174: A Quill

| wonko

Now in bygone eras (and magical schools) people used to sharpen a goose feather, dip it in ink and write with it – they called this contraption a Quill:

I was browsing for feathers, no iea why, when I stumbled accross a Vietnamese origami forum that had a rather lovely feathery pen thing, so decided to inflict the design on a nice piece of pearlescent white paper I had

fairly simple fold, with some fiddling around to get the nib shapely, in the end quite a nice fold.

Why a quill? Well, we are hours away from some announcement or other from J. K. Rowling about the Harry Potterverse, so I thought it appropriate.

173: Siberian Hamster

| wonko

Manuel emphatically suggests “Is no rat, is “Siberian Hampster, man is shop tell me” he insists – it cracks me up every time:

Fawlty Towers is not a show I can watch anymore, but a beloved memory is Manuel’s pet, “Basil” the rat, so I made one.

Curious and torturous fold this one – I stopped understanding the instructiosn and sort of winged it in all honesty – the Spanish with poorly drawn diagrams did my head in a bit, but I think I rescued a rat-like object from the chaos.

A deliciously complicated collapse does most of the work here, then it is mostly shaping – I made the mistake of using a 2×1 rectangle from an A4 page – it needed to be much larger, but you live and learn. When I fold this again I will be armed with the knowledge of what ends up where.

I can see much potential in this model – lots of paper for a nice tail, lovely head and ears, plenty of paper for legs – this base is a keeper.

172: Life, But Not As We Know It

| wonko

Spock from Roddenberry’s Star Trek is famous for many things – wooden acting, pudding bowl haircut, extreme eyebrow waxing, pointy ears and green blood:

But his lines of dialogue are what does it for me: “It’s a type of space madness we have not seen before”, “Fascinating, Captain”, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it” …

A fairly effective caricature of Nimoy as Spock – may you live long and prosper.

You should have a go at this one yourself – http://www.spiraclemusic.com/webwalk/spock1.htm

“You’ve Got Mail!”

| wonko

…so I have been waiting on mail from OrigamiShop.Com – my birthday purchase and was delighted when my son told I had a parcel on returning home from work today:

I was a little concerned because the packaging was damaged in transit (Large format paper must be a nightmare to ship) but the book was bubblewrapped and the paper will be fine, if a little crinkled to begin with. Besides a lovely book (which has the “Ancient Dragon” as a sort of middle-range hardness model – hahahaha)

I bought a starter pack of “tissue foil” – this laminated paper has tissue+foil+tissue sandwiched together – I have never used it before but it is apparently good for compact, intricate models – we shall see.

So much marking … will I be able to resist starting from Satoshi’s collection?

171: Lambs to the Slaughter

| wonko

So I am setting and supervising exams at the moment – hate it almost as much as the marking – cannot help but feel sometimes like leading lambs to the slaughter:

A simple but flawed fold I think – hand-drawn diagrams with few landmarks and an oddity about the head formation that I would re-make if I was to re-fold it. There are ears there, and plenty of paper to improve them  them but the photo does not do this model justice.

I like the legs, and the body-head proportions are good, I can see myself messing with this model to improve the sheepishness of it. Still – they cannot all be gems.

170: The Happy Couple

| wonko

Another parental milestone today. We are going with our daughter and her fiancé to look at a wedding and reception venue:

Lots on, important however to attend to that which really matters – family and friends.

Designed by Joseph Wu to me folded at the reception of a wedding (to give the guests an “ice breaker” activity to get to know the people at their table), a figurative “Happy Couple” – nice and simple.

169: A Yabbie

| wonko

Now in Australia, local waterholes and creek banks are often pock-marked with Yabbie-holes:

Yabbies are a sweet, freshwater crayfish that are related, albeit distantly, to the American Lobster more commonly seen off the Florida Coast

It is my brother-in-law’s Birthday today – happy Birthday Rob!!! he lives in Florida and dives for lobsters in his spare time – I thought it timely to remind him of his Australian equivalent.

This is a torturous model on a lot of fronts – a collaboration between John Montroll and Robert Lang from the book “Origami Sealife”.  I shoulda tweaked that it was the LAST model in the book (traditionally the the final model in a book is the most challenging) but began folding it anyway – 3 1/2 hours later, after some serious swearing and no little amount of paper torture I ended up with a delightful model.

Folded from a square cut from an A3 copy paper page, this TINY end model is testament to a superb design as it is all tucked away into a plump body, 8 legs, 2 claws, 2 stalked eyes and a lovely pair of antennae. It looks like it would cook a treat.

Actually pretty amazed that I was able to fold it at all, many times I contemplated giving up (like 1/2 hour in when I discovered my square was not quite … square), or the formation of the 2 pairs of 6 legs via some extremely fine (3-5mm) folds. You know a model is tough when on 5 separate points, after folding a tight model you are instructed to unfold everything, turn it over and fold something new – the planning to get that crease patter is mind-buggering.

You may applaud now, reminds me of the prawns I cooked for dinner last night – throw another shrimp on the barbie Rob, many happy returns for your birthday.

168: Tulips for Jo

| wonko

Today is my Wife’s Birthday, her favourite flower is a tulip so I had an idea:

After researching tulips suitable to stick on a card, I discovered that none were suitable so I invented a fold for that, then I decided that real-size tulips were also a good idea – a dozen a piece

I chose some nice pastels and strong colours, invented stems and foliage, made a custom vase (pyramidal) and then went to the florist to buy some dry oasis foam and cut it to fit – after a little faffing around a lovely arrangement was made and the presents sorted.

Happy Birthday Jo, love and hugs.

167: A Hyena

| wonko

Hyenas get a bum rap by the general public, They are seen as garbage collectors and, whilst it is true that they will eat stuff already dead, they prefer to hunt.

This is a difficult model to get the posture right – I like the base however and can see a rande of quadrupeds that could spring from it.

A “jackall” I think, and a dog are closely related. Hope you like it.

166: A Vase

| wonko

I like this container/vase a lot:

It self-locks, is water tight and could be used … to … put things in I guess.

the best bit is that you control the size of the base, and therefore the height of the thing – nice and useful for … things 😛

165: Sugar Plump Fairy

| wonko

I once shared a house with 3 other uni friends – much happened, most memorable. Late one night, instead of finishing a due-next-day assignment, Mark was seen flitting and pirouetting through the house:

We coined the expression “sugar plump fairy” after the dance he was attempting, it stuck. Happy Birthday Mark!!!

I like this model, simple folds, precise creasing that gives form from flat surfaces – very clever Mr Brill.

This model is designed to be a Christmas tree topper – I can see how that would work given the convenient pocket at the back. It is not free standing (although I could mangle the lovely minimalist legs into feet and knees I guess – that would ruin the lines however.

Hope you like it.

164: Queen Anne Table

| wonko

Now I put my hand up as a staunch REPUBLICAN – I have never seen the sense of a colonial country holding on to a token monarchy. It would be different if the monarchy were actually USEFUL to us, like a table:

Strong, supportive, present, made of something sustainable and central to daily life, a table is central to any home. This is a “Queen Anne” style table, designed by Robert Harbin, folded for our celebration of the Queen’s Birthday (a public holiday for us – one good, tangible thing that benefits us I suppose).

Nice exercise in petal folding, there are a few variations possible to transform it into a square table – quite like the polyhedral form however. Folded from “Secrets of Origami” by Robert Harbin, a treasure trove of old-school origami designs.

163: The Bullfight

| wonko

Miguel the Matador struts confidently into the arena, the crowd erupts, enraptured. El Toro stampedes into the arena, head held high, the crowd roars entusiastically:

Proudly El Toro circles the matador, alert yet regal the matador watches his worthy opponet, a balletic interplay continues, each proud adversary taunting the other until…

they both live happy ever after, El Toro got put out to pasture and the Matador, a champion for animal rights forms PETA and abolished the barbaric … yeah, I know, I got nothing.

Interesting figurative model – each suggestive of form without being nit-pickingly detailed – I like them, except for the sport they personify. I was looking for “Llopio’s moment of truth” by Neal Elias but could not find a licensed diagram, so I bought the book that it is in – it is being shipped from the British Origami Society as we speak, so settled on a much simpler but none the less effective model by Robert Neale.

I had to cheat – you can just see the splayed paper clip and blob of bluetac holding up the matador (his ankles are too weak and the balance is all wrong for him to stand unaided, sadly.

Why a bullfight? Well, we have been invited to a Spanish-inspired lunch by some old friends “The Goodies” so I thought getting in the mood was a good plan.

162: A Train and Carriages

| wonko

wow, no I mean WOW! I saw this box-pleating exercise and initially put it in the “yeah, prolly not” pile, but dug it out after I found a roll of nice butcher’s paper and wondered how it would fold:

Train carriages, engine complete with smokestack and lovely billow of smoke – far my favourite vehicle to date

An exercise in eighths with a 10×1 rectangle, each square initially divided in 8 horizontally and vertically, then collapse, pleat and crimp from there. The paper was 1m long and 10cm wide, meaning the smallest crimps were 5mm, making it lucky I have a bone folder really as my fat fingers were hopelessly inadequate.

I really like this one, proportions and technique. I added a “crumple” to the smoke – I think it works well. Must investigate crumpling (a real origami movement, some lovely stuff there also).

You too can have a go: train

Should I decide fold it again I would go longer – add another carriage and a caboose at the end. Quite chuffed with it, although it was not really that complicated, just a bit of planning prior to folding. You may applaud politely now, thank you.

161: A Dragon

| wonko

Now I have been looking for nicely shaped Dragons:

and stumbled across a Hungarian fold that reminded me of a cartoon one.

Lovely wings, thick and powerful tail, nice head – a fairly simple fold actually but sometimes simplicity is good too.  

I am working towards a Satoshi dragon, so I need all the dragon-practice I can get. I would like to pretend this one was my first-fold, but I scored a Year 11 Maths C stuporvision at school, and got bored with matrices and vectors so tried it then – so sue me.

Was going to give it to Josh, who has not shut up about dragons since he heard I was going to try the ancient dragon, but then he did not stop talking so took it back – you win some  lose some I guess.