Well, you know how people keep telling you that you need to stop and smell the roses? I got a little sidetracked in searching for ideas for Oma's birthday gift today, and stopped to *fold* the roses. I had the idea of possibly making 100 origami roses for Oma's birthday... until I realized just how complicated and finicky origami roses ARE. (A good friend gave me a very touching gift of paper roses one Valentine's Day, and now that I've tried my hand at them, I'm even MORE impressed with his work.) So, now I may, or I may not. But at the very least, I can show you the two types of roses I've sort of learned to fold (not well).
The "classic" origami rose is known as the Kawasaki rose, or K-rose. It is *not* for ameteurs (which would explain why mine looks like... well... a rolled-up wad of paper). Carlos Furuti's Origami Roses page contains a plethora of bibliographic citations for it, as well as easy-for-experts diagrams in .png and .pdf format. Bloom4ever has even better step-by-step picture instructions (even a video clip for the really tricky bit!), but I'll warn you, this is still not an easy rose. (See the "wad of paper" comment above.)
Something a little easier-- once I figured out that "stretchable creased paper" meant, in fact, 3 1/4" crepe-paper ribbon, and that steps 7-8 meant "keep folding the paper back when you get about 2 cm from the end of the folded bit, until you run out of paper to fold back"-- is this crepe rose from opane.com. The mock-up I created with plain 20-lb. typing paper is understandably stiff and imperfect (it's far from crepe paper, after all), but I got the general idea of it, and I think the end product done with the right materials would be quite pretty. Whether I'm ready to do 100 of them (that's 8 1/3 dozen, if you're curious) remains to be seen... I'm still exploring my options.
And yes, this seems sort of last-minute (her birthday is Friday), but I've been contemplating this for the last month. It is *not* easy to come up with a gift for someone who's had 100 years of birthday presents. She doesn't really wear jewelry, her vision is fading.... Besides, Oma doesn't really like getting "things." She *does* appreciate little handmade gifts... gifts of time. And it occurred to me as well (and forgive me if this sounds a little too macabre to you) that Oma *is* going to be 100, and she's not going to live forever. Certainly, I know her eventual passing has been on her mind, as it's been on the mind of everyone in my family ever since she took a spill last month. (Heck, it's been on our minds to a greater or lesser extent for the last 20 years or so.) And I thought... well, maybe paper roses are something she *could* take with her.
Posted by gris at July 20, 2004 09:29 PMWould it have to be roses? Or would a hundred origami flowers suffice? I can think of at least five flower designs I've encountered in the last year or so, all of which are worlds simpler than these... But they're simpler-looking. Lilies and tulips and bluebells, that kind of thing.
Posted by: Liz at July 21, 2004 07:54 PMEh... I looked at some of the flowers, and they seemed a little *too* simple-looking (the lotuses weren't bad, but they'd look sorta funky in a "bouquet"). I was hoping for something with "ooh!" value, but unfortunately it's hard to get that without putting some skillz into it.
And this may seem kinda lame, but I've decided that what I'm going to do is make some of her own potato salad for her, since she mentioned when she taught me last time that she finds it too hard to do it herself anymore. Or, since she's staying 'til Monday, I *might* take the weekend and have a stab at her kuechle, since I'm the *only* one she taught that recipe to. (::proud jr. chef beam::)
Posted by: Gris at July 22, 2004 12:02 AM