You guys are getting this on time-delay, because I’m using these posts to communicate with Emily DeCola, the designer, who is on a trip to China at the moment. So, once she reads and we catch up, I’ll post the pictures of the build.

Just because it is interesting, I’ll also share the commentary that we have going. Feel free to join in, just know that we are three days farther along in the process than you.

Monday, December 10th, 2007

We started the day at 10:00 today, shopping from home and organizing plans. Around eleven, Rob and I headed down to the shop and met up with Jane at noon. While Jane and I worked, Rob did the shopping for us. Gotta love husbands.

Here’re the fruits of our labor today.

I mocked the boat up in heavy paper to get a general pattern and to sort out construction plans of attack. When Rob brought the plastic back, I decided to go ahead and try building the rehearsal mockup from that rather than cardboard. Largely because I also needed to play with the materials, and this gave me an opportunity to do both.

I couldn’t find a clip light, so I stuck two maglights under the boat to check out it’s qualities as a lamp. Overall my conclusions were: I think want the material to be more opaque, or I want to put a diffusion gel on the lamp. You can’t score this stuff, or it will crack. But, you can bend it and it will hold the crease without breaking Easiest way to have the boat fit under the playboard is to lay it on its side. Having the pieces collapse works, but makes the boat jiggly.

If the El wire isn’t in the equation, Jane and I both prefer the bubblewrap. She’s wrapping it with the bubbles on the exterior, which looks really great.

This is one of the short coils. We are tappering the spiral, which is different from the way you approached the McCarter harpy.

We tried cling wrap to hold the batting in. Not a good plan. It’s easy, because it sticks to itself. Which is bad when you try to move the puppet.

We didn’t finish putting the batting on this one. Jane suggests trying the small bubble wrap on top of the batting as a compromise. Really, we won’t know anything until we get the EL wire in there.