"Stick a Plane on It" Fans

Spotty and Spot, Fan Club, Co-Chairs

"Sitck A Plane On It"

One of my all time favourite shows is Portlandia, which is a send up of urban granolas like me. I think that the greatest sketch ever is one called, "Put A Bird On It." I would try to describe it but the YouTube version is so much better.

Given how much kids love airplanes, helicopters, rockets and space shuttle, I have decided to write, produce, film and edit my own YouTube  video called, "Stick Plane on It" only I will need to learn how to do all that first (What is a producer anyway? My Sony Xperia can be used for filming? Right? Does the editing deck come with a autocorrect?)

Maybe I should just start with what I know, so here goes:

 So Portlandia fans, who do you think?

Alpacas for AirCrafting

 Felted Alpaca

1.       Lay a long rectangular piece of alpaca fleece vertically on top of a sponge or tea towel as ’paca’ is a little slipperier than other fibres. Starting from the bottom up roll the fleece into a cylinder.  This will be your ‘paca’s body. 

2.       With felting needle gently work the fleece into a symmetrical shape. (This can take anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending on the density of your fleece)

                                             

LEGS

3.       Lay 4 small rectangular pieces of alpaca fleece on a sponge or tea town.  Roll it into a small cylinder and felt it until it is symmetrical. (Again this will take 10-15 minutes). The cylinder will be your ‘paca’s left back leg (if you are to the left) or your paca’s left right leg (if you are to the right). 

4.       With your felting needle, stab (yes, I said stab) your leg into the body, it may probably take a few stabs

5.       Repeat steps 3 and 4 with remaining fleece. You will now have a blobby of fleece which in no way or shape resembles a ‘paca’, but have faith.

HEAD AND NECK

6.       Lay out a long but narrow rectangle piece of alpaca fleece horizontally and roll it from the bottom up until you have what looks like a Cuban cigar. Bend the top 3^rd of your cigar 45 degrees. You will now have what looks like a very bent Cuban cigar. The bent-part is your ‘paca’s” head

With your felting needle gently work the fleece into a symmetrical shape (and yes it will take between 1-015 minutes). Then with your felting needle stab the neck and head into the body. You will now have a large ball of fleece that marginally resembles a ‘paca."

Don’t give up! 3-D felting is a patience craft.

EARS, FEETSIES AND TOESIES 

7.       With a contrasting colour (okay, you can use a main colour if you want) make two small balls and stab onto sides of heads for ears. They will look wonky but don’t worry, you will be able to needle felt them into more triangular shape later.

8.       Stab 4 small balls of  contrasting colour fleece onto the bottom on the legs. These will be your paca’s feetsies. Your ‘paca will not stand up but later on when you needle felt the feetsies into little heart-shaped toesies they will.

9.       Okay your “conceptual idea” of a ‘paca is now done. With your felting needle, needle felt and intermittently stab your “big hunk of fleece” into a ‘paca.’ I cannot explain how to do this exactly but by working with the ‘paca’ fibre you will get a FEEL for it and it will tell you what to do. (No, this is not some ‘paca’ whisperer thing, but you will get it with some perserverance and practice-I promise)

10.   Keep needle felting and stabbing (this willd take you anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes) until you get a ‘paca’. Make sure you take some time with the ears which you will need to make pointy and the feetsies which you need to turn into heart-shaped toesies.

TAIL & AND EYES

11.   Alpacas have fluffy tails, make up a large loose circular ball of fleece for the tail and stab it into your ‘paca’s rear end. You can gently needle felt the tail in or make a firmer tail by stabbing the fleece.

 

12.   Now with a contrasting colour make two very small balls for the eyes and gently poke (not needle felt and not stab but something in between) into the head. I like to give my ‘pacas’ a slightly goofy expressions, so I make their eyes a bit asymmetrical but if you like symmetry go for it.)

13.   Needle felt in any stray bits of fleece and smooth out any rough patches.

14.   Then give your ‘paca’ a hug and please don’t forget to say “goodnight” to it.

Copyrighted to Glenn Goldman & Beryl Tsang, AirCrafting, 2013, for personal use only .

AirCrafting's Alpaca Herd

AirCrafting promotes aviation and aerospace inspired creative projects. Every now and again however, we get inspired by things on the ground One of those things are alpacas.


We love the crimpy camelids, and we are fortunate to have a farm nearby where we can go and hang with them. They even let us hum along if we are in the paddock.

This our friend Amy Kung-Oliver she and her husband Eric Berg own Nuevo Norte, in Colborne Ontario.

Amy is a fibre fanatic and Eric is a "closet knitter." (It's 2013 Eric, time to come out!) 

Their farm is where we get all the fabulous felt and colourful rovings that we use in our Rocket Square kits. (More about those later.)

We love Nuevo Norte and we miss the alpacas so much when we are back in the city, that we had to needle felt our own herd. 

The felted ones don't hum nor do they have have soft lips that will nibble us to sleep at night but they are fun to make and a great summer project. 

See our next post for instructions.
 

Things That Don't Fly

We have discovered in our relationship that many things do not fly well. Watermelons,for example, when launched from a trebuchet only remain in the air for 30 or fewer seconds and then land with a thud and make a mess. It is much better to split them in half and eaten with a spoon (and a splash of vodka).
 


Small land mammals don't fly very well either. Our friend Hero Cat tried it off the 8th floor balcony of his mid-town pied-a-terre and managed to tear all the ligaments on his hind legs and fracture his pelvis. Fortunately he is convalescing well and his humans are managing to keep him entertained by dressing him in Do It Yourself feline fashions. 

Despite the fact that many alpacas (or at least their farmers) own aviator glasses, we don't think that Alpacas actually like to fly as it:  

1. Makes their lips go pffft, pffft, pffft (especially when they are riding in an open cockpit.)

2. Messes up their up-dos and as everyone knows what is an alpaca without his up-do?

3. Puts a cramp on their crimp and what is
an alpaca but a fluffy camelid with crimp?  

Plus it stresses them out and they spit. We have four kids so we are not big fans of spitting.  We have however, discovered that alpaca fibre is prolly the best ever for aviation knitting.

It is warm, light and extremely "luxe". It wears well, washes up in the sink with some shampoo and the drape is amazing, especially for flying socks, scarves and sweaters. 

AirCrafting has even done a Baby Squadron Hat out of Americo Original's  Worsted Weight. Pattern will be posted shortly (at $5.00) but if you want a PDF of it now please email us at: aircrafting.co@gmail.com and we can send you one.

An Unconventional Landing

I have been flying since I was a "wee bairn" as they would say in Scotland. (For the record I am not a Celt but a generic Asian Canadian), traveling across oceans, between continents and from the Northern to the Southern Hemispheres regularly.

When I was 20 however, the unthinkable happened, I had what  was described as a really bad flight. It was 1986 and I was on  Korean Airlines flight from Seoul to Hong Kong. The plane had been delayed at Kimpo and I had fallen asleep  upon boarding and when I woke up, my plane zipping on a precarious angle between two super-sized sky-scrappers, but that  wasn't what freaked me out. It was the fact that I appeared to be descending into the South China Sea, at a great speed to an early demise and the last thing I saw before I was about to go splat was rather rumpled resident of one of the skyscrapers picking his nose.

Suddenly the runway appeared out of no where and I had what I can only describe as a near death experience. The plane thudded, skidded and bumped to a screeching halt. I don't think I ever got over it. Every flight thereafter required copious amounts of alcohol and a halcion scrip--every landing was "tough"

Kai Tak Airport circa 1986

Fast forward 23 years and my fear of flight has not diminished. Rather than taking vacations to exotic places I limited my flying to one trip a year to a yoga retreat in Oaxaca and the occasional weekend jaunts to Montreal to see my son or visit friends in New York City with my daughter. My life became less about seeing the world as it was about knitting the world together from the comfort of my downtown Toronto walk up.  In fact my life became focused on fibrenista-ing, "Stitching and Bitching: with other knitsters and tit-knitting (more about that later)

Life was sweet. I had a yarn stash that was the envy of most of my friend's in Toronto's Downtown Knit Collective, fab kids and cats who respected fibre (neither licked or clawed the cashmere). I was even one of two Canadian textile artists featured in Sabrina Gschwantder's book Knitknit Projects and Profiles from Knitting's New Wave.

My only problem, was I was sleeping with my yarn stash on a regular basis. The femme offspring unit, who normally thought boys were yucky, was perturbed with my cashmere cuddling and suggested an intervention. My bestie Nina, who had been charged with boarding a plane while wearing a pendant resembling a small firearm, convinced me that it was a good idea to start <insert shriek here. dating. Off I went to internet dating land. Being a textile artist I posted a picture of myself wearing yarn in my hair After a few weeks of being online, there were NO, NADA or as we say in Putonghua (Mandarin), MEIYOU  messages in my In Box.

My Dating Site Picture

Very few potential dates even bothered to look at  my profile.  A friend, who happened to be a Plasma Propulsion Specialist had previously posted a picture of Schrodinger's Cat on his profile told me to ixne, the yarn picture. It was not a good look he said. Experience had taught him that physics, online dating just don't mix. Same for fibre and dating. I was getting ready to become a crazy cat lady when the unthinkable happened, someone actually read my profile. 

Finally a potential date (and he had opposeable thumbs), So I sent him a message, "Nu? Kreplach?" (a.k.a. a Jewish wonton as his profile stated that he was a member of the tribe.) 

His Date Site icture

Surprisingly he wrote back, "When? Where?"

Me: "This weekend? Kensington Market?"

Him: "That won't work"

Me, "Next week?"

Him, "No that won't work either"

It was clear that this was going nowhere fast, so I wrote, "Great picture" and figured that was the end of that. Then the long reply came, "Thanks, that was taken at Oshkosh when I was preparing to fly a friend's Grumman Avenger." 

Fly? As in an airplane?  Oshkosh? as in the Wisconsin Aviation Convention ? Grumman Avenger as in the World War II Torpedo Bomber that George Bush, Senior was shot down over the Pacific in?

It was obvious that he was not my type. Pilots maybe better looking than particle physicists, but they spent their lives suspended in aluminum tubes thousands of feet off the ground whereas theoretical particle physicists just thought about things and space and experimental physicists blew things up from the safety of their labs located on earth.

What if he wanted to show me his plane? What if he expected me to fly in his plane and enjoy it? Given that we hadn't actually met yet. I re-resolved to become a crazy cat lady with yarn, lots and lots of yarn and forget him especially after he let it drop that the yarn in my hair looked awful.

Despite my best efforts to ignore him, he stayed in touch,texting often. (Patience and persistence I later learned are both hallmarks of a good pilot.) One night, while we were chatting on the telephone (which is considered a "phenomenon" in the digital dating world), I complained about a particularly nasty flight I had from Liberty earlier in the week.  A flight attendant had actually seized--yes seized--my knitting because I would not desist from finishing a sock I was knitting before take off. (Come on it was cold on the plane and  I was planning to wear that sock and its mate the flight). 

"It's tough," he responded thoughtfully, "to knit in public. People often think you are weird if you do it." As it turned out his 8 year old girl child loved  to knit and was often made fun of by her peers for her forays into the fibre world. We met and what followed was an ongoing adventure in aviation and art. My heart has finally landed and it a most unconventional landing ever.

Our most recent adventure is AirCrafting where we bring our air and space, art and craft. Check out this blog for our ruminations of love, life and all things creative.