Spring, social distancing, and an origami cocker spaniel

Just a quick post to check in. I’m still teaching online classes at my university, and we’ll be doing them for an additional week. I’ve actually thought all along that we might have to do them online for the entire semester; let’s wait and see.

Spring is coming quickly to South Korea and people are becoming weary of self-isolating and social distancing from Covid-19. While walking my dog today, I saw so many people outside, including children – masked, but not especially “distant” in every case. The weather is exceptionally fine for March, which means an early cherry blossom show this year. It probably also means a very hot summer.

I managed to steer away from the people and find some isolated space behind the university to walk Bodhi.

PHOTOS: left, dogwood in bloom; center, a small pond on my campus; right, Korean pines

In Korea, we’ve been dealing with restricted movement for so many weeks now, and the emergence from Winter into Spring has people understandably anxious to get over and get on with things. I worry a bit that some premature “socializing” could put the country back a few steps, though.

One quick make from yesterday, a beautiful little origami cocker spaniel from a design by Barth Duncan. I made him from 30×30 cm paper that I bought in Tokyo (see the package below).

PHOTO: origami cocker spaniel with some steps shown.

This figure was medium-hard for me. The reason I say so is because it has at least three “sinks.” A sink is an origami move where you have to push a portion of the model down inside the figure. There are open sinks and closed sinks (the hardest ones, for me). I think making good starting folds will prepare well for a sink.

That’s it for today! I’m a tiny bit slower in crafting these days, only because I am focused more on work, but I am still plugging away on some long-term projects that I’ll share with you soon. I’m also getting out some warmer-weather scarves I’ve made, and will share those old projects with you, too. Thanks for stopping by!

P.S. WordPress says this is my 50th post – yay! I say it calls for some ice cream.