#222 and #1 The list and the crane

Despite my intentions to complete the list of 1000 goals by my birthday, I didn't actually finish the list until almost two weeks later. None the less on July 6th, I happily completed my list with the 1000th goal and completed crane #222 "Come up with 1000 things to do" in the process. In celebration I immediately set to complete goal #1 "Learn how to fold a paper crane".

Let me confess here that I have never attempted the art of Origami before. Confident that I would be able to do this I purchased a package of Origami paper from the craft store when the crane list was still in the infancy of only a couple of hundred goals. I checked books out from the library and scanned over the pictures and folding diagrams and returned them promptly, both sure that I could manage this task easily enough and slightly confused by the intricate diagrams that made no sense to me at all. With my list of goals finally completed, I eagerly selected a piece of paper for that ever important first crane.

That's when I realized that my serious lack of spacial logic equated me to a folding dunce. I couldn't figure out the instructions at all, and finally in desperation I turned to the one source you can always count on to teach you how to do something you can't master yourself, YouTube.

Lisa Shea has a wonderful instructional video on YouTube that goes through the steps of folding a paper crane at a very slow pace to help you keep up. With Lisa's caring tutelage, and a couple of rewinds to figure out where I was going wrong, I was finally able to complete my first paper crane.



Not too bad, and I'm sure by the time I've completed the 1000th crane, I'll be an expert. As I complete each crane I will add it to my collection and eventually string them together in strips of 100 each. I reviewed the video while folding crane #222, and by the time I had finished folding the cranes for the goals I had already completed, I could manage all the folds on my own without the video guidance. Maybe someday I'll branch out and try to master another Origami shape, but for now, I'm back to the list to complete more goals!!