Bob and Charmayne's gallery of kites 2017

Bob's and Charmayne's kites in 2017

Quite a few this year!

This year at Ft. Worden we took 2 classes plus we taught a line laundry piece. Bob made a heart in René Maier's heart class. Plus we also made a third one at home so we now have three.
	They are easily put together in a train.

	Another Ft. Worden class was taught by Georgene Curan. A Hata stlye kite poked full of holes! The purple one is a lace work design from one of Georgene's actual tatted lace pieces. After drawing out the design for your kite you use a hot pen and cut away the design. A steady hand and a brave heart is needed!
I made copy of her Jack o' lantern pattern and made him at home.
My final Wholly holey but not holy kite is the flower. We had a small piece of light weight rainbow ripstop fabric. Perfect. I used it for my flower and then cut my flower petals WAY, way too big. But it flies and sure can take the wind!

Dick Toonen from Belgium taught his drum box kite at Ft. Worden in 2017. We had already made a drum from his plan. (Thank you, Dick!) I added my polka dots onto a white skin. The skins are shaped. I sewed the skin together before adding the dots. We brought a kit home from the Fort and that got built, too. I added little stars to the standard Drum Box design.
	More is always good. 2 more came about in our Fire Girl Drums. Bob found her on-line and cut the stencil while I was at my quilling convention. Looks great! So he spray painted them with an air brush.

Dick organizes a Drum Box fly at festivals. We took our 4 to Fanø and flew with a lot of other drum boxes. A dragon drum, bats, crown shaped, long and skinny, mini-sized, all sorts of colors, the standard black and white.		The reason they are called drum boxes is due not olny to the shape. Drop an assembled drum from height and you get a really loud bang. Not a super stable flier but we like them.

Carsten stayed with us during his stay for Ft. Worden in 2016. We were already working on a cellular kite made out of gingerbread boys. He was intrigued and has made his version, too. This adventure took lots of masking tape, plain white ripstop nylon and much trial and error. The photos to the right shows ONE of the first versions (not THE first). The second one shows another test flight with lines connecting the feet and a second supporting line for the faces.
	Time to decorate. They were flying and looking pretty good. Appliqué? No, too difficult at this point. Bob painted them. Instead of gingerbread boys, we decided the figures were better as Lego Men. Bob printed out some Lego pictures and made stencils of face details. I suggested we add our grandson's hockey number 90 and paint the shirt green, his favorite color that summer. And of course we needed Cowgirl Riley, wearing boots and a pink shirt with her blond hair. Not quite Lego Men any longer so it is our children kite. Note Bob has added a hoop to the top of the heads.


	The GPP Fanø project in 2017 is a Stormy Weathers star kite, constructed however you wish, out of whatever you wish. Stormy is no longer flying his kites from Earth. He was known for his record altitude attempts at the beach in Long Beach, Washington. His were super light. This kite is not! We used a odd shade of yellow fabric we had and it is pretty heavy but flies great in the strong Fanø winds. Swift Victory version 1996.
detail	testing in the yard	link to the GPP flights on Fanø

Another classic replica kite. This is called the Sparrow hawk. It is a Dutch design. Thanks to Frits for sharing the information.


The new line of laundry is complete with the combo piece and the balls.

Bob's Christmas kite this year is Jolly Boy's rough and tough partner. Another Jolly Boy but such a contrast to our first one. We call him the Ruffian. Originally on a diamond kite, I put him on a barn door kite to fly with the first Jolly Boy. Quite the contrast. They are perhaps 6 feet tall or more.
The new Ruffian is from a 1926 patent received by George W. Ayling. The kite was made to be a 2 stick foldable bow kite, folding into a convenient carrying size. There were several other items in the patent such as (1) notches at the ends of the frame, (2) being economical to manufacture. We have had some people say "evil". No. Our rough and tough Jolly Boy.