00230 KRAP

So I went KAPing and took out the Maxi Dopero on a very light wind day. And so the kite just wanted to go over the seaboard side of this fort and the camera was in the middle of the fort and I was on the land-ward side. All I could do is tie off the kite to the railings and head inside the fort to retrieve the camera suspended over the parapet (or whatever it's called). When I got there I discovered that the kite was miraculously still flying on the other side of the fort. Either there were weird thermals, or the wind moved through 90 degrees and then back again as soon as I picked up the line.
Did I mention it had already crashed before and the kite went into the sea? If you think that the Dopero resists the pull of the wind with alot of force, you want to try pulling it out of the sea. Man that was a fight.
I'm going to have to sort out what's up with it before I try getting back on that horse again.

00229 KAPing Saint's View

I've been meaning to get round to this for ages, but not had the balls to do it. The Maxi Dopero made it all possible and without it, I'd be lost. The winds were light and the sun was out. The only tricky thing was launching from the garden, which was small for such a large kite and completely in the wind shadow of the house. The wind was easterly and mild, so I'll have to try an early morning one when we have a good day and a Westerly. Actually the direction was spot on for walking down the narrow alley between the house and the hedge - it's the only way to get from front to back with a kite as the telephone wire comes in overhead.



Still, I'm pretty pleased with the results - even managed to get some of the sea off the east coast in shot.

00228 I've got the legs

After receiving the legs that I'll be making the stools out of and reviewing the materials that I have for the seat, this is the latest iteration of th bar stool:



Here's Cara with all the legs and a close up of a finished surface:



The legs taper - which I wasn't expecting. And so it seems that without an even remotely simple way to straighten them without revealing the screw holes at the top of each leg, I'll have to stick to the current shape. The only other option is to slim them down, but keep the taper. We'll see.

I'm going to the class tonight, where I'll be giving Barry the oak to be thicknessed down to make the seat.

00227 KAPing bonanza

Two outings in the same week, just like a London bus (kind of).

The first one is Fort Saumarez near Lihou and by crikey that Maxi-Dopero seemed to be constantly over flying, probably because I set the bridle at too acute an angle. Still, it proved that the kite is really very stable.
The second shot is from the Flowform and was much less stressful.
I'm quite liking this oblique view I'm getting from the rig, but I really need some more interesting subject matter.

00226 The best laid plans ...

So after deliberating for weeks on the design of the board I was going to make during the course of my evening classes, I was faced with the revelation that the school in which we were attending the classes was undergoing a minor spring clean, the result of which was that 40 laminated table legs were now available for anyone who was interested. Barry, the course tutor, suggested that someone might like to think about a bar stool project.
So I did the Sketchup thing:



Funny thing, really, seeing as we need two custom sizes bar stools for the island. Anyway, long story short, this will be the new project and THEN I'll do the backgammon set.

Should I be pleased? The funny thing is that I SHOULD be, but I can't help dwelling on the weeks I spent obsessing over something trivial.

Oh, did I forget to post up the legs available? They're really nice:



Oh, and the other thing that I forgot to add was that all of these ideas for the stool were based on a design by Alvar Aalto