When I was in grade school I remember some sage words that came from my band director to my Mom.  I can't recall the exact context of the conversation but the message was deeply impacting.  When it comes to performances by kids there are only two categories: cute and good. 

It's one of those statements that haunts you over the years: in a good way.  On the surface it seems to be just a simple quip -- but looking deeper there is a whole world of meaning that can be derived. 

I made a recent posting in my private blog about a similar statement made to my by my Mom when I was about 16 years old (which I think I posted last Mother's Day) with regard to where one puts ones passion... and where one chooses to not -- and how that choice if watched judiciously can teach you a LOT about your motivations for doing things.  

I'm not sure where my own personal motivation for sharing this stems, but the context has to do with what I'll call the Lucasification of Creating Origami in preparation for the new release.  Based on feedback from the convention this last week I determined that there really was a lot of small things that I wanted to clean up before releasing ANY new version of the book. 

So when do we get it?

So, the good news is that everyone will be receiving the "updated" version of the book in the limited release version.  The not so good news is that I've not been able to honor my commitment to get books into the hands of those of you who wanted them fast by the June deadline (which I imagine you've noticed already :-)

And the other good news is that those of you who decided to wait for the updated version will be getting it sooner.   I should have a near-complete draft of the new edition by later tonight... and it's looking excellent.  I'm quite excited by how it's turning out and definitely feel it will have been worth the extra time.  

So those of you who responded that they wanted the "limited," or "updated," or "I don't know" will all get the "updated/limited" edition this July.  There will be no release of the non-updated version.  There were a few people who doubled-down and requested both versions, and for you I'll honor that and send you one of each of the books with the two covers variations when they are available, unless you ping me otherwise.

A Few Other Notes - 

On the shirts: things got held up here and turned into a bit of a distraction.  The original manufacturer has not been responsive so I've decided to go with another vendor (the same one who has created the stickers/postcards) and am feeling quite good about them.  They should be able to help us meet ALL the variations of shirts requested by everyone with the exception that we won't be able to do pink.  The problem here is that different colors need to be treated as different orders and SO few pinks were ordered that we don't have enough for a minimum order.  I think at this point only 3 of the 40 or so shirts were pink and I"ll be contacting the "pinkies" personally to check in about that.

On the e-books: Things are coming along well there.  In fact the first one, It's Magic, was ready last weekend... but I've not had the time to set up the distribution/security for it yet.  I should have a chance to get that done in the next few days.  Look for a posting from MailChimp that will give you links and passwords.  I'll also make a posting via our account here to make sure everyone gets that posting.

On the second book, we've collected almost all the permissions needed and hope to get that out soon as well but the main focus right now is gettiong the book ready and into production.

On the Unicorns:  We finally collected all the data for what paper is needed and put the order in last Friday.  Hopefully, this Sunday we'll be having a "paper party" and starting the LONG process of getting all the paper prepared (takes about an hour a sheet) and maybe even starting the folding process.

On the other efforts:

For this I'll just make a quick list and update.

Mooser's Train Diagrams: Initial mailings have been made to start investigating rights.  Mostly, I need to start the engineering/diagramming process to show the intention/quality level of the project to help get sign-on from those involved.

Stamm's Dragon Book: Tom sent me step folds for the new Dragon and I've started re-engineering the process for creating the base.  We're also trying to track down diagrams for his "Sea Serpent" if anyone has them.

Crawford Retrospective:  We've been working to collect the missing diagrams and have tracked down about half of them.  Most of this has been polled from the origami database.  Two obscure but rich sources have been identified which contain most of the remaining works - "The Complete Notebooks of Neal Elias" and the "BOS Model Library".  BTW, if there are any people out there who have access to the BOS Convention Annuals from '80/'81 please drop me a line!  There are two other models in there we're trying to track down. 

Translation to Various Languages:  Still working hard with Jean-Christophe on working out the strategy around the technological issues of updating a book done with software from 15 years ago.  He's promised me that French and Japanese versions of "Andrea's Rose" will be out very soon and will be distributed to everyone. :-)

Articles for "The Fold" and "The Paper":  There are a total of three articles in the works on the on the SIP and it's Genealogy as well as the Kickstarter Project and what it takes to run a good one.  I spent a good amount of time on the first piece the week before last but it fell to the back-burner while I was in OCD mode updating the book and the second one will have to wait for completion of the fulfillment process.

That's the list!  Plenty on JC's plate for this month... now back to work!  You should see an update very soon with diagrams and news of the completed update process.  :-D