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Adrianne Balmer shows off her work of art in the 2009 Kite Festival.

The 11th annual kite festival drew nearly 10,000 people this year, according to its organizer, the Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce. In the sometimes swarthy sea of kids flying kites, folks from around Southwest Virginia tend to bump into people they know. But North Carolina native Ted Arven certainly didn't expect to bump into his old high school classmate and fellow choir member, Adrianne Balmer, there.

Arven and Balmer had just seen one another the summer before, in 2001, for their 35th class reunion. "I think it's kind of weird that you would just randomly meet somebody some 30 years later," Arven said. He lives in Roanoke and is a regional manager for Gwaltney/Valleydale.

Balmer lives in Richmond with her husband, Mearl, and they'd both recently started the intense hobby of sport kite flying and building in 1999.

"We had been flying kites for maybe 25 years just for a week at the beach," she said. "And each year it got a little bigger, and Mearl started entering and winning sport kite competitions." The now-master-kite-builder said that once she started attending kite events, she thought "there's something I can do - so I started making kites."

It wasn't a quick task - "I've learned more math and physics making kites than I learned in school," said Balmer. Other than unexpected physical conditioning, kite building involves a lot of trial and error, careful planning, and innovation to create the show-stoppers that they now show when they go to different festivals and expos with the group they joined - the Richmond Air Force Kite Club.

"I just think that it was really energizing, that after so many years to have something in common again so many years after high school," Balmer said.

"I think it's kind of weird that you would just randomly meet somebody some 30 years later," Arven said. The Balmers taught Arven and his wife, Vicki, to fly kites, and they've been to every kite festival at Green Hill Park until this year's. "It's neat to have something in common again ... They're probably one of the reasons I agreed to sponsor the kite festival," he said.

One day in 2002 Arven jokingly said to Balmer "Well Kroger's got a kite at the kite festival - why don't you make me a kite for Valleydale."

Balmer just asked for some logos and pictures of the company's mascots, the three musical pigs, and the next year she returned to Green Hill Park with a beautiful "Genke" kite to the theme of "when pigs fly."

The kite is made out of parachute-grade silk material. All of the colors for the designs are actually sewn in all together in the shape of the pattern. Then the kite builder cuts the layers out down to each section's intended color. And that's why a lot of the professionals' kites seem to glimmer different colors when the sun shines through them.

This past Saturday, April 18, even though Arven couldn't make it out, Balmer made sure those three pigs were flying high and proud.