Oh happiest of days! Sound the trumpets, dance a jig, put on your best hat! It’s finally happened!!

Don’t pretend you don’t know what we’re talking about—or worse, that you don’t care. It’s the Royal Wedding, of course! The festivities began at 11 am GMT (6 am EST—were you up?), and by now Prince William of Wales and the lovely Kate Middleton have been wed in front of several million of their closest friends. The dress, the ceremony, the crowds: It’s all so romantic and sweet and royal that we can hardly stand it!!!

But, truth be told, it’s not all sunshine and flowers and happily chiming bells—at least not around here. Of course we’re happy for the newlyweds, and we hope they enjoy the gift we sent them (Royal wedding tea cozies. They like tea there, right?). But when you get right down to it, the marriage of Wills and Kate means one thing above all else: one less eligible bachelor.

Ugh. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. But hey! Don’t despair: There are plenty of princes in the sea (let’s not forget about Harry!), and we can help you net one, with tips from Nicholas Boothman’s How to Make Someone Fall in Love with You in 90 Minutes or Less. Below, an introduction to introductions—in other words, the key to speaking those crucial first words to the cutie across the room (or the pond…). After all, even Kate and Wills had to start somewhere, and we’re pretty sure it was with a smoother line than “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Engineering Introductions
If a stranger across a crowded room catches your fancy, ask your host or a mutual friend or acquaintance to introduce you. But don’t leave things to chance. Instead, prepare your own ten-second commercial ahead of time by telling your introducer what to say—your name, perhaps where you’re from, and what you do for a living, or something else memorable about you, all put in an interesting way. It’ll come off a lot better than “Heather, this is Jim. He got soaked coming here, didn’t you, Jim?”

It’s also important to follow that old rule: Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Politely ask your host to introduce you, say one or two interesting things about you, and then leave. “Heather, this is Jim. He lives in Seattle and makes films.” You want the third party out of the way so the conversation doesn’t become two people talking and one listening—a bad dynamic for making a connection, no matter who ends up doing the talking.

If you really want to impress, ask your host to tell you two or three interesting things about the person you want to meet before he introduces you. Then, when you do connect, you can say, “Bob told me that you spent last month in a Buddhist retreat. What was it like? What inspired you to go?” This strategy puts you on a more personal footing faster.

—Avery, whose wedding will surely be as large and extravagant as today’s main event. (Not.)

In April, earth-consciousness is in the air all month long. And here at Workman, we’ve got a slew of books to help everyone, from kids to adults, be a little kinder to the world we live in. With so many pages full of great advice, you might say that every day is Earth Day within these (appropriately) bright green walls. Just check out these adorable solutions to very real environmental problems in Suzy Becker’s inspirational book-and-journal for kids, Kids Make It Better.

Problem: There is a hole in the ozone, the layer of gas that protects Earth. What can we do to repair it?
Solution (by Sara, age 8 ): “Get some dirt and seeds and plant flowers over the hole to make it look pretty for the aliens!”

Problem: What would you do to help the animals who don’t have a place to live?
Solution (by Craig, age 7): “I would build a big place where dogs can live and eat food.”
(YES, KIDS CAN! Janine Licare Andrews and Aislin Livingstone, age 9: Janine and Aislin were worried about the animals who lose their homes when rain forests are cut down. They got their friends together and started raising money to save the trees. The money is also used to build bridges that keep the animals safe from cars and electrical wires.)

Problem: Help! Humans make so much garbage, we’re running out of places to put it. What can we do?
Solution (by Kristin, age 10): “Have a law that says every person who litters has to pick it up and eat it.”

Problem: There is not enough clean water for all the living things on our planet. How can we fix that?
Solution (by Jackie, age 9): “Have scientists make fish that love to eat tons of pollution.”
(THIS REALLY WORKS! A silver carp can eat twice its body weight [up to 60 pounds] of blue-green algae. So China used tens of millions of silver and grass carp to clean up Taihu Lake, its third-largest freshwater lake and the source of drinking water for 17 million people.)

For more kid-spiration, or to get your future Nobel Laureate off on the right foot, check out Kids Make It Better.

Welcome to Inside the Author’s Studio, where we give you a peek into the minds of your favorite Workman authors.

Today we pick the sticky brain of Tim Nyberg, one half of the hilarious and resourceful Jim and Tim the Duct Tape Guys. (That’s Tim with the bright idea.)

Recent book you loved/learned from:
If Grace Is True: Why God will Save Every Person,  by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland.

Favorite bookstore:
Any town’s independent bookseller. Not a big fan of what the chain stores have done to the publishing market.

Bookmark, dog-ear, or virtuality?:
I do more reading online than physical books. But when reading a paperback or hardcover, it’s a bookmark. Dog-earing is for magazines. My bookmarks are often made of, you guessed it, duct tape.

Book you are most ashamed never to have read:
Ashamed to never have actually finished Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Favorite childhood book:
The Bumper Book—filled with wonderful art and a mix of stories and poems. I wish they still published it… Mine is trashed and I’d love to share it with my (future) grandkids. And in late grade school through high school, Mad Magazine played a bit too powerful role in my life.

Most frequent form of writerly procrastination:
Painting or any other artistic/creative endeavor while getting lost in jazz.

Hidden talent:
I’m a dang good cook—but I absolutely hate following recipes. I’m a huge advocate of creative, “clean the fridge” cooking.

Alternate ambition (best if secret, never before revealed):
Itinerant, hidden-identity restaurant reviewer.

Your perfect meal:
Chicago-style pizza and a good ale. Or sushi. Yeah, probably sushi. Lots and lots of sushi (that someone else is paying for).

Big dream:
Humorous television show traveling the world in an electric-powered vehicle showcasing favorite hometown haunts and interviewing the “strangest person in town.”

Super power of choice:
Flying.

Favorite use of duct tape, actual or theoretical:
Making a 15-plus year career of schlepping the stuff.

I once tried to prank a friend by putting strips of duct tape across her door frame, but I couldn’t pull it off. Was this horribly misguided? How could I have done better?:
I have a lot of duct tape practical jokes in my Practical Joker’s Handbook and The Sequel, but since they aren’t Workman books, you probably haven’t read them.

What Workman book would you like to receive as compensation for your involvement?:
The Best of Stuntology so I can compare notes.

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Along with Jim Berg, Tim Nyberg is the author of The Duct Tape Book, The Jumbo Duct Tape Book, The Original Duct Tape Halloween Book, and many others. Visit Jim and Tim at DuctTapeGuys.com.

With Easter around the corner, who better to turn to for Easter basket ideas than the arbiter of good taste herself, Martha Stewart?

So, let’s turn to the expert. Says Martha, “Every Easter basket should have at least one book in it.”

We agree! While Martha’s book choices are excellent, indeed, may we also suggest the eggs-traordinary Good Egg by Barney Saltzberg?

It’s so much fun, you’ll crack up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNCUDK17_yk[/youtube]

We all know that once upon a time, Humpty Dumpty suffered from a great and unfortunate fall, but did you know it happened when he was attempting a grand-plié-triple-pirouette-arabesque-jump? Or was it the Electric Slide? Or maybe it was the Humpty Dance. (As you can see, my sources are fuzzy).

From puppeteer Noel MacNeal, author of 10-Minute Puppets, here’s a brand new 10-Minute Puppet just in time for Easter that will definitely put make your eggy more leggy! (Just steer clear of tap-dancing across–or sitting on–any walls.)

Materials:

-The Dancing Easter Egg template

-2 colorful, square Post-it notes

-markers or crayons

-lightweight cardboard (file folders work well)

-glue stick

-scissors

Make it:

1. Cut out the foot template and line up the straight edge of the template with the sticky edge of one of the Post-it notes. Trace it and repeat with the second note. Cut out the feet and set them aside.

2. Color in the egg and glue it onto a piece of lightweight cardboard.

3. Carefully cut out the egg (don’t forget the holes!).

4. Insert your first and second fingers through the holes in the egg to be the egg’s legs. Press the tips of your fingers onto the sticky part of the Post-it feet.

5. Now let’s see a high kick…crack!…is that an emerging chick?

The Dancing Easter Egg is a brand-new puppet by professional puppeteer, Noel MacNeal, based on his book 10-Minute Puppets. Catch him in a segment with Shelley Goldberg on NY1 (and corresponding markets) this weekend, where he’ll be appearing with one of his many puppet alter-egos, Lionel, from Between the Lions!
UPDATE: Watch the segment here!

A guest post by Debbie Lazarus, author of Sh*t Happens: The Book, to cheer us up on this dreary day (I mean, unless, unlike me, you have a fat refund check coming to you). Could today turn out to be your best day ever?

Days like April 15th inspire books like Sh*t Happens.

Two cataclysmic events occurred on this date: President Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet in 1865 and the “unsinkable” Titanic went down to the bottom of the Atlantic with nearly two thousand souls in 1912.

Plus, in the United States, April 15th is Tax Day–a day generally dreaded by all–if not for the forking over of one’s hard-earned cash, then for fear of having to fill out reams of confusing forms.

T.S. Eliot had already declared April to be the cruelest month.  I was convinced that April 15th must be the cruelest day–that it was only a holiday for conspiracy theorists and James Cameron.  Something BIG must have fallen from the sky at some point in today’s history (or at least some puny asteroid might have hit Wethersfield, Connecticut yet again*) or some appalling, if not fatal, occurrence would surely have ruined a performance of the Scottish Play.

Would further research reveal that April 15th was some sort of vortex of doom?  Or not?

While stock market crashes do tend to happen in October, most bad things that befall us (whether natural or man-made) tend to be distributed throughout the year.  April 15th turns out to be no worse than any other day.  In fact, it might be better than most, given the number of events on this date that made the world an immeasurably better place.

Today could rightfully be celebrated as a “Day of Freedom” on which we were liberated from the debilitation of a major disease (insulin became available to the general public in 1923), bad grammar (Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755), prejudice (Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947), and man-made hells (Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops in 1945).  And America’s freedom from the British was completed when Congress ratified the articles of peace on April 15, 1783, bringing the Revolutionary War to an end.

Even on a mundane level, April 15th marks the anniversary of many things that keep bad sh*t from happening to all of us:

On April 15, 1738, the first bottle opener was invented, preserving the teeth of countless thirsty individuals for generations to come.

On April 15, 1878, Ivory Soap made its debut.  Being clean rather than dirty is always good for preventing a lot of nasty sh*t, and because Ivory famously floated in water, it prevented millions from getting hollered at for leaving the soap to melt at the bottom of the tub.

On April 15, 1892, the General Electric Company was formed.  Their inventions not only brought widespread illumination to homes and streets,  preventing many unexpected falls after sunset, but eventually restored family harmony by ending the perpetual nightly struggle over who would have to hand-wash the dishes.

On April 15, 1924, Rand McNally published its first Road Atlas.  It may not seem like much, but having a good map on a road trip prevents a lot of really bad sh*t from happening–divorce as a result of spousal reproaches that “you should have asked for directions back there!”, getting eaten by bears while answering nature’s call deep in the woods, and having to check into a wayward inn like the Bates Motel because it’s really dark, you’re really lost, and you really need to take a shower.

And there was no diabolical plot when April 15th was chosen as the deadline for tax filing.  Although income taxes were levied to help pay for the Civil War, regular income tax did not become law until 1913, when the deadline was March 1st.  The date was moved forward to March 15th in 1918 and April 15th in 1955.  Why the delay?  The IRS claimed it spread out the workload, but a later date allowed the government to hold onto all that refund money longer.

Here’s something else to keep in mind– although Lincoln died and the Titanic sank on the 15th, the bad sh*t that sealed their fates happened on April 14th, when Booth shot Lincoln and the Titanic struck the iceberg.  But that’s a topic for another day.

And as far as those taxes and all those forms and all that dough you have to cough up are concerned, you can relax for a couple of days.  The law stipulates that if April 15th falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, the deadline is the following business day.  And since this year,  Emancipation Day–the District of Columbia holiday marking the aforementioned, ill-fated president freeing the slaves of that municipality–is being observed today, Tax Day isn’t until Monday!

Have a nice weekend.

*See Sh*t Happens, page 90.

–Debbie Lazarus, author of Sh*t Happens: The Book

In honor of DoSomething.org’s Epic Book Drive to raise money for the New Orleans Recovery School District, Workman’s Editorial staff have nominated their favorite childhood books: the ones they read in bed with their parents, named their stuffed animals after, and repeatedly checked out with their first library cards. Of course, narrowing down this list was no easy task for our book-loving editors–hence it’s nearly epic status. What books did you love as a young reader? Let us know in the comments section. To help kids discover their own favorites, check out the Epic Book drive! (DoSomething.org is the amazing organization behind Do Something! A Handbook for Young Activists.)

Here’s what we had to say:

Eloise, Kay Thompson; The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle

“It’s a toss-up. I love Eloise’s spunk and NYC know-how, but I also really liked making butterflies a la Eric Carle’s final image.” –Emily

Redwall, Brian Jacques

“Actually, I was enamored with the whole series… particularly Salamandastron, which may have fueled a lifelong fascination with badgers. The characters regularly sit down to lavish feasts, speak in their own dialects, and have epic battles—kind of like Lord of the Rings, but with talking animals. And what little girl doesn’t love talking animals? May Mr. Jacques, who died this February, rest in peace.” –Liz

Heidi, Johanna Spyri

“Heidi is not my absolute favorite children’s book by any means, but it holds a special place in my heart, because my dad and I read it together as part of a fourth grade class project (basically, read a challenging book with one of your parents). I went on to name one of my stuffed animals (a sheep) Schneehöpli after one of the protagonist’s goats (guess I didn’t have any stuffed animal goats…).” –Liz

Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh; Matilda, Roald Dahl

“I loved Harriet the Spy and Matilda. Harriet kindled my lifelong obsession with dumbwaiters, not to mention composition notebooks. Matilda, with her wagon full of library books, remains a role model. Both 1996 film adaptations are highly recommended!” — Heather

The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear, Oliver Butterworth

“When I was a kid my mom gave me a copy of her favorite childhood book, The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear by Oliver Butterworth, and it immediately became my favorite as well. The story is original and really charming: After her big brothers play a prank involving an extremely loud radio, Jenny finds she’s able to hear people’s thoughts. Over the course of the book Jenny uses her new power to cheat on a game show (by “listening” to the answers) and raise money to save a neighborhood park, among other funny adventures. It’s a book I’ve recommended on many occasions, because it still has its appeal even 50 years after it was written.” –Avery

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle; From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E. L. Konigsburg; Beautiful Joe, Margaret Marshall Saunders

“Mixed-Up Files was a sort of uber-Boomer-kid thing—published around the same time as Harriet the Spy. Beautiful Joe, I just found out, was written in 1893! I had a paper-over-board version someone gave me as a gift—it might be the original anti-animal cruelty story.” –Bruce

Nancy Drew mysteries: Ramona, Age 8, Beverly Cleary; All The Babysitter’s Club books (obviously); Anastasia Krupnik, Lois Lowry; From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E. L. Konigsburg

“When I was six, my dad would read me a chapter from a Nancy Drew book before bed. They always ended on these intense cliff hangers (Oh no! Nancy’s sporty coupe was cut off by a truck–will she crash? Oh no! Carson Drew’s seaplane looks like it’s in trouble–will he crash?!).  My dad would be nodding off and I’d be like: DON’T STOP.” –Maisie

The Complete Illustrated Stories of Hans Christian Anderson, Hans Christian Anderson

“I’d read the sad tales over and over, particularly The Snow Queen and Little Match Girl.”  –Netta

Momo and The Never Ending Story, Michael Ende.

“If you’ve only seen the movie, you’ve only just begun.” –Netta

Every book by Lois Duncan

“I thought that if I practiced enough I would develop ESP. I’m getting close.” –Netta

This coming week will be my first Passover without my mother, so excuse me if I’m a bit farklempt. She left us this past September at age 93, and for the first time I am making her famous chicken soup without her.

For many years her soup was her province, a closely guarded secret. If Seder was at our house, she would simply appear with her 16-quart pot, and no one was the wiser. How does she do it?, we’d all exclaim between slurps. Such flavor, such comfort. No one could beat it.

In later years, as her hands became shakier and her memory a bit slower, we worked together, and finally the many secrets of this celestial brew were revealed.

Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: YOUR mother’s soup is the best. Sorry. No, it’s not. My mother’s is the best on so many levels, and here’s why. She put the whole produce market into that soup!

How she would laugh when she would see chicken soup recipes from famous cookbook authors calling for two carrots and a stalk of celery. My mother used two POUNDS of carrots in that soup.

Most chicken soup recipes instruct you to add water to cover. No, no, no, said my mother. Two-thirds is plenty. The vegetables cook down and will be covered soon enough, because what you are looking for is that deep, dark, richly flavorful brew. Resist the temptation to add a cup of water to get another cup of soup, she advised.

Even if you’re not Jewish, you must use kosher chickens. The jury is still out on why they taste so much better. Is it the method of killing? The freshness? The salting? The blessing? Who knows, but there really is a difference. (Note: Kosher chickens are salted, so watch that shaker!)

Pack it in! Use as much chicken and vegetables as you can pack into your pot, or conversely, use as little water as possible, to produce the most intense flavor.

You must use fresh dill, and lots of it.

After cooking, reserve the carrots to be sliced into the soup later. Then squeeze the remaining vegetables well through a strainer for extra flavor. Purists will say, “But the best soup must be clear.” I say, give me a choice between clarity and flavor, and I’ll take flavor any day!

Lillian “Honey” Bart’s Famous Chicken Soup
While her exact ingredients would vary as the mood hits her, here is my mom’s recipe from a typical day.

2 chickens (3 1/2 to 4 pounds each) with giblets (no liver), quartered
2 pounds carrots (yes, 2 pounds, not 2 carrots)
2 large onions, cut in half
5 large ribs celery, cut in half
2 large parsnips
1 small sweet potato (6 ounces), cut in half
1 turnip (6 ounces), cut in half
1 rutabaga (6 ounces), cut in half
1 small celery root, cut in half (optional)
1/2 large green bell pepper, stemmed and seeded
1/2 large yellow pepper, stemmed and seeded
2 bunches dill, coarsely chopped (about 1½ cups)
1/2 bunch curly-leaf parsley (about ¼ cup)
3 cloves garlic
Kosher (coarse) salt and black pepper to taste
Chopped dill, for serving (optional)

Makes about 3 quarts

1. Place the chicken in a 12- to 16-quart stockpot and add water to barely cover. Bring just to the boiling point. Then reduce the heat to a simmer and skim off the foam that rises to the top. Add all the remaining ingredients (except the optional chopped dill) and only enough water to come within about two thirds of the height of the vegetables in the pot. (Most recipes will tell you to add water to cover. Do not do this! You want elixir of the gods or weak tea? As the soup cooks, the vegetables will sink and will be covered soon enough. Eight to 10 cups of water total is plenty for this highly flavorful brew.) Simmer, covered, until the chicken is cooked through, about 1 1/2 hours.

2. Remove the chicken and about half the carrots from the pot, and set them aside.

3. Strain the soup through a fine-mesh strainer into another pot or container, pressing on the vegetables to extract all the flavor. Scrape the underside of the strainer with a rubber spatula and add the pulp to the soup. Discard the fibrous vegetable membranes that remain in the strainer. If you’re fussy about clarity (and we’re not), you can strain it again through a fine tea strainer, but there goes some of the flavor. Cover the soup and refrigerate overnight.

4. When you are ready to serve the soup, scoop the congealed fat off the surface and discard it. Reheat, adding more dill if desired (and we do). Slice the reserved carrots and add them to the soup. Serve the soup with matzoh balls and mandlen (soup nuts) for Passover and lukshen (thin noodles) after the holiday.

–Judy Bart Kancigor

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Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family and the recently released Workman Short The Perfect Passover Cookbook: Family-Tested Recipes for Matzoh Ball Soup, Kugel, Haroset, and More, Plus 25 Desserts. A freelance food writer and columnist for the Orange County Register, Judy started Cooking Jewish as a family project. To find out more, go to http://cookingjewish.com.

Questions about how the earth works are about as old as the earth itself. That’s probably because it’s always fascinating to learn about what makes our planet go round! In fact, I still have my old, doodled-upon, dog-eared copy of the question-and-answer book How Come? from when I was in fourth grade (aww). So, in celebration of Earth Month (April!) and the daffodils I saw blooming on my way to work this morning, here are some fun facts about our wonderful Mother from another book in the series, How Come? Planet Earth:

Tall, anvil-shaped clouds usually mean a thunderstorm is on its way.

The largest lava flow in history was in Iceland in 1783. The vent that the lava pushed through was nearly 20 miles across. The lava streamed 40 miles from one end of the vent and 30 miles from the other end. Scooped up, the lava would have filled a box 2 miles wide by 2 miles high.

Occasionally, in places like the Arctic, ice fogs may form. Walk through an ice fog, and you will be surrounded by tiny, glittering ice crystals.

The Amazon River pours out more than 456 million cubic feet of water each minute.

Honeybees may eat up to 30 pounds of the honey stored in their hives over a long winter.

Terpenes are what give pine and fir trees their Christmas-tree fragrance; orange peels get their scent from terpenes, too.

A patch of quicksand isn’t really a bottomless pit. The average “pit” is only a few inches to a few feet deep.

The dinosaur with the longest name–micropachycephalosaurus–was one of the smallest dinosaurs, a mere 20 inches long. (Its name means “small, thick-headed lizard.”)

If all the ice covering the Antarctic and Greenland suddenly melted, oceans all over the world would rise about 215 feet, enough to cover a 21-story building.

Birds travel routes scientists call “flyways,” nearly as regular as the routes cars take on a drive south. There are several big flyways crossing North America, including one down each coast of the United States.

At night, when there is no light, plants actually behave more like we do: absorbing some oxygen from the air and giving off carbon dioxide as a waste product. In daylight, plants still “breathe in”  a little oxygen, but mostly they photosynthesize, giving off far more oxygen than they take in.

A few weeks ago I rediscovered my love of origami in time for National Craft Month in March. I have an aunt who spent her childhood in Japan, and growing up she used to feed my addiction for paper folding with a steady stream of brilliantly colored paper: delicate sheets of red and gold, pink cherry blossoms, and angular bamboo poles. I had the patience to sit and follow the step-by-step instructions in my origami book, carefully folding and turning until the flat squares in front of me had transformed into three-dimensional majestic paper cranes, sailboats, fans, crowns, and my personal favorite: the jumping frog.

So I was more than a little excited to find instructions on how to make a jumping frog out of a business card in Margaret Van Sicklen’s Origami on the Go! It was perfect timing, because my Workman business cards had just arrived. Before I looked at the instructions, though, I tried to make one from memory and was pleasantly surprised to find that my fingers instinctively remembered the order of steps needed to turn my new business card into a toy.

Ribbit!

I went home to visit family and friends in Boston that weekend and proceeded to make business-card-frogs on demand—it made networking that much more fun!

Origami on the Go! is filled with 40 cool crafts that are a perfect way for kids (and origami-loving adults like me) to kill time in the car (especially with those summer road trips coming up!), on the plane, or just on a quiet afternoon. It even comes with assorted paper and stickers that correspond to the models (the Zambia Giraffe, Grand Canyon Rattlesnake, and Egyptian Mummy are a few standouts).

I'm not the only one in the office with an origami obsession...

Now that April’s here, and Earth Day is coming up, it’s time (as it always is) to think about our environmental impact. I’m resisting the urge to head to Chinatown for new paper in favor of utilizing the (many) forms of paper all around me. (I mean, I work in a publishing company!) The frog is a good first step, in a way, because who doesn’t have a stack of outdated business cards lying around? But what about pages from old magazine and newspaper issues (hey, publicity department, I’m looking at you)? Or snack wrappers, or…

The Bronx Zoo cobra strikes again!

I stole an idea from a friend and saved my favorite Christmas cards this year to use as gift tags next year, simply by cutting off the front cover of the card and hole-punching the top. It’s a good way to reuse old cards—and save money. I’ve been known to save wrapping paper over the years, back when I was going through a decoupage phase, so I’m going to dig that out for my next round of folding. If you’re feeling especially crafty, make your own paper from bits and pieces lying around: check out Storey Publishing’s Trash-to-Treasure Papermaking, out this month.

And if that’s not enough Origami for you, pick up a copy of The Joy of Origami or keep an eye out for our 2012 Origami Page-A-Day Calendar—a unique project for every day of the year!

Just watch out for paper cuts…

–Adrienne