, or find a better craft store.) is really pretty, most of it.

the above sentence is proof that my mind? is ADD, according to my family. Seriously, I was driving through the valley with my son and some friends one day, and talking about something or other, and saw a duck at the side of the road, and right in the middle of my sentence, I said "hey look! a duck!" and continued on with my train of thought without missing a beat. My son likes to remind me of this occasion at every possible opportunity.

So the papers, which come metallic/plain, are the following combos: gold/red, silver/purple, purple/green, green/yellow, magenta/blue, blue/pink. All of these make really pretty two-color origami ...er, things. Except the blue/pink. The blue, itself, is gorgeous. It’s a deep, pretty blue. The pink? is the same color as the regular pink origami paper. It's not a pretty rose color, it's not a deep magenta color, and it's not even a light, springy, happy pink. No, it's exactly the shade of pepto bismol.

Which would be great if I wanted to fold an origami pepto bismol bottle. Now, I'm certain that SOMEBODY has already folded one of these, and has posted directions for it on the net, and a dogpile search would bring up at least half-a-dozen pages on how to fold an origami pepto bismol bottle, but for shit's sake, that should be the definition of "way too much time on your hands" if you're making an entire web page on how to fold an origami pepto bismol bottle, not to mention the time it took to actually figure out the folds to make an origami pepto bismol bottle. Thinking about it though, is a freebie. Just means you have an active mind.

yeah.

Or, as in my case, your mind just goes in origami folds, all convoluted, and pain-in-the-ass, but if it works out right, you get something really neat.