1009: Mayhew (or Black Death)

Apparently one of the symptoms of the plague was to smell a sweet smell like flowers:

Xander Perrott's "Mayhew"

That escalated rather quickly, but that is life in a pandemic age I guess. This “black flower ball” is “Mayhew”, a kusudama designed by Xander Perrott, a lovely thing indeed.

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1006: Fake News

In an age of great confusion and concern over health, safety and social distancing, it is interesting (nay, alarming) to see the spike of “fake news” relating to the current Pandemic:

Xander Perrott's "Zenith"

We learn via social media that Covid-19 was man-made, released as a viral payload from some weaponsied experiment (gone wrong, or not), is transmitted via 5G, and is defeated by injecting disinfectant and drinking bleach. We hear and watch idiot orange leader lie, contradict himself, blame storm, underfund, over-claim, then go and play golf while his country suffers.

We learn that some ffolk, tired of being “isolated” for a week or two in one of the most virus-ravaged countries chose to riot (hence magnify the problem) for their right to congregate, despite social distancing suggestions in place to save their lives – and we see them turn up, enraged, with guns, like they can shoot the fucking invisible enemy.

We hear from celebrities, entombed in their mansions, doing it tough because they are down to only domestic champagne, we hear of crop circles, conspiracies, complete shit uttered by people with access to the greater public, in the end (like this post) it is all NOISE, no SIGNAL.

It appears scientists and health workers DO know how to mitigate spread, that social distancing IS effective at arresting spread, that outbreaks are inevitable but manageble if there is a healthcare system in place applying rational and reasonable steps, and that the world will return to some version of normalcy slowly and cautiously.

Xander Perrott's "Zenith" scale

This is “Zenith”, a 30 piece kusudama, designed by Xander Perrott (from his eBook “Folded Forms”), folded from duo red/natural Kraft. It is reminiscent of the shape we are seeing of virus (cells?), it was folded during a telly binge, it helped to calm me down when I think of work Monday: I am a teacher, for the past few weeks I have had had nearly normal classes (I teach mostly year 11 and 12, they were back in F2F after an extended period in ISO). This coming week, all students return to a tiny inner-city campus. 1700 boys, 120 staff, no room to swing a cat, social distancing impossible. Happy days.

1003: Flat-folding Sine Wave-based Corrugation

Exploring the notion of curve-following corrugations, I drew a section of a sine wave, placed a series of graduated squares diagonally along it, constructed diagonal bisectors and extended them to the bounding boxes. then tiled, mirrored and flipped copies to construct a sine-wave that extended over an A4 page:

flat-folding sine wave-based corrugation - crease pattern

Although tiny, I used a stylus to score the necessary creases then spent a couple of hours delicately collapsing it.

flat-folding sine wave-based corrugation - finished form

The first few creases did not cooperate but as more of the structure emerged, it reinforced the remaining collapses and it sort of started to look after itself. Explore further the Maths behind this technique in this published paper.

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974: Xiao’s Styracosaurus

I have had a partially completed test fold of Chen Xiao’s “Styracosaurus” on my desk for months – in truth I started it before we went on holidays (8ish weeks ago) and just sort of discarded it part way through the fold sequence.

chen xiao styracosaur

Returning from holidays, having tied up the editing of the new origami book, I decided rather than discard the model I should finish it, and am glad I did. this model’s structure is amazing, the sensitive use of colour and complex collapses make this a challenging fold.

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968: Spiny Norman

Anyone with a decent knowledge of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, would recognise the name “Spiny Norman” – the gigantic hedgehog that haunted Dinsdale, the more vicious of the Piranha Brothers. When I saw Yudai Imai’s Hedgehog, I knew I had to give it a try:

Yudai Imai's hedgehog

I had been looking for a model to best show of some duo 30cm Thai Unryu I had bought from the Origami Shop.

Yudai Imai's hedgehog paper - OrigamiShop's duo Unryu

Although Unryu is generally tissue thin, this duo paper seemed really thick, still I thought it was worth a bend so set about gridding – This was really hard work on fingers, and resorted to a bone folder – only when I laided in creases crisply was I able to reverse them (and in many cases even then with difficulty).

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