Tuesday, October 14. 2008
Fabric, string...and wind
« The question is... | Hauptseite | Toe-up socks »It‘s autumn here in Germany. Days are getting cooler (and nights colder), leaves are turning...and falling. Actually, a lovely time of the year...if only it didn‘t mean that winter is on its way – and where I live that means mostly cold, gray, drizzly days will soon be here.
Oh well....but now it‘s autumn and Sunday was just beautiful. The morning fog (also a standard autumn feature) burned off by noon, the sun came out and it was warm and lovely. Perfect weather for an outing...but where should we go? Then we remembered, that it was the weekend of the local kite festival. Sounded like a good idea – and it was! The weather was perfect for kite flying – just enough wind (and we were lucky with our timing, later the wind more or less disappeared as I have been told).
The festival is held on open fields on a high slope above a neighboring village. There must have been a thousand people there when we arrived – families with kids, kite enthusiasts of all ages, kite-flying clubs from the area and also from further away (Holland, Luxembourg) – all flying kites of various shapes, sizes, colors, degrees of complication, etc. (I might mention that our decision to go was so spontaneous that we forgot our kite...duh!)
Here is a selection of some of my favorite kites:
Like a quilt in the sky.
Many of the kites were so imaginative, like these
"insects" or "wind sprites" or... whatever they might be.
It's a funny thing about kites – as soon as they are flying
and moving, they really seem to be alive. These two
were literally dancing on the wind.
This one looked like it had been painted (maybe silk painting?).
The tail was of some kind of sheer fabric that shimmered
when the wind played with it.
Most kites these days are made of ripstop nylon and fiberglass or graphite
poles, which make lightweight, sturdy kites. This kite was made of muslin
and bamboo which was beautiful, but which was probably much heavier –
and which was why it was just sitting on the ground...not enough wind.
This isn't actually a kite – it's more like a flying sculpture which is suspended from the
kite string of another kite. There were several such figures – seahorses,
penguins, an owl – and some were so large that they made large "bales" of
fabric when they were rolled up. The pull of the carrier kite much be quite
strong to not sag under the weight of such a huge amount of fabric.
Also not kites, but people who like kites also seem to like
other things for the wind to play with – and they probably
have lots of scraps of bright-colored kite fabric. The fabric
triangles are attached to rings (graphite?) and the points
of the triangles on the bottom ring are attached to one
another. They spin beautifully on the breeze.
When we were kids, we bought paper kites for a nickle (5 cents)
and had lots of fun flying them. When they were well established
in the sky, we cut (or tore) a slit in a piece of paper, hung the
paper on the kite string, and the paper slid magically up the
string to meet the kite. This man let 60 (I counted them) miniature
kits ride up the string of his kite.
We started with patchwork in the sky and now here's
weaving in the sky. In this case, I think maybe painted
on clear plastic.
Of course, this is just a small selection of all the imaginative,
colorful, intriguing kites that were being flown at the
festival. The next day we read in the paper that there
had been kites at night the evening before – definitely
something to look forward to for next year!