Wednesday 11 November 2015

30 days in November 11...

Today is:

Origami Day

Origami, the ancient art of Japanese paper folding, something I’ve tried on numerous occasions but which I’ve never really got the hang of. I’ve never been able to make a paper boat properly, or one of those fortune teller things that all the girls made at school to find out who they would marry, I can’t even manage a simple snapping beak; the ones that you put your fingers and thumbs in. I can only just about manage a paper aeroplane, but even they don’t fly very well.

Origami - ori meaning ‘folding’, and kami meaning ‘paper’ - is often associated with Japanese culture, but I guess children everywhere have paper, and as they are creative, it’s probably a universal thing. The goal is to transform a flat sheet square of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques. I on the other hand will always end up with a plane no matter what I am trying to make.

I once tried an origami crane, it ended up as a plane. Then I tried a lotus flower, it ended up as a plane. I even tried a frog and guess what? Well, I told everybody it was a flying frog, but actually it was a plane.

I had friends who could do some pretty neat paper folding. I even knew a farmer who started an origami business, but he was arrested for rustling and it folded (I bet that one had you in creases). As I said I really never got the hang of it and my origami remains very basic. I can’t even fold a piece of A4 paper to make it fit a third A4 envelope without having to re-crease it three or four times. Oh well we can’t all be black belts can we.

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