Local Happenings

The local towns have been having ice festivals. I think the main attraction is the ice carving that happens. I kept reading about them but the weather wasn't good for driving and I kept thinking I would get to the Hunter Ice Festival in Niles, MI. Niles is about an 8 minute drive (on non-icy roads) from South Bend. In fact the yarn store that I really like and sometimes attend their knit night is in downtown Niles. So I even knew where the festival would be. Well, it was this weekend. And even though we've had good weather (mid 20s is good right now) it just didn't happen. Yesterday it was all we could manage to get to the grocery store. We even ended up eating at a burrito place because we couldn't get out of the house early enough to get back with groceries at a time acceptable to still cook dinner. Today, I wanted to go to the Origami class put on by Amanda with the Riverbend Community Math Center. This class was at 1:00 and I thought we could go to the ice festival either before or after the class. But, you see, I'm just a little bit pregnant. I'm not sleeping well at night AT ALL so it is hard to get moving in the morning. And while we were at the class, I felt myself fading, fading, fading ...

The class was (and is going to be) really cool. I loved making Origami as a kid. I seemed to always have an origami book out of the library. But all I ever did is follow directions. Amanda is teaching us some of the mathematics behind the folds so that we can actually create our own original Origami pieces. Today, we learned that any construction that can be made with a ruler and compass (things like finding midpoints, bisecting angles, etc) can be done with a few Origami axioms. Plus, there are a couple more axioms that will allow us to do things like trisect an angle (something that is classically known to be impossible with a compass and a straight edge). I think the universe will be able to rest soundly knowing that it is still impossible to square a circle (I think ... )