I try to mark the passing of Hiroshima Day August 6 with respect and effort.
Having folded the traditional 1000 cranes twice in my life (oddly, the second time my cranes were “borrowed” by a then campaigning year 11 for a community project where he received the credit and was subsequently elected School Captain … but I digress) so thought it time to try something new. Continue reading
Now I am not of the generation that grew up with Pokemon, but seem surrounded by adults that were. Fandom/enthusiasm takes many forms and the latest augmented reality game “Pokemon GO!” is so hot right now I felt I had to fold a poke-thing because…reasons
I had seen a video tutorial from Tadashi Mori on a complex model called “Charizard” so thought I would give it a go. Squaring up a large sheet of crumpled VOG paper (I used red, the critter should be orange – not sure if it matters) and began folding.
Turns out the tutorial was in 3 parts, and the model was really challenging, but I think I managed a reasonable rendition of the critter. Continue reading
Voting is something democratic societies hold as an important right. Some counties have compulsory voting, most allow citizens to choose whether they want to vote – all too often the result is the same – groups of opinionated, empty-headed people are elected to represent the views of the common people.
Anyone who knows me, realises I take the political piss whenever I can – voting only encouraged politicians to think they are more important than the rest of us, but they are just us, right, paid to argue (usually paid a LOT more that those of us who enjoy a good argument). 
We organise candidates into “parties”, “alliances” and “coalitions”, pick “leaders” and rally behind them like their personalities are what really matters. All too often, in the end, we end up with the government we deserve. Continue reading
Continuing my exploration of Hiden Senbazuru Orikata (The Secret of One Thousand Cranes Origami), published in 1797 I managed to wrangle a triple Tsuru:
The original schematic suggests that you use 2 small squares attached to the wings of the larger square, and I cannot fathom whether the dotted lines mean “remove” the unused paper or “hide” it. I chose to hide it.
We end up with parent and 2 kids, joined at the wings. The actual folding is fairly fiddly and the paper hiding makes the head/tail of the parent very thick (or was it the paper I chose?) Continue reading
Taking a square and (nearly) cleaving it into 4 separate sheets leads to an interesting design dilemma:
When the join is in the centre of the sheet, you can join wings, tails or I suppose beaks together.
When the joins are at the edges of the sheet, you could join wings, beaks or tails but I went for the symmetry of wings in this fold. Continue reading
Joined at the wing, this pair of Tsuru (traditional Cranes) was folded from a single sheet split nearly in half:
Taken from “Hiden Senbazuru Orikata (The Secret of One Thousand Cranes Origami)” published in 1797. It is part of a series I hope to tackle…
The trick is to not tear it as you fold it – the paper tension at the split is tenuous, so requires a gently, deft touch. Continue reading
To celebrate the 500th unique fold documented on this blog, I thought I would hold a guessing game whilst trying a fold I have been considering for a while.
This is “Horse Laugh” by Kunsulu Jilkishiyeva from Nicholas Terry’s “Drawing Origami Tome 1” – a fun fold that sees some amazing box pleating and layer management to make a really detailed head (with lips, teeth, eyes, the works), tail, rather lovely mane and some funky legs. Continue reading
Sensei Cassidy was lurking, she did not want to impose, but she was carrying some origami-related paraphernalia and … well … origami:
She had this kit, based on Totoro (apparently a cult Anime film/ character/ universe/ thing), with some pre-printed paper and instruction sheet on how to assemble.
Initially I thought it wold be a cut/glue exercise, so smiled politely and said I would give it a whirl when reporting was done. On further investigation to my relief it was folding only, and some odd stuff as well.
The large character is Totoro, apparently, then there are 2 smaller characters of a similar shape, and then, for no explicable reason, a bus that is a cat (well, a catbus) – which apparently makes complete sense. Continue reading
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
After much care and attention, diligently following expert lessons (courtesy of MrOrigami’s Daniel Brown), I have managed to successfully navigate lessons 1-11 in what promises to be an ever intensifying journey towards understanding the whole model. This is PART 2 of a previous post. Part 3 also exists.
Along the way I have learned a LOT about myself – patience is it’s own reward. If at first you do not succeed, try, try and try again (something I needed to do for lesson 11 – which I folded 4 times until I got it right, each attempt taking me 12ish hours)
I can see why Satoshi Kamiya (the astonishingly talented designer) has not folded lots of these – the detail (and there is LOTS of details here, most you cannot see) needed to let the paper sit correctly whilst transitioning between elements is breaking my brain.
So far, I have learned elements of the design in isolation:
The lessons after this appear to tackle larger and more complex chunks – the aim to get all pieces to co-exist on the same sheet.
Interestingly, although it is time consuming, I am finding the process fascinating, each piece gains a sort of momentum that propels me on to finish it and get it right, and I look forward to the next part with a sort of morbid curiosity.
I bought some WIDE Kraft online (90cmx30m) and, depending how it behaves, intend to laminate 2 strips together to make a square nearly 2m x 2m as my first attempt of the whole model – no idea if that will be big enough, we shall see.
The Lessons continue. Continue reading
Itching to fold something, I dug out a lovely sheet of green VOG
Cut it into a square (because, even though it is sold as a square, rarely have I found it so. Continue reading
Sometimes I just need to fold, it is difficult to explain but I find great clarity in wrestling with complex geometry. We ALL have much to learn GRASSHOPPER. 
Having bought Robert Lang’s “Origami Insects Volume 2” I thought it was high time to fold something from it.
Lang’s models are great technical exercises, amazing manipulations of the plane to the extraordiary.
I am also searching for a model to use a sheet of Origamido paper I have on, but will not use it as a first fold – it costs too much.
There is lots to like with this model, and it was a good WTF exercises – sadly my origami friends probably recognised it immediately and my other friends had no clue.
Fernando Gilgado is a legendary character folder, I have made many of his models, this one is a charmer:
from one sheet of paper, you get 6 pages, a hard cover, arms, legs, a smile and eyes peeping over the top – neat
So, as I mark furiously (having run out of the ability to put it off any longer), my procrastigami takes hold and I started bending something. I also wanted to try out my new self-healing craft mat (the green griddy thing) and have discovered that folding from an iPad or other tablet is better than a book because of the pinch-zooming possible to help old eyes see details of diagrams. Continue reading
In days of old, when people of a township were threatened they retreated (as their last best hope) into the Keep – a heavily fortified “core” of the castle that was designed to withstand the most vigorous of attacks
So I had this odd but interesting idea that it should, given the right size of paper, be possible to fold an entire castle from it. After being inspired by Gachepaper and his exploration of Lotka I decided to give it a whirl
I stumbled across low res hand-drawn diagrams of a Ryu (Chinese dragon) and with a cursory glance said “why not give that a go”:
Two weeks later and a whole bunch of improvising helped me realise that may not have been a wise choice but I have something that is at least based on Hoang Trung Thanh’s model but not faithful to it.
On folding the range of pleats I added a ziggy zaggy spine, decided on 3 rows of scales and invented a method of locking the leg units (each leg is a separate sheet of paper) into the body pleats. I also stuffed the body (with neutral facial tissues) for a little shape and added a nice row of belly scales which I think make it look pretty nice.
The head instructions were un-followable (to me at least) so I sort of wrangled a new head with some lovely horns and a nice open mouth. Continue reading
