Proofing manuscripts that are soon to become Origami books is an interesting (and sometimes intense) business. While looking at a recent draft, I happened upon Nguyễn Tiến Kha’s lovely new “Lapin (Rabbit)” design and new I needed to test-fold it:

This is an intense fold – it eats up so much paper (I folded this little lovely from a 45cm square), but in the end we get a lovely bi-colour rabbit with all its bits in the right place, good proportions (although a little “top heavy”) and (with a little bum surgery) self-standing.

There are lots of origami rabbits, I have folded most of them, and this one is a charmer for a bunch of reasons. The fold sequence is ingenious, intense and really reliant of accuracy early – lots of pre-creasing provides good landmarks later on, and some lovely emergent geometry as you turn things inside out, round and about.

My edit was (I think) the final pass of a book that will come out of Origami Shop in the next month, and contains some lovely complex folds from the growing legion of Vietnamese designers Nguyễn Tiến Kha has included some wonderfully interesting techniques, and his mastery of colour change is well controlled as well.

I hope your New Year is everything yo hope for – certainly New Year 2023 for me means being newly retired – it is interesting NOT being anxious at this time of the year about up-coming classes and curriculum – 41 years teaching is long enough I think, time to do different things that I want to do, at my schedule.