Carissa Conti (@Carissa_Conti)

So last month just before Christmas I woke up one day with the sudden desire to fold colorful pieces of paper into shapes. Found a good beginner's Origami kit on Amazon that comes with 300 sheets of 6"x6" paper in a large variety of colors and patterns, and a how-to book. Then promptly set to work ignoring the book and going straight to the YT vids. 🤣 I wanted to do the crane as my first project, and the book didn't have that one, surprisingly. But YT of course had plenty of vids for that. Origami's always fascinated me since childhood, but I never got around to actually *trying to do it* until now. Part of the motivation was when I was compiling my recent astrology post, which went up on 12/24. As I was writing that in the weeks leading up to finally posting it I was reflecting in particular on what I noted about the stark difference between my energy, and Taurus energy, which is literally my opposite sign on the wheel. (I've got multiple Scorpio, Leo rising, year of the Tiger...it's a lot of intense energy, which multiple people with the Sight have even commented on, like O.o ! holy shit girl....seeing energy just pouring off the top of my head, saying they've never seen anything like that before.) Something that's always impressed me about Tauruses, whether male or female, is their steady and methodical way of doing anything pretty much. As I joked in that post, though I'm not actually joking, I've stood and watched various Tauruses just....do stuff, because they're always so steady, controlled, methodical, patient and thus, precise. Meanwhile I'm just like "ARGHGHGHGAHAHAHGHGHGH!!!!" full of impatience when it comes to tasks I couldn't give a shit about, or something that may be semi-important, but I'm not *investing* myself in it. Which is great if you're doing something that needs to be done fast. I can be a total speed demon. But not so good for slow tasks. !! Tauruses however from what I've witnessed seem to invest themselves no matter what they're doing. When I'm invested, like when it came to knitting for years (socks were my jam...after learning the basics I went straight to one of the most complicated things you can do in knitting, top shelf, needing the challenge; and beyond mastered it) then things come out perfectly. Everything else though.... "ARGHGHGHGAHAHAHGHGHGH!!!!" The knitting thing does actually make sense in terms of my energy though, because once you get going with it, and it's muscle memory, and you're using slick metal double pointed needles (versus high friction wood) it becomes FAST. A good "fiddling" energy release that you can do for hours. And when channeled into knitting projects for charity it's a win-win for everybody. :) I figured Origami could be fun though to help me hone some Taurus level skills. And I learned straight away on my first practice crane attempt that......Yup, precision is EVERYTHING in Origami. !! Tossed that first practice crane right out. 🤣 What I figured out though very quickly is that every fold needs to be A) HYPER precise/aligned. Not even the slightest misalignment, and B) tightly creased. So I use a pen to help crease the paper with every fold. Make things as defined/tight as possible. With regards to the alignment thing though, if you're even slightly misaligned with one fold at the beginning then it compounds with every fold after, so by the time you make it to some critical complex folds down the line you're going to be completely misaligned, and things will look super wonky. The appeal of Origami is not only the cleverness of it all, but also the challenge, and then the geometry aspect of it. Many folds are very geometrical in nature. Mastered the crane by my third attempt (below pic) which was my third total attempt in general in life, so that was cool. Gave me the motivation to keep going with it all. Have made a couple more things here and there, like the Lotus flower 🏵️ a green jumping frog 🐸 and an orange fox. 🦊 I find that following along with actual vids is WAY easier than trying to do written instructions, which I haven't even attempted yet. (That's how I had to learn socks; bought a $20 DVD to watch. There was no way to learn that level of complexity via written instructions.) And when it comes to vids some people's really suck, because they go way too fast, don't hold things up to the camera enough to really show you what they even just did, sometimes combine two or three folds into one because it's so second nature to them they're not thinking about the newbies who have no idea what TF even just happened, then block things with their fat fingers, and so on. Other vids are much better, and take more care to keep the viewers in mind. So you kind of have to try out different YT origami channels to find the better ones. But yeah, nothing like learning useless skills as the world heads into a slow burn apocalypse. 🤣 That's alright though, it's fun.