Thursday, December 23, 2010

Weekend Origami For Christmas--Candle, Candy Cane, and Tree

(and brief blog break 'til Sunday, Dec. 26-- Gomen Nasai!  No Field Notes this week...:-((

Three fun origami for Christmas, from *very* simple (= kindergarten ok) to medium easy (first grade and up, or older kindergartner with some help).

First, the easiest one:  Christmas Candy Cane!  Cici is using a 5cm x 5cm sheet, but you can use any size, or cut a larger size sheet into fourths, or use a big piece to hang on the tree.  Fold not quite all the way to the top (leave some white showing), turn over, and roll up!  Like this:



See?  Easy!  The next easiest one is the candle--lower elementary age kids would have no problem making this, and 5 to 6-year-olds still in kindergarten should be able to do this, too.  A four-year-old might need a little (more if they haven't done much origami, less if they do a lot of it).  My daughter is using gold foil origami paper (just because it looks pretty for the flame--making several using red, orange, yellow would look good, too).  Cici's paper is a fourth of a 15 x 15 cm sheet (thus 7.5 x 7.5 cm).  First fold a triangle, then in half again and unfold for your guide folds.  Like this:



Easy, desho!  The Christmas Tree is a little harder--it involves the "open out and smush (hiraete, tsubusu)" move, which my daughter found a little challenging because it's in a small place at the bottom of the tree (regular open-and-smush she can do).  Make the basic ice cream first...



(Thanks to my husband for the camera work above:-))

Here's a tree I folded with the Origami Star (7.5 x 7.5 sheet) stuck on top and little candy canes (as above) and paper punch shapes glued on:


















So what did you do for the Winter Solstice?  Here it's called Tooji, and you're supposed to eat kabocha (pumpkin--didn't get to that this year) and have a Yuzu (Citron) Bath, which we did.  Smells nice--very relaxing and warming:-))


...our lovely (not) bathtub (it is nice and deep, though)


...above are some of the Yuzu (citron) I put in (yup--just like that), along with a Yuzu bath bomb that dissolves in the hot water (40deg C) and, at right, a Yuzu herb packet (like a teabag that you put in the water).  That bathtub smells so good....  You can see the happy family all in the bath together at the bottom of the package--which is probably unimaginable for most Americans (possibly Europeans, too, for that matter).  If you've seen  My Neighbor Totoro, you'll see the two girls in the tub with their father.  Which is *completely* normal.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year.
Yoi O-Toshi O!  Me-ri Kurisumasu!

12 comments:

  1. Hmmm. I think 'Christmas Tree' might be at the limit of my fumble-fingered talent. Even my paper aeroplanes always end up with odd-sized wings...

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  2. Falen--you should try a citron bath! Can you get citron? It looks like a round lemon, but smells different. Like...well, like citron. A very refreshing scent! If only I could send you a Citron Bath with my Amazing Mental Powers...but, alas, I have them not:-((

    Daz--that's why you put the guide folds in first, then you can line everything up! Make a candle--it's easier:-))

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  3. Condemned to the shallow end. Story of my life. Here I am, brain the size of a planet... etc etc

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  4. Did Marvin ever get any further than "Brain the size of a planet..." ?

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  5. Hmmm. Don't think so. Didn't it always sort of fade out on that line as he walked away?

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  6. I think it did, now that I think about it. Don't have a copy anymore to check (too many moves :-((

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  7. Thinking on it, did he actually say it that often, or was it just a phrase that got picked up and meme-ified?

    Changing the subject, I ran across a great quote on wikiquote:

    "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
    —James Nicoll

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  8. OT, but...

    Just found a service you might find useful. It's made for converting Chinese ideograms (That is the word I'm looking for isn't it?) into html codes, but claims to do Japanese (hiragana, katakana, and kanji, whatever that means. Different variations, I assume), as well. so that 金魚, きんぎょ and キンギョ, become:

    金魚, きんぎょ and キンギョ

    They also claim to do Cyrillic. Ignore all the stuff about charsets, these are html, not unicode. They seem to be a tad confused about that. I tried it on an ASCII charset and it worked fine.

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  9. Thanks! On my own computer, I just have a button I can push and a drop-down menu to choose between Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and Alphabet. Incidentally, when I type in Japanese, can you read it on your computer? And if it comes up weird, would you be able to read it if I type it using html code instead? (Though I realize you may not have the answers, ComputerGod though you be ;-))

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  10. I've never noticed any problem with the characters displaying, if that's what you mean. My own personal policy is to use html symbols if it's important that they be seen, as browsers can be a bit funny about showing non-standard characters, and it varies from browser to browser, with individual settings adding even more fun to the mix. Opera, in particular, has some very odd quirks. On the other hand, large amounts of text made with html codes would make the page size (in Kb, not area) shoot up, so swings & roundabouts...

    On the third hand, I've been playing with it, and found that pasting in symbols you don't know the code for will give you the numerical html code for them. → gives you →, for instance. Not as easy to remember as '→', which does the same thing, but better than nowt. (uarr, rarr, darr and larr give up, right, down and left arrows.)

    Gawd! Sorry, I went into geek-mode again.

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  11. Aimashite, omedetougozaimasu!!!!!

    ~Ez

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