Work Never Stops

Happy Labor Day everyone!

I hope everyone had a good well-deserved day off. For workaholics like me, work is what you like to do to "relax", even at home. There is nothing like feeling productive after a quiet day at home with nothing but you, your books, and your laptop.

Home is my office, and the office is my home.

 I have done everything short of sleeping in that place. But I have the feeling that a day will come when I have to take a nap right there in my chair. I leave all of my stuff at the office: my Tupperware, my blanket when it's cold, and my books, which litter the desk.

However, my work station at home is no less busy or chaotic. Work just seems to follow me wherever I go.

On the whole, work is fun and never fails to be interesting, and the office has been a second home to me for nearly five years now. My obsessive folding is not only tolerated there; it is encouraged. For instance, we sometimes use origami demonstrations in our English classes to teach students process analysis. And origami often provides a nice touch to our projects.

I made this (temporary) logo for one of our Civic Engagement projects called LingoTech.

I'm one of those freaks who are terrified of surprise days off and holidays for fear of not getting everything done. I do not bemoan the end of the weekend, but rather start planning the week to come. I might be exaggerating a little. Of course, it can get very tiring sometimes, and the prospect of sleeping in on days off is always welcome, but I know people who absolutely hate their jobs. So at the end of the day, I suppose I should count myself blessed.

Earth Day 2013

We are nearing the end of April, and it's still cold and rainy here in Lebanon. Some people in Canada are still  snowed in, and winter just does not seem to want to leave. It makes me think, today especially, how bad we must have been to our Earth to make it so confused. 

It is no tragedy when thousands of people die in an earthquake, hurricane or flood; it's just nature fighting back. The real tragedy is how we turn a deaf ear to her desperate cries for help. Winter in the middle of spring, and summers which stretch out well into autumn should be a sign that something is terribly wrong. Or is it just me?

To put my conscience at ease, I decided to make today's origami out of reused paper.

This frog looks nothing like the original design.

There is always used paper lying around, so why not make something out of it? That is after all the idea behind origami, and this blog for that matter.

I made my very first kusudama following this tutorial. Kusudama often require a lot of paper. This model for instance uses 30 units (no wonder I'd never had the courage to make one before), so try putting all that paper you were going to toss out to good use and make something decorative and neat (those of you who have read this blog before know that when I say neat, I mean "cool", "cute", "interesting", not the other thing, which my models very seldom are.)

 


And if you don't have anyone to impress, or if you've already snazzed-up your living quarters enough (seriously, are your parents/roommates starting to complain?) you can make something useful out of scraps of paper.

We use these little boxes around the office sometimes. Pages from magazines and flyers printed on glossy paper work best and are often colorful. For instructions on how to make this origami box, visit this older blog post.

As a child, I wanted to be an environmentalist/conservationist/zoologist. I later realized that it was a lost cause, and that Mother Nature was beyond help. Maybe if I had gone through with my dream, the Earth would have been saved by now. The thought will forever haunt me!

Mutant Cranes

Everyone needs a coffee break at work from time to time to relieve some of the stress of deadlines, little daily frustrations of the workplace and people wanting things from you in general.
My supervisor and I have recently taken to folding origami during our coffee breaks. I am infinitely lucky that my hobby-verging-on-obsession is tolerated where I work. My supervisor is wonderful, and always wants to learn new models with me. She also recently started her own blog called Fold and Learn where she sometimes uses origami with her students to teach them writing.

While she was practicing her cranes, she accidentally came up with a few...variations. There were clearly flaws in her technique, and she probably missed/added a few steps. But these little guys came out so cute! I took it upon myself to study these mutant cranes and try to figure out how she got such strange results. My aim was to be able to reproduce these little oddities exactly, without unfolding or damaging them.

To quote the creator of these blundering birds, "sometimes an accident can create something new and interesting."

Introducing the Mutant Cranes!

From left to right: Proud Crane (her favorite), Hunchback Crane and Box Crane

Here are my reproductions of these amazing cranes.


Box Crane

Hunchback Crane

This was pretty easy to figure out.

Proud Crane

This was the closest I could get it to looking like the original.
Mine is not so proud. I guess accidents only happen once.

Check out a cool post on Fold and Learn: Mistakes: A Recipe for Creativity.