I made my bow jig today and as I suspected, it wasn’t quite durable enough to weather the storm.  It worked ok, but I made it out of green Styrofoam, and it molted.  I mean molted.  I had that Styrofoam all over my hands and it made it really difficult to tie bows after my hands were covered with it.  I have to say, if you covered the Styrofoam with duct tape it might be a feasibility, but otherwise, not so much.  I had a really hard time getting my bows tight as well.  But that might have been because the ribbon I used was kind of thick.  I think you have best results with a bow jig when you use a thin ribbon.  I wondered why I didn’t use the jig much.  It must have been because I couldn’t get a consistent bow, or else I just forgot I owned it, you be the judge.

Tomorrow is our final DIY project, a homemade stencil.  I hope it turns out well because I have a really great idea for a card with it.  You never know when you attempt a DIY whether it will be successful or a failure and for the most part, I don’t like to have the surprise ruined by making one in advance.  Where’s the fun in that?  I prefer to fly by the seat of my pants.  Where did that come from and what does it really mean.  I’m going to do some research.

Here’s what I found.

Meaning

Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.

Origin

This is early aviation parlance. Aircraft initially had few navigation aids and flying was accomplished by means of the pilot’s judgment. The term emerged in the 1930s and was first widely used in reports of Douglas Corrigan’s flight from the USA to Ireland in 1938.

That flight was reported in many US newspapers of the day, including this piece, titled ‘Corrigan Flies By The Seat Of His Pants’, in The Edwardsville Intelligencer, 19th July 1938:

“Douglas Corrigan was described as an aviator ‘who flies by the seat of his pants’ today by a mechanic who helped him rejuvinate the plane which airport men have now nicknamed the ‘Spirit of $69.90’. The old flying expression of ‘flies by the seat of his trousers’ was explained by Larry Conner, means going aloft without instruments, radio or other such luxuries.”

Two days before this report Corrigan had submitted a flight plan to fly from Brooklyn to California. He had previously had a plan for a trans-Atlantic flight rejected (presumably on the grounds that the ‘Spirit of $69.60 wasn’t considered up to the job). His subsequent 29 hour flight ended in Dublin, Ireland. He claimed that his compasses had failed. He didn’t openly admit it but it was widely assumed that he had ignored the rejection of his flight plan and deliberately flown east rather than west. He was thereafter known as ‘Wrong Way Corrigan’ and starred as himself in the 1938 movie The Flying Irishman.

The ‘old flying expression’ quoted above (although it can’t have been very old in 1938) that refers to trousers rather than pants does suggest that the phrase was originally British and crossed the Atlantic (the right way) prior to becoming ‘flies by the seat of one’s pants’.

So it literally means exactly what it says, weird.  So I’m not flying but I am wearing pants, at least I’m halfway there.

 

 

 

 

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