This weekend Angela took advantage of the extra day off and went to New York with Jen to do some sightseeing. Meanwhile, back in Waterloo I spent my time trying to finish up some of the things on my "to do" list for the wedding.

One task that I completed was the folding of 82 origami froglets. These little guys are made from the smallest origami paper you can buy (in Ontario, at least), and they are a design that I remember from my first origami book when I was a kid. I didn't include any kind of reference scale in this photo, but each froglet is about the size of a fingernail.

There were two books that sparked my interest in origami. The first one was a book by Robert Harbin. I'm not sure which book it was, but my mum still has it somewhere I think. I believe it was simply titled "Origami", and was probably a reprint of his 1969 book with that title. It was the book I learned this frog design from. The second was "Animal Origami For The Enthusiast" by John Montroll. It had 25 more advanced animal designs in it, and provided a nice challenge for me.

I recently picked up "Origami Design Secrets" by Robert J. Lang, which is a book that turned the origami world on its head by introducing new mathematical concepts that can be used to help design the most complicated models imaginable. It was an excellent read, and I highly recommend it if you are into that sort of thing. (Even if you're not interested, I recommend reading this article on Rober J. Lang from the New Yorker.) While reading Lang's book, I was amused to find out that the two previous books that influenced me as a kid are pretty much the two cornerstone books in the history of origami, up until Lang's, which is undoubtedly the third.

I dug up "Animal Origami For The Enthusiast" again, and if you are coming to the wedding, you will probably see some frogs I made based on the "frog with toes" model in that book. One day I will attempt to fold Lang's "tree frog" from "Origami Design Secrets", but that will have to wait until I have a lot of time, patience, and determination, since it is far more difficult than anything I've tried before.

Technical details: This image was taken with my Rebel XT + kit lens at 55mm, ISO 100, f/11 for 0.6 seconds.

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Also available, a TED video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html