My hands are tired, but the project is done.

I've been working on an origami project for my co-worker and his girlfriend for their wedding. I had made up a bunch of samples for them, but what they selected turned out to be a massive project. Mette Rings - they will be using these on the wine bottles they are giving away at the reception.

Each Mette ring requires 18 units made from square paper of the same size. And they requested 100 rings. 100 x 18 = 1,800 units. And the wedding is at the end of February. In making my samples I determined that I could fold one unit in about 30 seconds - so, plenty of time for those, but it was harder to factor in getting the paper ready and putting the units together. I broke this down into phases to stay on track.

Phase 0 - Material Acquisition. I pulled from my own paper stockpile, a craft store, and Staples. I also bought extra blades for my paper cutter and 3 bottles of glue.

Phase 1 - Paper Cutting. I wore out two blades for my paper cutter, but got all 1800 units cut in about 4 days.

Phase 2 - Unit Folding. I started carrying around stacks of paper with me and a knapsack to hold the completed units. To the movies, to the birth of my niece. Any downtime was spent folding. I did too many in one day and had to put my hands in the snow to numb them. My parents - who are pretty good folders themselves - helped while we were at the hospital in the waiting room. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Phase 3 - Ring Construction. I had all the colors sorted out into boxes and bags - then with movies playing on the TV, I sorted out 2 white, 1 red, 2 white, 1 black, etc. until I had 18, then I put together 2 sets and then put those together. I put them in stacks of ten to keep track of them.

Phase 4 - Structural Integrity. To prevent the rings from flying apart when handled, I coated each side with glue. (I've tried gluing the units while putting them together and it's tedious - even for me). Each side had to dry before I do the other - took a lot of time and a lot of space.

I finished up last evening and boxed them up to bring into work. Took me about two and a half weeks for the whole project. My co-worker has promised to get some good photos for me.

In other news... my work phone stopped working yesterday. We're gearing up to move to a new office in the building and I thought this was a precursor - but no, it's just broke. I had the office manager make the call to repair yesterday afternoon before I left - we'll see how it goes. It's pretty quiet here - but my voicemail (which I can still check via my computer) is filling up.