I have these lovely bits of Lotka and was looking for something to be my first fold with this new paper:

I chose Brian Chan’s Wolf spider partly because I had not folded it before and partly because the “milk chocolate” fibrous nature of the paper reminded me of the natural colour and texture of the spider itself.

The first cut is more painful than the first fold on a sheet that is roughly rectangular – the issues with most hand-made papers include rough edges, uneven thicknesses, odd fibre bundles in unfortunate places and a lovely mottled colour distribution.

Coaxing the paper through the pre-folding stages was a challenge – when it arrived from The Origami Shop it was already folded roughly into quarters – annoyingly these folds did not align with my square-cut and, as the crease from shipping was a strong crease I fought to keep the creasline to my fine accurate ones.

Wrestling to the base, my accuracy paid off and before long there were the beginnings of 8 lovely thin legs (and bruised finger tips – tough work bending this thick, this fine).

The paper is a lot like fabric, so I needed to “size” it – MC was used to sculpt and stiffen the model so it is stable (else it wold unfold by itself) and it allowed me to achieve a nice spidery pose – this should also stabilise the paper for an age.

The result is a lovely, hairy (pity the photos do not highlight the lovely hairyness of the surface) spider – I hope never to see one in real life quite this big (although some have come close).

No idea what I will do with this lovely, but enjoyed returning to the bug folding, and have some other amazing paper I must punish for the sake of a bug/insect/crustacean or two … we shall see.

Hope you enjoyed the commentary even a little bit as much as I enjoyed the fold.