 Attention all families - The absolutely best way to spend your fall in-service training weekend is to make and fly kites at the Idaho Kite Festival. You will see octopus and fish in the skies over Pocatello and Chubbuck, teddy bears and other adorable stuffed delights parachuting overhead, kite battles, a train made of 100 kites – and many other wonders to behold. If you are a veteran or know one, make and fly kites with veterans of several wars. Last year Harold Isaacs of Aberdeen created a Korean War kite. Commander Richard Hollingsworth of the Veterans of Foreign Wars who with Tom Norris started the VFW memorial kite fly, decorated his kite with his favorite plane. Families of all age groups made red white and blue kites to honor our veterans for the annual fly that is a staple event of IKF. The Sky’s The Limit!Idaho Kite Festival (formerly Idaho State Kite Festival) chose the name The Sky’s The Limit! for their team of volunteers because of the kite theme, and because their enthusiasm knows no bounds. In four years of workshops, more than 700 kites have been made in Pocatello, Chubbuck, Lava Hot Springs, Boise, Twin Falls, Ontario OR and a few other states. And they are just getting started in their efforts to make IKF the fall mini-vacation destination.
We are looking for kids and kids at heart whose eyes light up rather than look hurt when asked, “Why don’t you go fly a kite?” We provide a creative, confidence-building, educational, outdoor activity for everyone, and restore the simple fun of kiting to parents who tell me, “I haven’t flown a kite since I was a kid…we made them out of anything we could find…it was so much fun…I want to make one with my son or daughter.” WHERE YOU WILL FIND USRegular Workshops: Want a kitemaking workshop in your area? The criteria are simple. If we can fit your date into our schedules AND if everyone is welcome – children to senior citizens and everyone in between – we will volunteer a kitemaking table. For example, we schedule spring (April is National Kite Month!) and fall library workshops and veterans’ workshop for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, all free and open to the public. You have not lived till you have made a kite with these vets, and you’ve never laughed so much , either. IKF Volunteers at the Pocatello Community Environmental Fair
The challenge: the Fair lasted 4 hours, and the kites were flown in a park surrounded by large buildings. This called for simply constructed, lightweight kites. We made nearly 200 – Old News(papers) – New Kites, Go Green with Red White and Blue (former tablecloths) for the VFW, Go Fly a ….Fish, and My Kite’s My (shopping) Bag were this year’s choices. The rest of the participants hope for a sunny, calm day – I hoped for and got a light breeze to fly the kites! "Octopus Seen Swimming in Pocatello Skies on New Years Day"
College of Southern Idaho Asian Students Organization Fall Children’s Festival Twin Falls area kids flocked to the first annual Fall Children’s Festival (FCF) last September as though a Pied Piper played on the CSI campus. Held by the Asian Students Organization of CSI, in collaboration with our volunteers, the Fall Festival attracted children with parents, clubs with their leaders, scout troops and more. One FCF activity was a pre-event kite workshop for the 2007 Idaho State Kite Festival in Pocatello two weeks later. Children in the “Kites at the Speed of Light” workshop decorated, assembled and flew 112 kites, and were invited to bring them to the Pocatello festival. The Sky’s The Limit! volunteers Micki Kawakami and Patty Watanabe of Pocatello, aided by members of ASO, guided children thru the five steps of a simple Japanese kimono kite. At other tables children made dramatic face masks, learned to spin Korean tops, folded origami figures, and created gyotaku (fish print) with black ink painted on a fish then pressed onto paper. ASO students from many countries worked tirelessly to keep the crowds busy. The second annual FCF will be September 23 08, and The Sky’s The Limit! will be there. WHAT YOU DO AT KITE WORKSHOPS
THE BIG EVENT
Best of winds, Micki Kawakami
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True, last year’s Festival had that quintessentially Idaho twist – two inches of snow on October 6! Although they might have been outnumbered by the sledders at ISU Bartz Field, kiters from Boise, Burley, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Falls, Paul, Pocatello, Chubbuck, Ogden UT and Florida defied the snow to fly kites. As guest instructor Tom Tinney, miniature kitemaster said, flying in these conditions gives us bragging rights when we look back at the first annual Festival! 
For the annual Community Environmental Fair (CEF), we created kites from recycled or reusable materials. Of necessity and curiosity, since I started making kites 4 years ago I’ve grabbed any plastic or paper around the house to fashion a kite. So the practice isn’t foreign to me, and we rarely discard anything! Needless to say, everyone saves their Sunday comics, shopping bags, and any large sheet of material that catches their eyes. 
This sounds like a National Enquirer story, but it’s truth, not fantasy! Wanting to recreate an old Japanese tradition of flying kites on New Years Day (it’s usually cold and snowy in Japan too!) we devised a semi-traditional fly with octopus kites 9 feet long. “Kite” in Japanese is “tako” which is also the word for octopus! At a Portneuf Library workshop, the inner artist came out – my favorite Japanese calligrapher Harry Watanabe of Pocatello covered one octopus with Happy New Year wishes. Other kites became hot-air balloons with clever artwork, and one became a jellyfish! 
At a kitemaking workshop you can decorate, assemble and fly kite classics such as the delta kite, with its familiar triangular sail. We even have one made of newspaper.
Or, you might make a fighter kite as the children of India, Vietnam, Japan or the Philippines have made for centuries, and as we did to celebrate the Veterans Memorial Fly. Using tablecloths with a flag motif, we recycled these plastic sheets into patriotic kites!
Another favorite is the Malay kite, shaped like a shield. We use a design by famous Japanese-Canadian kitemaster Dan Kurahashi. A small version of this kite makes up the Idaho Kite Festival’s first kite train, one hundred kites strung together on one line, at IKF 2008! Kiters from all over Idaho are creating sections of this train, which will arc over the flying field.
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