Origami Difficulties

I went on a recent cleaning and redecorating spree around the house and one of the end results was a teenage-friendly hangout in the conservatory.

I bought a new couch (which everyone hates because they are not allowed to eat or drink around it), and put the old one in the sun room.

Previously there had been some potted tropical plants out there and a draft board that both the NPR and I use for painting and drawing.

Now the drafting table overlooks the garden and has a potted orange tree beside it and the other side has the couch, a rug and a coffee table. Above it hangs a ball mason jar with a tea light in it. Behind the couch is a large tropical plant and my potted Nopal sitting on a small table.

I got one of Nick's old work benches, made an adjustment to one of its legs and turned it into a bookshelf. Underneath it are a few jigsaw puzzles and a model of a Stearman airplane that I mean to put together one of these days.

I wanted the space to be one where the NPR and her BFF/sometime boyfriend/fangirl soulmate Nygell could hang out.

The curtains can be pulled so that the area's residents can watch a series of online angsty anime series in relative privacy.

This was one of the selling points I gave to the NPR when I encouraged her to invite friends over to hang out in her newly designated Bohemian paradise.

Unfortunately, I used the coffee table to put together a new jigsaw puzzle I ordered and the NPR arrived home with her mate to find her teen sanctum occupied.

There were some terse words spoken at the sliding door and some good old fashioned guilt tripping from the sofa.

I decided the last thing to add to the space would be a linked chain of origami peace cranes. I bought a little kit that had a how-to booklet and some thin paper.

All was going well until I came to something called a "petal fold."

It made no sense so I started to freestyle in my folds.

The paper ripped a little bit and got a wilted look.

I got angrier and angrier until I finally threw the paper down and declared the how-to booklet to be worthless.

I hated how something so tiny could make me so mad but I had a plan B.

When the NPR was younger she used to make peace cranes all the time.

Once she sat on her bed in a grump with me and folded and entire flock of them. When I entered her room to talk to her she huffed and shifted on the bed causing some of the cranes to make tentative efforts towards flight.

So I got the NPR to sit at the edge of my bed and talk to me about yokai whilst folding a series of cranes.

I watched her make one and experienced a twinge of jealousy at how effortlessly she made the paper take the shape of the bird.

I will try making a jumping frog next and if that doesn't work I'll probably give up on the art entirely.