Join us Saturday, Feb 22 for the MKS Annual Meeting & Auction!

CHINESE 3-STICK KITE

(fyi - a Unit is any number of inches you decide to use. 6 units is the height of a Rok, 5 is the width, and 4 is the distance between the two horizontal spars, and one unit is how far in from both sides one places each bridle line. This kite needs to be bowed.)

How they figured out the 3 point bridle, I don't know. But there's a ratio. The top two lines run from the top to the center in length. The one that goes from the center also fastens the sticks together at their center on the back of the kite and is 4/5ths as long as the other two bridle lines. Overhand tie the three together. This may need an adjustment so it's always best to make the bridle lines a couple inches longer to allow such changes.

I spent over a year piecing the flowers together, quilting style, and finished it in time to compete it at the 2008 AKA Convention in Gettysburg, PA. It placed third in the Flat Kite category. On the day we flew the kites it was also the day we were judged on our ground displays, and I had an entry in that, too. So I jogged from one site of a very long field to the other, kite in hand, tripped going over the tape edging the field and fell. The horizontal spar broke. Thanks to friends in the sport kite groups lolling in a tent alongside the field, a replacement spar was quickly offered and installed and I, wearing a long colonial dress and bonnet, made it. Harry brought me my folding 3-legged stool. I launched the kite into a murky gray sky with a decent wind at my back, and it soared straight up, gluing itself to the sky. I sat there like a milkmaid while it flew absolutely straight as an arrow, tail and all, for the requisite time, until I was tapped on my shoulder and told to reel it in. It came right straight back to my hand. THAT is a perfect flight! This kite was also flown as one of the kites required to earn a daily pin at another AKA Convention in Utah. I didn't go, but another club member, Sara Torok, did and she needed a flat kite, so I loaned her this one. She broke the "magic spar" during that flight and replaced it with the dowel now in the kite. I've flown it a couple times since it returned from that journey, and can tell you it's best appearance is when it flies so the sun is behind it, causing a sort of stained glass effect. I have loved this kite form since 1980 when I made my first Chinese 3 stick, which was probably one of the first kites ever flown over China a good 2000 years ago. People wonder about the fact that it is comprised of six equilateral triangles and was developed way before Geometry was figured out in Greece, but frankly, folks, you don't need Geometry to make a kite like this. You need Oragmi skills. Do it just like the snowflakes you made in first grade. Fold a piece of paper in half, fold it down to find the center point, and fold back both ends evenly and you have a hexagon when you open it up. Stick a string in the center point and tie a pencil to the other end and scribe a circle. Cut straight lines between the folds - you then glue thin sticks along those fold lines. Try making one out of a napkin and toothpicks. A 6th grade girl did that at lunch in school after we had done a history of kites presentation. She came up to me after lunch and said, " Like this?" You can make a Rokkaku , too, using the Japanese 4-5-6 formula, which modified the 3-stick to fly without a tail at all.

Stabilizers about 6 to 7 feet long ( on a 3 ft. diameter kite) are attached to loops on the two bottom points. Add a tail that dangles below below the kite about the same distance as the equalateral triangle that comprises the hexagon should be seven times the width of the kite.

A parting shot about making early kites - the Maylay 2 stick is the same dimensions as a human being. Our arms are the same length from fingertip to fingertip straight out from our body as our height when we are under the age of Osteoporosis. And our arms cross our bodies one fifth of our total height down from the tops of our heads, exactly where the two sticks cross. I have learned that over the age of 75, our height goes down but that arm length measurement stays the same. Yes, at 81, I am 4 inches shorter! About the same dimensions as a Hata.

Nancy Lockwood

Ken Runke is donating some great items. Including:

• • Mystery Box! -- these are always something good

The most fascinating jigsaw puzzle ever - It's small - and it is Oh My Gosh Kites! - in fact, it's a photograph of two of the Windjammers Performance Kite Team flying in a clear blue sky. I don't know where Gary Maynard got this photo enlarged, mounted and and cut into interlocking pieces, but he sent it to me for Christmas. So it has had one assembling. I'm ready to pass it on. Hint - all that blue sky was not easy to assemble. But maybe a jigsaw addict like me would like to take it on.