Origami in New York and now in Bombay...

One of my favorite hobbies is origami. The national non-profit origami group OrigamiUSA (OUSA) is headquartered in NYC and I've been a member with them since 1997. There are many regional origami groups all over the US and of course, around the world as well, but having the national group in New York is great as we have monthly origami meetings (Folding Sundays) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where OUSA has had their offices since inception.

But once-a-month meetings have never been enough for origami die-hards, so my wonderful & lovely friend Sok Song started an Origami meetup group (OMG) late 2009 (maybe earlier), which quickly grew to be a very vibrant and healthy origami group that now meets almost NINE times a month. Originally it was a once-a-month meeting on Saturdays. Then we started meeting weekly after work on Thursdays at the 23rd street Cosi restaurant... this was the beginning of AWOL (After Work Origami Lovers). Pretty soon folks within our group who were not free on Thursdays, started WTF (Weekly Tuesday Folders) meeting at the 8th street Cosi. And that's how we got to about NINE origami meetings a month. Seems too many? No, not really.

The group consists of some great origami folders, teachers, creators, enthusiasts... from all walks of life. Just to name a few (of course, in no particular order)... Sok, Wes, Judy, Wen, Peter, Rich, Doug, Jim, Ahnme, Haggit, Tricia, Gita, Ranjeet, Talo, Nathan, Marcio, Tammy, Mark, Seth, Margot, Margot's mum, Birge, and another Mark... that's the main gang. Many more come and go. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we meet & fold for several hours. Check out my twitter feed on those days to see photos of models we folded. The staff at both the Cosi restaurants love us being there... keeping their restaurants busy while sharing our joy of origami.

While in Bombay, I'm of course missing all the OUSA and OMG meetings and all my lovely origami friends. But no worries... there is an equally fun group of folders here... called Origami Mitra. When I was here last in Dec 2009, I met with them once and shared several of my favorite models with them. Here are some of them: a 2-piece wedge box...

Seth's simple bird with color change beak

Marigold by Ayako Kawate

This time, with Gita's help (she's the founder of Origami Mitra and part of our OMG group in NY as well), I got in touch with Himanshu and attended the Mitra monthly September meeting last weekend. There were about a dozen of us (sorry, but I don't yet know everyone's names and I didn't take any photos either) and I got to share models I've been folding lately. Latest new find from my origami box is an easy 3d flower I believe I learnt when at the German origami convention in summer 2009. Here are some versions folded from various paper sizes...

And Miyuki Kawamura's Wedge Cube, a classic favorite...

Happy folding...