This is non-origami-related- have you ever bought anything from the Oriental Trading Company? we had a friend give us a copy of their catalog, and it’s full of very cheap (low cost, and low quality) inexpensive items in bulk. some of the stuff was just insanely cheap, and made me wonder who was making it all. kind of strange. I remember my mom getting the same catalog when I was a kid, but it’s been a long time since I’d ever seen it. She used to buy supplies for the disabled kids she worked with; little toys for prizes, etc. I managed to pass on ordering 144 little drink umbrellas for $4.95. although somewhere deep inside I’m thinking of possible uses (justifications?) for such a purchase… Hopefully the Fair Trade part of me will win out over the “hundreds of drink umbrellas!” part of me. It’s equally difficult arguing with the “10 miles of streamer tape!!!” voice, but he’ll just have to live with it.

boutique: les lampes le klint lamps Wow! this french origami site has some pretty amazing tessellated lamps for sale! since my french is limited to finding the metro, buying lunch, and locating bathroom facilities, I can’t understand much of it. Although it does promise to take me to another dimension! base made of wood, using compact fluoresecent bulbs to avoid setting things on fire (good idea, there). for the most part, they seem to consist of 45 degree angle tessellations, or vertical pleating designs which have interesting bases or designs in the vertical portions. My initial thought was “I can get more complex than that!” but in reality a simpler design probably catches the light better, and isn’t as distracting as something overly complex. This is, no doubt, another item to try out folding and see what comes of it! I can imagine the stockpile of white unryu paper that I have probably will come in handy for this particular project. This looks like a good idea- I had some plans for making a lamp …

I’ve merged the content from my origomi.blogspot.com blog site and my origamitessellations.com site, into a single location. I now have active, working RSS feeds, and all sorts of other good things. I’m particularly excited about how much easier it is for me to add items, which means I’m much more likely to keep things up to date. One feature I really like is the flickr photo gallery plugin, which allows me to display all my latest flickr photos in a convenient in-site gallery. check it out here. However, there is a downside: for the time being I am unable to provide Portuguese translations of all my pages, although all diagram documents will be translated (with help from my Brasilian friends!) Meus apologies, origamigos! So, if you’ve been reading this website, or checking it occasionally- please hop over to www.origamitessellations.com. that’s where everything will be from now on. This is a good change, really, and I think it will be an improvement overall. I’m still getting the hang of the WordPress blog system, but so far …

Ignore a lot of the kimono stuff on the top of the page (or not, I guess it’s your call) and scroll down to the bottom and check out these amazing hand-cut kanji stencils. not related to origami in any way, but still very neat if you’re into paper in general. I’m a paper freak, so… yeah.

This came in as a post to the Origami-L mailing list, from Anna of Origami Austria (Origami Österreich). Apparently at one of their meetings, they discovered a “faster” way to fold the traditional crane (also known as a tsuru). Essentially, it involves using a double-rabbit-ear fold to speed up the folding process- if you’re good at eyeballing this sort of thing, it should really make things easier. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising. They also put together a very nice PDF for it. (this is the english version- follow the link to their site above if you want the German PDF.) new way of folding the traditional Origami Crane