SNOHOMISH — A tantrum in a toy store was Kim Crane’s introduction to the gentle art of Japanese paper folding. When her mother refused to buy her an origami kit, 6-year-old Kim began tearing up the store.

It was too much for Mom. “She broke down and bought it,” Crane said with a laugh.

Crane was immediately smitten and spent hours learning how to fold ’em. “It just grew on me,” she said.

Often described as a quiet, meditative art, origami would later become her refuge during a decades-long career as a high-stakes government research analyst.

“You can tell how stressful my job was,” said Crane, now retired, pointing to a tiny menagerie of animals and intricate 3-D shapes she folded when she was still working.

Thirty years ago, she took her hobby one step further and launched Kim’s Cr

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