Manual labor

[larryhammer]

I made one of these today -- a recreation very similar to origami, except requiring more patience while waiting for glue to dry enough to do the next step.

Papercrafts make good projects for me. Yes, they're sedentary activities involving close hand-eye work, just like writing, but they exercise very different muscles than typing. Good rest for the wrists. Not to mention, all the fiddly bits let my inner OCD soul go to town. And in the end, you get a model stegosaur, or a scorpion,* or a sheep that rows a bow when you turn the crank. Plus a feeling of accomplishment.

A question, O ye writers: what do you do to get away from writing?


* Yes, I've folded both of those.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Cannot get enough writing time, so question doesn't apply here. But origami is cool to see. It would drive me nuts to do, but I love seeing the product.

[larryhammer]

Nuts because of eyesight? arthritis?

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Arthritis, yes, but also because I am terrible at little fiddly things that need directions to complete successfully. Knitting, now, that takes no brain, a Smith mind can handle. I would love to have evenings of nothing but quiet, music, and knitting, or listening to the fountain, or even TV and knitting. I hope to attain that some day! But now I am Mrs Price, my days a long series of tasks that are always interrupted, never quite done, though i am ferociously disciplined, and thus can win five minuteses here and there for such as LJ runs while my tea lasts.

[harvestar.livejournal.com]

Very cool!

I should dig up my ex-boyfriend's oragami spaceships and take pictures. They were really cool!!

He also made me a long stemmed rose and a dozen roses too.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I remember coming home one day and finding paper roses scattered all about the house. :-)

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

A misfired spell, perhaps, or one uttered with a bad cold.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Clearly.

[larryhammer]

I need to learn how to make better flower stems. I focus on the bloom itself too much.

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Er, please forgive my ignorance, but how does one listen to a translation of the Nibelungenlied?

[larryhammer]

By a) customizing one's journal so that it says "Reading" instead of "Listening," and 2) sitting down with the Penguin Classics edition of the poem that's Wagner's source. Or one of his sources -- he did a lot more mixing it up with Tuetonic mythology than I'd realized.

I must say, after reading so much about medieval Iceland, it's somewhat croggling to come across Brunhild, Queen of Iceland. Whaa?

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Tsk! You've only customized the front page; the main link to the post (http://lnhammer.livejournal.com/56430.html) from my friends page still says "current music."

Penguin classics, very good. I think I'd like to read that, actually... I think I'd like to drain your brain, too, come to think of it.

[larryhammer]

If I could customize the post pages in this style, I would.

Decanting my brain has been tried. It came out as gook, though -- too many hardwired subroutine jumps in the spaghetti code.

---L.

[(Anonymous)]

When I don't want to write I knit, paint, or draw. Knitting is by far the closest to papercraft, though.

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me.

[larryhammer]

Knitting does seem to be closest, yeah, even though it uses the least paper. Which is an interesting thought.

When you draw or paint, does it strain your hands in the same way as typing or in different ways?

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I love origami, spent years as a child happily working my way through Robert Lang-- but I ran across a problem which is still unsolved on my end, and maybe you have an idea. So one does origami. And it is nifty. Some of it is incredibly nifty, and one wants to keep it forever and show it to all one's friends. Some of it is just okay, but a lot of time went into it: what the hell do you do with it then? You can give people origami, but they just thank you and then wonder what they should do with it, and throwing it out seems kind of, well, frustrating. So I don't do origami that much anymore, because I was being overwhelmed by tiny paper everything, but I miss it and was wondering if you have a workaround for that one.

[larryhammer]

I am such the Robert Lang fanboy.

My workaround is to classify it as a temporary art form, much like sand castles. This helps me deal with both the disposal problem and the unfolding problem by claiming I knew they wouldn't last forever, and can even throw them out or deliberately give them to the cats, as needed. (Well, sometimes I can throw the good ones away. Once in a while. Okay, once.)

The models do tend to take over the place, though.

---L.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Those are absolutely amazing. You delighted my inner child with all of them, but especially the little sheep in the boat. :)

I don't run to other things to get away from writing. I think of all my creative activities as refilling the well or feeding my soul in some way. When I'm not writing, or at work, I make jewelry, crochet and sew. The sewing encompasses both quilting and making clothing. I am the very model of a multi-talented individual. *g*

[larryhammer]

What kinds of jewelry?

---L.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

All of these are gone and early efforts (I do much better now), but there are some pictures on my flicker account. These are the only pictures I have. Semi-precious stones, pewter, sterling silver and good quality czech glass.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/85012036@N00/46481262/)

[larryhammer]

I want more of the Flying Pig models now. If only I could remember where I picked up the sheep....