blah blah blah, about nothing in marticular – may contain traces of aaaarrrggghh
I find it fascinating that there are so many models and folding techniques I have yet to try. The “Magic Rose Cube” is a case in point – I am amazed I have never folded it:
Such a beautiful little modular, 3 pieces the flower, 3 slightly different pieces the leaves, slots together into a cube easily, unfurls beautifully. Continue reading
Having pre-ordered the new album by David Bowie, I was delighted when it arrived in my postbox yesterday morning (Monday 11 January 2016). Much hyped, I put it on loud, in high rotation for the day, each listen affirming a new favorite Bowie Album.
In the afternoon we went grocery shopping, to return home to the news that Bowie had passed on, after a long and private battle with cancer.
Few aspects of the music industry were not influenced by this artist.
His music woke me up as a teenager, a welcome relief from the bang and twang that monopolised the music charts. Continue reading
I will admit it, I have been a Star Wars fan since it was possible to be one. I saw the original movies many times in the cinema DECADES before my kids thought it would be cool to do the same with the new ones:
The original 3 movies were special (well, they WERE before Lucas began messing with them again), the “Force” was this unexplained thing that made sense (subsequently RUINED by the introduction of “midiclorians” or some such shit), space ships where sterile white, blasters went “pew pew pew” but left no blood spatter and it was kind of ok to crush on your sister until you realised she was your sister. Continue reading
Although I began folding paper when I was 11, I peaked at about 13 (back then, in my own mind) by mastering Jack Skillman’s “Jackstone”:
I had bought Robert Harbin’s Origami book series, the model featured in book 2 at the back which meant it wqas hard. It seems the Jackstone was at the time a measure of the complexity of the art and, strangely, the geometry made sense to me – so much so that, for whatever reason I committed it to memory and still fold it today. (read Dave Lister’s BOS account of it)
It is a masterpiece of pre-folding – that you unfold, turn inside out and collapse along existing lines – the magic still delights and fascinates me to this day. Continue reading
On the 10th of October, 2010, the origami world lost a living treasure and master of the art of Origami – Monsieur Eric Joisel.
To “breathe life into paper” is something I am inspired to do as a DIRECT reaction and influence of his work. To think more about the art and less about the technique is challenging, but a worthy struggle.
Eric Joisel – your legacy lives on. May all paper folders learn a little from your art, be inspired by your spirit and fold from the heart.
Faces are things we humans are born to recognise. We see them everywhere, we can recognise them with the barest of visual clues:
Apparently even magpies do facial recognition, remembering the dive-bombing victim and their seeming boundary transgressions for years.
I am interested in the structure of faces, particularly how little paper manipulation is necessary to evoke a face that embodies an expression, the visual manifestation of attitude and mood.
Inspired by the work of Junior Fritz Jacquet, I am exploring how to fold faces from flat sheets without edge incursions, with the hope that it translates into tube-folded faces – we shall see. I have documented my progress below: Continue reading
I am often asked why some of my posts are preceded with a number. I must admit to folding paper, on and off, since I was 11, but more recently I took it back up again as a sort of physical therapy to convince myself (as much as anything) that I could control my nerve-damaged hands after spinal reconstruction.
The numbering makes sense to me, really. On January 2011 I (in retrospect rather naively) decided to try and fold a different model every day for a year. I numbered the models as I folded them, using that index to catalogue the unique folds I managed to achieve.
When I got to 365, I ran out of 2011 and no longer had the one a day madness that was actually really interesting.
I decided to keep folding. When I fold something I had never folded before it too is granted a number. I will continue – it is a useful metric for me, might be an organiser for you but it reminds me of the staggering variety of models out there, and reminds me of the fact that I have really only tried a tiny fraction of them so far.
Now you know …
As you may have guessed from subsequent posts, I have been learning to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5:
After a year of lessons, learning bits of the model and patiently/painstakingly working on each of the elements of the design, I managed to combine all onto one model. Continue reading
This post only serves to test a new plugin from wordpress – WP to TWITTER
It supposed to autotweet an announcement of a new post – seems to work a treat.
Soz for the spam, will purge
This post tests the new editor on my iPad
Seems to work well
This morning I was greeted with the sad news that actor Leonard Nimoy had passed away. Our universe is a little dimmer, missing a bright and shining star. “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it”:
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015
Leonard Nimoy did for television and movie what few others have achieved: he demonstrated through his “Spock” character portrayal that a loyal, honest, ethical, objective, calm, logical, thoughtful, respected male alien could be an invaluable colleague and life-long friend. We can all learn from this – he challenges all males to do better.
I have been, and always will be a fan of that “green-blooded devil” and all that he stood for.
You too can fold a tribute – go here
They say “many hands make light work” and they (whoever “they” are) are quite correct:
My pastoral care group (the Mighty Magee F) and I folded Tomoko Fuse’s Icosahedron Kasudama, as part of a “getting to know you” exercise to start off the year, with the theme “the sum of the parts is greater than the individual”. Continue reading
As 2014 rolls to a close, we welcome the new year:
These are digits designed by Andrey Lukyanov, as demonstrated via videos by the talented Sara Adams – check them out.
Happy New Year!
There is always time to make a little peace in our world.
It takes incidents like those that unraveled yesterday to realise that peace is a choice we make as participants of the world on which we live. Continue reading
I am honored to have been allowed to learn how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5 by an extraordinarily talented folder who goes under the name “MrOrigami”.
When finished, it should look like this:
He sends me lessons, I must complete them neatly and photo-evidence back to him before he sends me the next lessons.
This blog post chronicles my progress so far. It is a long and winding road towards folding the whole thing from one square of paper – that road consists of a myriad of skills, techniques and components all designed to tuck away 70%+ of the sheet revealing just the dragonny bits.
The Crease Pattern is terrifying (but if you look closely you can see head, body in 2 sections, claws and tail … well, I can):
I hope I am skillful enough to learn how to fold it … we shall see. Explore PART 2 of this project. Continue reading
