Adventures in Paper: Crane in the Neck

It's time for another installment of Adventures in Paper. As you may know, one of the most well known origami models is the crane. Anybody who has had the slightest inclination to fold paper would have tried this at some point. Every package of origami paper I've ever bought has come with instructions to fold it. The crane is practically the mascot for origami, and here's it is folded with standard 15 x 15cm paper:

The origami crane is a symbol of peace and good fortune, and they say that if you fold 1000 of them you will have a wish granted. My guess is that if you actually did fold 1000 of them you'd only wish for a cure for your ragin' arthritis.

In any case, I've folded plenty of cranes in my life but one day I was struck with an idea; I may not have the time to fold a thousand of these little buggers, but I wonder how small I could make one. Ladies and gentlemen, I had myself a challenge.

Well the logical step after folding a normal sized crane would be to fold a slightly smaller one. I would have to ease myself into this. I busted out the mini origami paper and folded this with a 7.5 x 7.5cm sheet. I little bit tricky, but no sweat.

Okay, that certainly is smaller, but who cares? My next step was to take a fourth of the 7.5cm paper and fold a crane. My fat fingers were getting in the way, but I managed it. Here is the crane I folded with 3.75 x 3.75cm paper.

I was proud of this one, but where do I go from here? There's only one way to go ... smaller, damn it. Take a fourth of the previous paper size and you got yourself a 1.87 x 1.87cm sheet of origami paper. I knew this model meant business when I began sweating from the concentration. Fingers are useless at this point and it's all about using fingernails like tweezers. After more than ten minutes of folding, I had this:

That crane was difficult enough that I felt I had achieved something. Not something I could put on a resume, but something. It had been hard as hell to fold, but the time had come to separate the men from the boys who cant fold shit. My last and smallest attempt was with 0.93 x 0.93cm paper. Thirty excruciatingly tedious minutes later ...

Bam. Now that's a small crane. This crane took two attempts to achieve because the first try I dropped the crane by accident and it fell between the keys of my computer keyboard and was lost forever. That's the kind of tiny I'm talking about. I had to hold my breath nearly the whole time for fear of exhaling it across the room into the carpet, or worse, inhaling it.

All in all, I felt proud for having done it. With nothing but my bare hands and a lot of patience, I had made the smallest ass origami crane I'd ever seen. The only thing I could do after that was fold a box to keep it in so I wouldn't lose the damn thing.