The effect of extensive practice

I've been doing origami, as I have probably said ad nauseum, for something more than thrumptysevix years now. But I've only been folding semi-seriously for about three or four years: and it is really showing in my ability to fold more complex models.
In the past two days I've attempted -- and to an extent succeeded -- in folding two of the magnificent John Montroll's four star models: his triceratops and stegasaurus from Prehistoric Origami. Now, especially in the case of the stegasaurus, I had to take a couple of shortcuts: but now I can anticipate whether the shortcut will destroy the model, or just make it rather less good.

On a different scale (especially, on a shorter time scale) I saw something similar in my recent course: one of the students had never folded before, but in spite of the size of his hands he was willing to try and willing to learn: he's now practicing blind-folding cranes from three-inch squares of paper, and this marks a huge improvement on his early work!

Yours, continuing the folding,
N.