The Start of an Origami Career

by Sam
(Fordland, Missouri, USA)

The first origami model that I designed (unintentionally) was a dagger, the result of a mistake in the folding process of Jerry Harris' Triceratops. I didn't remember any folding sequence, and to me at the time, if a model wasn't by a professional, it wasn't up to standard.

Several months later, I was visiting Lambert’s (a popular restaurant in Ozark, Missouri), and I picked up a souvenir menu. With no specific model to fold, I began free folding, letting the paper take shape in my hands. I didn’t know what it was, until I held it up at the right angle, and it was a flea!

I wanted to remember how to make the flea, yet time erases the best remembered folding processes, and at the time I didn’t know what a crease pattern was. Then, I found the web site of Dr. Stephen O’Hanlon...

Encouraged by his efforts of diagramming without the aid of expensive computer software, I decided to diagram my flea. I had some idea of how to make diagrams (I’d been making origami for six months, so I gave it a shot. I planned on publishing the diagrams (by now I have made almost thirty of my own models) online, but I have no idea as yet how to start and run a website, but I plan on trying. It’s not too late yet, so who knows?