Birds and Beads

やっと秋らしくなりましてよかった。^w^

One last image from the Japanese Festival:

This little bird, likely a female Anna's hummingbird, appeared in the welcome center and promptly started snacking on a flower arrangement. The staff set up a little feeder (should the flowers run dry of nectar), and the bird happily hovered over the crowd all afternoon.

蜂鳥: hachidori (hah-chee-doh-ree)
Hummingbird; literal translation is "bee bird."

And now, back to the show.

I have some beads here, and some thread. Beadweaving ensues. :D

Some really, really old CDS rings that Ku made in, I dunno, maybe middle school. -_-;

While you can find all manner of beadwork tutorials on the internet, I haven't yet come across one for conjoined daisy stitch. Ergo, I'mma make one meself.

The two are only slightly different:

CDS is stronger and more compact than regular daisy stitch because each flower shares its east and west petals with the one next to it.

This allows flowers to overlap:

...or, you can divide individual flowers with pillars of a counter color, たとえば:

In any case, here's how to do it:

All you need are some beads, some string of a gauge small enough to go through those beads, and a thin needle to help you get said string through aforementioned beads. ビーズ、糸、と針しかいらない。簡単でしょう？ ^-^

Japanese Festival 2008 (the aftermath thereof)

I am a goddamn Bon Odori dancer. Oh hell yes. d(>ω<)b

Ku is somewhere in this picture.

The Missouri Botanical Garden held it's annual Japanese Festival this past Labor Day weekend, and for the first time evar (EVAR~!) I got to participate. ^-^

My younger sister and I are first-year members of a local Tozan Ryu group (for dancing, not shakuhachi), and we were privileged to perform dances for the Obon festival along with the rest of the troupe and about 200 festival attendees who, bravely, accepted sensei's challenge to dance along with us.

Obon (お盆) is the big autumnal holiday in Japan. It's similar in intent to Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, but different, of course, in style and execution. Obon comes with its own special music called ondo (音頭) and a collection of dances that are simply referred to as Bon odori (盆踊り), literally, "Obon dances." There are songs and correlating dances about all kinds of things, including (but not limited to) famous cities, coal miners, fireworks, traditional clothing, wishes for good fortune, and Pokemon.

Yes, Pokemon. And many other anime.

Besides dancing, there were lots of other lovely attractions as well:

Ikebana...

...and bonsai...

...and fans of kimono...

...and adorable Asian children...

...and a master of the deceptively difficult Japanese koma tops...

...and ♥origami♥...

...and a f*ck ton of Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures which are on loan to the gardens and have nothing to do with the Japanese festival, but were still photographically interesting...

...and more cosplayers than there should have been, so I didn't take pictures of them. XD

I hope you've all had an equally lovely weekend. If you should find yourself near St. Louis this autumn, please consider visiting the gardens; they're fantastic. 超すばらしい〜

Prolific!

Remember the little guy from this post?

He's a big brother now. :D

New pattern coming up soon, honest. (I've been on a writing kick lately, and more words = less images.)

We Have a New Birdfeeder

...with anti-squirrel technology.

(Still can't stop the damn raccoon, though.)

New post coming up later. ^_^ 少々お待ち下さい〜

Door Into Summer

It's the first day of summer, so says I. Here's proof:

A baby cardinal, perched on the roof of my (very dirty) car.

As you can tell by the closeup, he didn't even flinch when I put the camera right in his little face. Close inspection revealed that there was no nest in the tree overhead. There were, however, a mated pair of two very noisy adult cardinals perched on the mailbox. I put two and two together and decided this little guy wasn't a gravity case, but rather right in the middle of flight training. It doesn't take more than a couple of hours for most songbirds of this size to test their wings out of the nest, so actually coming across the event is pretty lucky.

Sure enough, as soon as I backed off, the adults give us a low fly-by, and the kid flaps his cute little butt right off the car and 20 feet through the air, into the yard for a 3-point landing.

Welcome to the neighborhood, little guy. Feeder's out back, refill is on Sundays.

Have a good summer!

Spring Breeze

Spring means kites. Kites, yay! Everybody go get your kites... or make them, as you please.

This pattern is the best one I’ve found so far for a small, quick build that flies well. It’s a great choice for a fast project with kids. Unfortunately, the original gif file by Jeremy Carson (1987) is older than most of the net itself, low-res, and badly deteriorating.

A friend of mine from down the road in Towa village, showing off a couple of kites we made from pages of a calendar.

Using Carson’s original measurements, I’ve rebuilt the file in Illustrator, giving the kite a blank face so that you can decorate it on your own. (Click for full sized file.)

OR, here’s one I already decorated with part of the coat of arms of the Czech Republic, for no reason better than that I really like that lion.

Heraldry symbols are COOL.

Build Notes:
The file prints on letter size paper. Please note that you don’t need special lightweight paper to get this model to fly well – regular weight printer paper works best. I suggest bamboo skewers, available in most grocery stores wherever the toothpicks are, for the spars. Use regular cotton or polyester sewing thread for the line (NOT serious kite line, because it’s too heavy), and don’t skimp on the length of the tails. This kite needs heavy rear drag to stabilize.

Flight Notes:
Once you’ve built it, you might think your kite’s sail area looks pretty small compared to the weight of the paper, the spars, the glue, and the huge twin tails you’ve rigged it with... BUT, don’t worry! She flies very well... provided you have steady wind. This kite will dance for gusts, but like most small kites, it doesn’t launch easily in on-off winds. Still, it doesn’t take much to get her airborne. Launch in steady winds, minimum 8 mph. If you have steady winds above 12 mph, you should be able to launch without any running. (Serious kite flyers hate running starts, did you know that?) Optimum wind speed is 12-15mph, maximum is 18 or thereabouts.

Advanced:
I’ve never had to add wing tassels or mini tails to my builds, but Jeremy suggested it in the original instructions, so it’s likely worth a shot if you have a balance issue. If your kite takes some altitude and then suddenly starts spinning around in a tight circle, it’s because the winds are simply too strong for the sail to cope with at that altitude, and the balance can’t be fixed. You just need a bigger kite.

Kites!

They came, they flew, they got the family out of the house. (In January, which, retrospectively, might not have been the best for our health, but it was worth it.)

A Paul Gunther butterfly....


...and a "small" delta-coyne. (Only in the world of kites and passenger jets does five feet of wing mean "small.")

A note to any other Missouri kite fliers fighting with variable winds; delta coynes. Seriously. They’re unshakable, and they’ll climb up on anything from 5 to 25 mph, easy. We launched Tiny from a standing takeoff, no assistant, to 150 feet in 40 seconds.

We're gonna need a longer line.

A Time for Kites

When it's early January and a pleasant 71 degrees Fahrenheit outside, it becomes a time for kites. I went out to Faust Park on Sunday with the family and enjoyed the wind with "Yasui," my uber-cheap, half-tailed, 40 feet of single-line Edo kite. He's flown in the sea breeze off the eastern coast of Japan, and he did fairly well in the skies over middle America, but a paper kite only lives so long.

So now it's a time for new kites.

We've got a pair on order from Into the Wind, but until they arrive, I'm enjoying myself over at the Kite Plan Base.

(Highly recommend that there Kite Plan Base.)