Thursday, June 3, 2010

Putting Strings Away

I have this bad habit of letting dead strings accumulate before I put in the time to wind them into the ball. This is almost the opposite mindset this project was created for. Here I am pictured putting what must be eight or ten strings after saving them until I found the motivation to wind them up.
I don't get the immediate feedback of the work each string actually is, which makes them energetically "cheaper". Want another string? OK, done. It's wrong, and I want to stop.

I also gave away a string yesterday. I let little kids (5 and 7 years old) play with my yo-yo, and little kids have unbearably grubby hands, and utterly destroyed the string with gunk within a few minutes. They didn't notice how bad the string felt, as they were having fun learning a sleeper. But I would not even want to hang on to the disgusting string long enough to put it in the ball. So I made a gift out of the mucky, stiff, gooey, and positively revolting string. I would have paid the kids to take it, but they even said "thanks".

I got to go to California this past weekend, and didn't bring my ball of strings (I was packing light). The ones I am winding are ones used on the trip. There was some contest (BAC) that weekend super-close to where my family was, and I gave the 5A freestyle of my life.

Unfortunately, I don't think it was filmed, or it's nowhere to be found online. I even got filmed by Gabe, which was a secret life dream, got complimented by lots on non-yo-yoers, drew crowds with silly tricks, realized Augie Fash is really a superstar, and even gave contact info out to somebody that works at a museum that liked my freestyle. The last guy needed permission to use the footage they got from the freestyle in a documentary that will try to make yo-yoing more athletic, and get it into the Olympic sports. And had some GREAT apple curry.

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