I’d like to invite anyone to join me in making what I am calling “#CovidCranes” You may be familiar with the legend of 1,000 cranes. In Japanese legend, folding 1,000 cranes will grant you your wish. Over 15 years ago, in a time of personal stress, I folded cranes as a way to temporarily shift my focus from the problems at hand. I folded almost 400 of them then and they served their purpose. As of today, I have folded 56 of them. I will fold one for each day that my movements are limited by the virus. I’m hoping I don’t get anywhere close to 1,000 but maybe, as a group, we can get way past 1,00o and get our wish for this virus to spare as many people as possible!
So, you ask, “what do I do with them”. Right now, mine are just looking pretty in the glass bowl. If that’s all they do they bring a smile to my face every day. I may decide to turn them in to a garland to be used as decoration, I know that, if you make them small enough, they can be used as earrings. I’ve sent out a lot of little packages lately and I tuck them into envelopes, put them in the mask for a neighbor, anything to being a smile to someone’s face The possibilities are endless.
With that said, the question is “How do you make a crane?”
- First, get a square piece of paper. (If you don’t know how to create a square from a rectangular piece of paper, click here. What kind of paper do you need? Almost anything will do. Copy paper, magazines (I’m fond of making them out of the covers of New Yorker magazines). Wrapping paper will work but it’s fairly fragile so it’s not a good choice for your first attempts. Regular old construction paper doesn’t work very well–it’s too thick and it cracks when you fold it.
- Once you got your square of paper (and the 8×8 created from a regular piece of copy paper is a good place to start) I found this video from Wikihow to be the easiest to follow. There are lots of other directions on the web as well if you just google “origami crane”
- Practice, practice practice. My advice is two-fold. 1. CREASE everything really well. the back of a spoon makes a great creasing tool. 2. Make a LOT the first few times. If you fold 10/day for a few days you will find that you have memorized how to fold them and you will begin to set challenges for yourself. How small can you fold them? How big? What materials can you use?
Post pictures of your cranes on your favorite social media site. Use the hashtag #CovidCranes and let’s see how many we get. Please comment to me on my Facebook page.