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My story

Once upon a time ... No, this is not a fairy tale, it's my origami life story. It started when my mother was folding party hats for my fifth birthday party. I already folded some simple models in kindergarten but I liked these hats better so my mother had to teach me.

There was much more in the book that these hats came from. Origami was still unknown in those days and there were no books for sale and no origami paper. But we didn't know it existed anyway so there was no real problem. For years I have been folding off and on with all the 'wrong' materials and just this one book.

When I went to university I had other things on my mind but then, purely by chance, I saw Sakata's book 'Origami' in a jumble sale. This was the real start of my life with origami. I muddled on for another 8 or 10 years until I found out about the Belgian-Dutch society that had been founded just a few years before.

From there on things went fast, too fast sometimes but I loved it. I became an official teacher (OSN and NOA) and started several classes, workshops and folding groups. I was asked for demonstrations, exhibitions, lectures etc. and I became involved in the OSN organization.

As time went by my private life and my job became more time consuming so I concentrated on folding and a little designing. My folding group was very disappointed that I wanted to stop. As I liked folding with this group I kept it on but cancelled my other activities.

However it didn't take too long before I got involved in OSN matters again. First there was a district convention, then there was a conference, I became the OSN treasurer, the editor in chief of the youth magazine Minori and the 'court folder' for the weekend convention.

All this stopped at the end of 2007 because I was going to emigrate. Maybe I'll start all over again in France, time will tell. And she lived happily ever after.