Gay first talked about the stories Lilian Oppenheimer used to tell, and then showed us her version of Alice, the little girl, sitting around bored on a rainy day. During the story, a newspaper turned into a paper hat, the hat changed into a firefighter's helmet, then into a pirate's hat, a boat, and finally into a lifejacket. Of course, all the folds were simple and well known, but the story evolving around them made each model a very special thing.
The next story was about the brothers long and the sisters short that received a birthday party invitation and what happened then. This story didn't even use models, just a few folds to symbolize an object. Only the "happy end" resulted in a model: a box. And then there was Mother Nature waking up after hibernation, and finally a lovely story about a magician and his wishing kite.
Right after that Gay showed a few modular "action" models, one of them being a spectacular butterfly ball, and I was very sorry when I learned that her book "The Art of Origami" which included these models was out of print, and sold out too.

Right after this came yet another highlight (obviously I can't count): Jan Polish with a huge stack of business cards showed us how to fold the the dimpled cuboctahedron by Valerie Vann. Well, the folding part was easy, but assembling this six-piece modular was a nightmare; the zig-zag folded biz cards didn't look like they would ever turn into the finished model Jan was showing around. But eventually they did, and after this the other models were comparatively easy: A star by Jeannine Mosely, and a cube, Jeannine's variation of a traditional module.

After this presentation, it was already time to eat. The Convention ended right afterwards, and some even had to rush before dessert to catch their train back home. On my way back Barbara Rähmi and I folded a few of the models in Kasahara's "Creative Origami" while Andreas Rähmi tried to read the chapter about creativity at the same time... it proved to be a bit difficult <g>.
The Rähmi family left at Basel, and on my way from Basel to Berne I found an unsuspecting victim that had to look at all the models I was taking home from the Convention and listen to my babble about Origami. He seemed happy enough to find someone to chat with though. When I learned that he was webmaster of one of the biggest marketing companies here in Switzerland I made him give me his e-mail address. So if you think this homepage needs plastic surgery to become halfway presentable, I know where to ask for help :-). Arriving late at night in Bern, I immediately started to tell my wife every exciting detail of the Convention until she got THAT look and decided it was time for her to go to bed. I was of course too wild awake to sleep, so I downloaded all my e-mail, prematurely announced this report on origami-l, briefly visited my favourite MUD, and -at one o'clock in the morning- finally went to sleep. And this is the end of my report. Feel free to contact me via the e-mail address below if you want to comment on it, correct an error, etc.
Matthias Gutfeldt