1010: Foschi’s “Black Widow”

Determined to work on one of my known folding weaknesses (solving crease patterns), I decided to have a go at Riccardo Foschi’s “Black Widow”:

Folded from 4×1 rectangle, box pleating teases out lovely long legs, cephalothorax and abdomen. With a little magic I managed to extend some pincer-like jaws also to use up some of the paper that was otherwise lurking in the transition between the body and the legs, which was quite pleasing.

Riccardo Foschi's Black Widow

Half the job is the collapse – working out what should be mountain, what should be valley, and the order of the collapse. The rest of the work (some say the hardest bit) is in the shaping as, often, the base you collapse to only roughly corresponds to the morphology of the final form, you then need to primp, tease, thin and pose to gain model finesse.

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869: (319/365) Love is Love

For what seems like an age, Australia has been torn apart by a divisive postal survey that the incumbent government decided was the best way to determine what the right thing to do was:

Ignoring world trends, common decency and justice, we “voted” on whether 2 people who love each other should be allowed to marry. Labelled the “Same Sex Marriage Debate”, it became an embarrassing mud slinging match as conservative bigots surfaced all sorts of reasons why this was a bad idea.

Thankfully, the majority (61%) of Australians said “Yes”, this (theoretically) now means the government has a MANDATE (hahaha, sorry, my inner 7 year old took over for a moment) to change our constitution so “Marriage” becomes a union between a loving couple, regardless of gender, orientation, hair colour, religion, IQ or political ideology. Continue reading

822: (272/365) Excalibur

“The Lady of the Lake,… [angels sing] …her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] THAT is why I’m your king!”:

“Listen, strange women, lyin’ in ponds, distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. SUPREME executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

“Shut up!”

“You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power, just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!” Continue reading

688: (138/365) Max Hulme’s Chess Bishop

Integral to the war effort, the church remains a dangerous player on the board:

This is Max Hulme’s “Bishop” – a lovely little Pontif-ish chap that is missing his golden hook and holy relic. Continue reading

469: Fiddly Folding

My heuristic is that we do not get mail on Fridays – not sure it is always true but mostly. Last Friday I therefore did not check the mailbox. Sunday I discovered my Tanteidan had been delivered on Friday and I had left it for nearly 2 days before opening it.

On the cover, Gen Hagiwara’s violin – a sublime fold that I have seen many fellow paper-benders succeed at folding and I was determined to give it a bash.

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