"electric word, life / it means forever and that's a mighty long time"

[larryhammer]

Realization while talking with branna: I've been folding origami for 40 years. My usual personal marker for no longer being a youngster is my time online (35 years, starting with dial-up BBSs) but this is an even longer measure. And in its way more impressive.

Since, however significant this may be to me, that's not enough to make a post, here's a couple recent results of all that practice:



Folded from a 10" (25cm) square, no cuts: three long necks with dragon heads, four legs, wings, and a tail. This was something like the 5th or 6th time I've made this model, and despite it being several years since the last one, it was not the technical challenge I remembered -- just long and complicated. Huh.



A tiny apatosaurus* folded from 3" (7.5cm) paper from memory, by way of stretching myself. I can hold about a dozen models in my head at any given time, and this is the most complicated one I've ever memorized. With TBD old enough I don't have to pocket a tissue pack everywhere I go, I now carry small folding papers. I managed this model without resorting to a toothpick or the like, for working the smaller folds. And then repeated the feat in light green (not shown).

---L.

* AKA the Artist Formerly Known As Brontosaurus.

Subject quote from "Let's Go Crazy," Prince.

Comments

[larryhammer]

Fold something enough times, and I can start to remember the sequence. At least, if it's short enough. This was one of the few times I set out to work a model into memory by doing as much as I could till I got stuck.

35, yeah. And yeah, congratulations -- I feel no ambivalence about that.

[thistleingrey]

Even so! I've made the basic shapes enough times that something ought to've sunk in, but no. :P I think I feel worse about it because my mother remembers the basic boat from when she taught elementary-school students to do it in 1970, and I've never done it without some sort of reminder. *shrugs*

*salutes you*