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Another weekend....
May. 4th, 2012 11:54 am....another event.
My pre-split bamboo kite spars arrived from the Drachen Foundation - with shipping it was about $30, but I got enough bamboo to make a bunch of kites. I'm going to attempt to build a kite on-site at Beltane Coronation this weekend and possibly fly it if we get a decent breeze at the sheep ranch. Documentation on period Japanese kites is kinda iffy - while they are mentioned, we have no extant examples, and it's not clear what shape they took. One could easily interpret the nickname "paper hawk" as being bird shaped, or painted with the image of a bird, or simply being a paper object that flies. The Suruga supposedly was used to signal victory in a 16th century battle, and it's kind of a neat shape. I may or may not also try one of the simpler rectangular frame kites. Diamond kites appear to have come to Japan from India via the Dutch as the "Nagasaki Hata" is named for the port city and is traditionally painted with the colors of the Dutch flag (red, white, blue), but I can't be sure they were in Japan before the 17th c. (There is an oft-cited English woodcut from 1635 showing a diamond kite identified as a "Fier Drake" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite)....
Kite flying is also seasonally appropriate for the celebration of Children's Day tomorrow.
Ran home last night, banged out a load of laundry, two batches of kasutera and packed the truck by 6:30 PM (in between greeting the new tenant in the 2nd floor apartment) because I thought I'd meet up with James over at BART, only to have him text me to say he wasn't going to make it.
So I sat down with a plate of cheesy eggs and found a movie called "Paul" on cable about a potty mouthed alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) who gets picked up by a couple of British tourists (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost) who are in the US for Comic Con. Clever, funny (if the language doesn't put you off) and full of sci-fi references that made me chuckle. Then the new "Jane Eyre" was on at 10 - I fell asleep in the middle of it, woke up, realized it was near midnight and staggered upstairs.
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My pre-split bamboo kite spars arrived from the Drachen Foundation - with shipping it was about $30, but I got enough bamboo to make a bunch of kites. I'm going to attempt to build a kite on-site at Beltane Coronation this weekend and possibly fly it if we get a decent breeze at the sheep ranch. Documentation on period Japanese kites is kinda iffy - while they are mentioned, we have no extant examples, and it's not clear what shape they took. One could easily interpret the nickname "paper hawk" as being bird shaped, or painted with the image of a bird, or simply being a paper object that flies. The Suruga supposedly was used to signal victory in a 16th century battle, and it's kind of a neat shape. I may or may not also try one of the simpler rectangular frame kites. Diamond kites appear to have come to Japan from India via the Dutch as the "Nagasaki Hata" is named for the port city and is traditionally painted with the colors of the Dutch flag (red, white, blue), but I can't be sure they were in Japan before the 17th c. (There is an oft-cited English woodcut from 1635 showing a diamond kite identified as a "Fier Drake" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite)....
Kite flying is also seasonally appropriate for the celebration of Children's Day tomorrow.
Ran home last night, banged out a load of laundry, two batches of kasutera and packed the truck by 6:30 PM (in between greeting the new tenant in the 2nd floor apartment) because I thought I'd meet up with James over at BART, only to have him text me to say he wasn't going to make it.
So I sat down with a plate of cheesy eggs and found a movie called "Paul" on cable about a potty mouthed alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) who gets picked up by a couple of British tourists (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost) who are in the US for Comic Con. Clever, funny (if the language doesn't put you off) and full of sci-fi references that made me chuckle. Then the new "Jane Eyre" was on at 10 - I fell asleep in the middle of it, woke up, realized it was near midnight and staggered upstairs.
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