i totally lost count.

i have no idea how many strings i've twisted. maybe like... 60? 70?

all's i know is that the ball no longer fits well in the rancor's hand... and it makes him feel inadequate. it's kind of weak, since i was making tally marks. how hard is it to make a tally mark? i don't even remember neglecting to do so. was there a string i twisted and i was going to make the mark in the book, but i was like 'ah, screw it!'?

i also know that whenever i stop twisting from the cone of doom, i'm really going to miss the way the strands look after you tie the loop. it reminds me of a buddhist mala (though i'll grant you, a lot of things do... because i'm pretty flaky).

also noteworthy is the fact that i 'compared cones' (god that sounds dirty) with john higby last week, who has one of the old tom kuhn spools (both the smaller one and one of the enormous ones), and although the tk stuff is type 8, it feels exactly like this stuff in terms of its rigidity and spring-factor.

i'm a little concerned because i can't really make out any discernible change in the overall size of the cone. i mean, i don't twist a ton of strings (i timed one last week and it lasted for at least 6 hours of play)... but it looks pretty much just as massive and daunting as when i first received it. i guess since it's cylindrical, as it unwinds, the width will start to diminish more rapidly over time. is that right? i'm not like a math teacher or anything.

... oops.

A Full One Hundred Throws and Catches

A Full One Hundred Throws and Catches (and others) from Jacob Deffenbaugh on Vimeo.

This almost seems counter-intuitive for this project. But the roots lie in enjoying every throw.

Instead of throwing the yo-yo like you always do, then dealing with the sometimes sub-par performance, why not make the actual throw more fun?

I don't have a lesson here, and I'm not really expecting this to change the world. I just want to do simple, cool yo-yo tricks.

DISNEY!!!

leaving for walt disney world in a few hours. our travel will be complicated somewhat by the swirling vortex of winter weather that will (apparently) descend upon north carolina late tonight. my daughter and i actually have tickets to the ringling bros. (and barnum and bailey) circus tonight. plan was to leave tomorrow after her ballet class, but as that's sure to be canceled i think we'll amscray in the night and hope to miss the worst of the precipitation.

folk from the north always laugh at the mid-atlantic states as they fumble around during the winter, but while they get 3 feet of [clearly impassable] snow, we tend to get freezing rain, and a half-inch of ice, which may look like nothing, but will misdirect even the hardiest snow-tires into a ditch.

i'm psyched for the trip, but this is really the first time i've had to twist some string in advance. i'll be gone a week, so i twisted 8 strings. this seems more than i could possibly use (probably more like 3 or 4), but i wanted to be safe. i'm not bringing the cone or the ball, so i'll have to carefully save what i use. leave no trace.

someone on 'extremespin' (which still exists, funnily enough) asked how the project is going, which to me indicates that i don't post enough. i'll end this entry with what i told him, since i can't think of a more interesting way to paraphrase it:

"it's awesome string. i play narrow gaps, and i'm not gonna lie... it's hard. it takes a really concentrated effort to do the stuff that i've had dialed on thinner string. but that's also why i like it. i've only snapped one, it lasts a LONG time, and the texture is divine.

and much like the original 'idea', i really THINK before i twist a new one. they aren't 'disposable' in the same way that other string has been for me. i commit to twisting it well, commit to playing it well (or as well as i can manage), and when it joins the ever-expanding ball, winding it is almost a kind of meditation. like a tiny funeral. and like any funeral for one who has lived well, there's more joy than grief involved."

An old, familiar feeling.

I recently acquired a yo-yo that is a few years old. Don't tell anyone, but I bought it mostly because of the color. Turns out I like how it plays a whole lot. But I know on the inside that it's probably mostly the color that makes me want to look down at it while it's spinning, not necessarily the unique feedback I get through this string.

The old, familiar feeling came from the response pads that it came with. They are Kentaro pads. Old-school black, textured rubber pads that were a breakthrough when they first hit the market. These used to be my favorite response pads. They feel great, grip hard, and stay out of the way when you want them to. But I found that silicone (instead of rubber) did not leave behind the tell-tale black residue on the string.

I played one string with these pads. Twisted one fresh for this yo-yo, and I have not changed it as of writing this. But I was reminded how I came to changing the string as often as I used to (which was often more than once a day). I can't stand a dirty-looking string. Even a bright color of the string makes me feel like it's dirty. Yo-yo string is supposed to be white!

The residue visible is from about two days of playing. Around the slipknot is what the string used to look like before playing. I can't stand it anymore, it's too dirty. This is the shortest that I have had a string last.

I thankfully had an envelope come with more of a non-staining silicone response pad. Gonna play this up now, and with a clean string.

a series of non sequiters

i've been really discombobulated lately. i have no real 'theme', and yet i was compelled to post something anyhow, if only because i haven't in awhile (confessional).

my little boy says 'robot' all the time now, and then he talks like a robot. except he kind of says 'rabat', which makes me think of a mechanical rabbit terminating the characters from 'watership down'.

i can't tell if playing extremely 'high-end' unresponsive metal yo-yo's AND 'low-end' snappy wooden yo-yo's serves to enrich my play... or confuse it. i do like that the stuff connecting me to my yo-yo's is all the same. that feels good.

i bought myself an a-2 style leather jacket last week. it's the first leather jacket i've owned. stacy thinks it's 'a little boxy'. i wonder if marion ravenwood thought indiana's was 'a little boxy' too.

i'm going back to disney world in a few weeks. taking the little girl out of school for a full week. the principal is pretty aggro and might give me a hard time. bring it. steve doesn't like disney world cause it's so corporate, but i dig me some pirates of the carribean (i always misspell caribbean).

i have twisted and used 46 strings in about 3 months. got em all right here. you could play wiffleball with 46 strings, but it would be a pitchers' duel.

so i have 2 cats. one poops immediately outside the litter box (i can only assume it's for spite). the other insists on going outside as soon as the door is opened, where she promptly chews some grass, then comes back in to vomit. always on the carpet.

i like this frontstyle john-bot bucket mount a lot.

although there is nothing 'zen' about wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the kanji for 'zen' (or indeed about anything that proclaims to 'be zen'), there IS something 'zen' about irony. get it?

i hate all kinds of berries on principle, and their related ice cream/yogurt. except boysenberry.

it is 64 degrees here in nc on 1/19/10. i'm typing this in shirt sleeves on my porch.

shirt sleeves. what a ridiculous expression.

jonrob left spyy to do his own thing. it was pretty awesome to have been on a yo-yo team with him.

i'm making gumbo tonight in the crock pot, but totally forgot to buy okra at the store. what is gumbo without okra, i ask you?

most people won't seem satisfied unless they can put you in some kind of convenient box.

my little boy is up in the tree house, and i can smell his poopy diaper from here. if poopy diapers were bad guys, i would be like wolverine. ('i'm the best at what i do. but what i do isn't very nice... at all... in fact it's really disgusting.')

so i thought this string was pretty thick. then i started collaborating with john higby on a project, and he sent me a [bigger] cone to twist some string from. the string he sent me is like 'type 15'. so thick it'll hardly keep a twist at all, and when it does, it's literally the width of a no jive's gap. it's also left handed! we probably won't be using it.

i really want to get a new tattoo. of a triceratops skull.

yesterday i got a crown on a cracked tooth. getting the tooth shaved down and polished up and then having the thing stuck on with cement was mildly uncomfortable. it bothered me all day. felt like something was 'wrong' in my mouth. i went skating today and fell badly a few times while trying to get a launch ramp dialed. i'm shredded all over and it's pretty uncomfortable. doesn't bother me at all though, because somehow it feels as though it's 'supposed' to be that way.

Not Just Balls

I have been making yo-yo string into braids and ropes and finding uses for them since... 2004~ish. This is one of the things that further convinces me that I am indeed a suitable fit for this Project.

For example, shoelaces that are more durable (and less expensive) than those found in stores. I make it a point to have at least one pair of shoes that has yo-yo string laces. I don't think I have ever gotten a comment about laces, but it's a personal thing. I know it's there, and that's all that really matters.

A keychain is the first thing I made out of used

yo-yo string. This was when I got my first

vehicle (a '95 Nissan "Matchbox" Truck), and didn't like the laniards that were sold in stores or given for free at events. I am also prone to losing things, so I wanted something unique that could only be mine (as nobody else in Topeka that I know plays yo-yo to this day). I could also call stores and easily describe the keychain in question that I lost there. Now that I think about it, I have neither lost these kind of keychains nor gotten a comment about them...

I can do some pretty baller bracelets and necklaces (given long enough string). This is the same design I learned for making hemp jewelry products. A cool yo-yo twist on a hippie classic. I think Ed needs about four of these (forget it, he's gonna open up a head shop and sell 'em).

I'm working on a single long string from the scraps I have collected. I plan to make some more shoelaces, and have this Project travel with me wherever I go. Gonna need about five meters, and have only two meters made during the last two months.

I also have about twenty strings in my ball... it's getting sizable. Ironically, making the ball is the most frustrating part of this Project. I couldn't ever imagine throwing these old friends in the garbage, but a ball just isn't what I want, I guess.

Note: Only one Cones-to-Balls string was sacrificed to the above-mentioned crafts. Other strings are unimportant enough to sacrifice to these things (of course, only after being lovingly played first).

Type Ten.

I totally forgot these cones were Type 10.

Apparently, Ed's observation about how I've been demonstrating so long that I can just pick up anything and use it and recover and such....guess he was right.

Now I kinda feel like some sort of weird, quiet, largely-useless-but-still-vaguely-impressive super-hero.

USE ANY YO-YO OR STRING GUY!

Woo hoo.