Today, Roderick basically asks us to make a wreath. His suggestion is to pick up a wreath frame from a craft store along with a bunch of moss, some pieces of paper, and a slew of dried flowers. He suggest to cover the frame as desired with the moss, to write down our talents, skills, or accomplishments onto the little slips of paper, twist these papers into the frame and moss, and then decorate with flowers as desired–sunflowers being particularly evocative of the solstice.
This did not sound appealing to me in the least. My hatred of craft stores is nigh legendary, but that had little to do with my antipathy towards this project. It just seemed like a lot of money and time to put into something I’ll just burn up tomorrow. Granted, I might well prefer to make a big elaborate wreath at some point in the future–it actually sounds like a fantastic group activity or something to do with children–but right now, I just want to get to the nitty gritty of the activity.
My little origami sun wheel
For me, the important parts of this activity was the combustible wheel and the lists of talents, skills, or accomplishments. After just a few minutes of wondering how I could make a wreath out of paper, I struck upon the idea of origami. I even found some instructions detailing how to do this with 3×5 pieces of paper. Since I have scads of 3×5 note cards lying about, I was sold.
This wreath probably cost me a nickel to make and about 45 minutes of my time. Folding the card stock was a little trickier than paper, and I ended up having to fold 29 cards in order to get the wreath to self-support. But that was okay, for it challenged me to think up more talents…and to state them as gerunds.
Three Hundred and Sixty-Six 