Randomness Friday...

Notice the new box on the left there for the 1000 Cranes?  I was thinking yesterday that it might be a good idea to have a permanent place for a running count, just in case I lose track or the piece of paper with the tally marks gets lost.  

I haven't started the project yet, though I have the right size squares now.  Turns out it was great to learn origami with the larger size, but I have to use the smaller ones for the project.  Not as easy, of course, but once I get used to the size differential, I should be okay.  Theoretically.

Still.  It's one thing to whip out a crane with 6" paper...and quite another using 3" paper

I was also trying to decide how to do the colors.  The cranes are strung on silk thread in groups of 40; finished you have 25 lengths, 40 cranes each.  I looked at the stack of brilliantly colored papers and have chosen to start at the top with pink and work my way down this stack of 1005 sheets (5 extra for errors, I guess). 

 

I'm smiling right now as I imagine the rainbow cranes to come...

 

 

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New Year's Day I made my usual pot of red beans and rice--traditional good luck and health dish for the coming year.  I reached for one of the wooden spoons in my utensil jar/container to stir the delicious saucy mixture, then whilst rinsing it off, I realized which spoon I held.

Alan's grandmother's spoon, then his mother's, until it became his and through him, mine...

It's thick and sturdy, has burn marks and gouges...

It used to be round at the top, like any spoon, and because it's not the one I usually reach for, I took a moment and really looked at it...and understood it had been worn over many years with use, rather than fashioned with that slant.  I stood at the sink, dish towel in hand and stared at it.  How many soups and stews, sauces and baked goods must it have taken to so perfectly wear down the edge of this spoon?  How many hands, meals, years?  I had a moment, wondering if maybe I shouldn't cram it back into the utensil jar, cripes, it's practically an heirloom spoon!  Then I laughed and shoved it between the whisks and the spatulas.  It's made it this long, after all... 

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Lynn, over at Paperback Writer, had an interesting link on her blog today: a test to see if the way you talk matches with where you live...or maybe grew up.  There are 25 questions related to geographic locations across America for basic stuff, like pop vs soda or freeway vs tollway...that kind of thing.  I took the test and hey, like it's any big surprise?  I'm a West Coast girl. 

Although.  If I lived in Maine, or Oklahoma, say, I would most likely pick up their words like I did living in Scotland and the UK.  The US is so big, if you divided it up, like Europe, we're probably at least five separate countries and that's not counting Alaska and Hawaii.

Pacific Northwest, West Coast, inland Western states, Southwest, Midwest, Central, Great Lakes region, the South, East Coast and New England.

Holy crap. That's ten different countries with their own dialects, foods, climates, and I think it could actually be broken down even further--the Upper Peninsula, Texas, deep South as opposed to the Gulf states--plus then add Alaska and Hawaii back into the mix.

I wonder if we would fare any better if we really were ten or twelve different countries?  Or maybe I've just been reading too many steampunk/alternate reality novels lately which might explain why I find that idea oddly appealing...