Dragonfly acrobats

I recently "discovered" an age-old toy of Asian (probably Chinese) origin. Sticks of bamboo or banana wood are shaped into the body and wings of a dragonfly and arranged so that the whole "statue" balances gently on the tip of its nose.
Intriguing! I set to develop (that is "copy", in layman's terms :) a version of my own. Initially, i used poplar stirring sticks (contributed by the local coffee-shop). Later on, i noticed a kind of palm tree, quite common as a decorative plant in my neiborhood.
Near the base of the trunk, branches carry a paricular version of leaves: they are nicely needle-shaped and, once dried, quite solid. I file or sand-paper five of those to a rounded edge. Four are cut to equal size, to serve as the dragonfly's wings. The longer and stronger one is left to original length: this is the dragonfly's body.
I cut a hole through the body (using a pointed file or a milling hand-tool, as in the picture), some 2 cm from the tip of te "head". The opening has to be large enough for the pointed ends of all four "wings" (two on each side) to fit - approx. 6 mm in diameter will do, in this case.
Once assembled, a drop of epoxy glue bonds them solidly together.
After a number of tries, i decided to make a rig out of corrugated cardboard, to keep the pieces aligned while the glue cures. Epoxy takes on well to wood and provides an adequately strong joint. The quick-setting variety bonds in less than 10 min. (which still leaves ample time to enjoy a glass of milk :)
The rig boosted production pace, so i ended up with a swarm of wooden insects. They were decorated with gouache paint and finished with two generous coats of nail varnish.
To achieve balancing - in some cases, when an adjustment of the weight was necessary - i glue clippings of copper wire under the tips of the wings. Also, i decorate the head with 'eyes' made from glass beads glued on the ends of a 1.5 mm dia. piece of scraped-out bamboo stick.
They can perch on practically anything and are quite keen trapezists: the gentlest breeze has them floating gracefully, on and on...

Manufestae

Work is love made visible
Kahlil Gibran, "The prophet"

As a child, my head constantly echoed with my parents' warnings "Don't touch! Keep off!". Indeed, no sooner did I lay eyes on something, than I was reaching for it: to touch, to feel, to sense. Often, in my over-eager clumsiness, resulting in damage.
Because, more and above providing instant tactile gratification, everything turned out to be somehow 'composed' of parts. And - behold - everything had a story to tell: how someone prepared and assembled these (often quite disparate) elements. And how these parts combined and joined towards a purpose; all brought together by some amount of will and dedication.
I never overcame this magic of things made. To cut a long story short, I kept fumbling with tools and materials, taking time to discover how things are made, attaching to 'old stuff' and refusing to trash anything that wasn't entirely beyond re-use. Kept a hand on the ground, of sorts.
If this blog, then, has to be "about" something, it would be the celebration of the hand.
In these times of virtuality and globalization, values tend to be confused. We often fail to distinguish between ownership and legitimacy, nobility and descendance, credit and faith, creativity and fabrication. Artifacts witness and remind that human work (part of which is craftsmanship) is and shall always be testimony and mark of our potential, our natural source of rightfulness. And bliss. And what, more than the work of hands, epitomizes this quality?
So here I stand, another acolyte of the crafts. Within the scores of comrades-in-tools that make small and larger things just "because". Grateful I can share their gifts and spirit. Stepping back into the original meaning of 'digital'. Admiring the miracles of human hands - the mysterious interplay between haptic perception and manual creativity.
And here are memoirs of my excursions in those magical grounds where play, attention and necessity meet. Over and again.