Frost, and Making Things

The first of the month came, and I turned the page of my wall calendar both at home and at work. It's that time of the year when the makers of scenic calendars seem to feel the urge to use photos appropriate to the season. The trouble is that New Zealand houses tend to be hard to keep warm, and when I am wrapping up to stop from turning blue the last thing I want is to gaze at a scene of frozen mountains, bare trees and icy rivers.

Next year I need to plan to swap calendars with someone in the Northern Hemisphere, so that in winter I can gaze at Greek Islands, or fields in Provence, or some of Di's wonderful photos of Turkey, or Italy.

My family history writing fizzled out about halfway through June. Without the incentive of an internet site to post to, it's harder to commit to writing every single day. But I still got a sizeable chunk done.

This month, I feel the urge to make things. I haven't indulged in craft for a long time. I have some half finished quilting and knitting projects that probably need a lot more than a month to finish up. I will probably work on one or two, but I am also on the lookout for small projects that I can make in a spare hour or two.

Yesterday, I made one of these small origami books. (I will take photos over the weekend, when I'm at home in the hours of daylight). My version was very simple, with pages of gradated origami paper in shades of green. But I find myself thinking about all the possibilities of stamping the paper, colour washing it, printing it on the computer before I fold it. And i'm trying to work out, if I wrote a poem in one of these books, should I do it before or after I fold the paper, and how would it progress across the pages. Would it twist and turn? If I wrote stanzas onto the pages before folding, how would they rearrange themselves when I assembled the book?

For more detail photos of the book, go here and scroll about halfway down the page.

(The photo at the top of this post is a very frosty pile of leaves by the path outside my house this morning).