Saturday, February 25, 2012

Knitting update

I am still working on coming up with a decent pattern for knitting balls that can be stuffed with pellets and juggled. If you make them with a worsted yarn on american 5 needles you can just about get them to hold the pellets that they are stuffed with. I have not come up with a pattern that makes a round ball. They are just a bit off. Maybe this is because I have not knit this thing before and it may need more fines than I am putting into them.

Well I will keep working at it and see if I can come up with something better. Now you may be saying to yourself. Why don't you crochet them. Well I am not such a fan of the so called hooked art. I have it in my head that this can be don with the knitting so I am going to try and figure it out.

Sunday is the ice skating trip with the church and I am wearing my skates as I type because I have not worn them in a long time and want to make certain they still fit. They appear to fit. I am sure that mattered to everyone out there in the interweb land.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012


There is actual honest to goodness knitting prograss in this entry. And on top of that once again i am knitting something odd.

First off is a little sewing. I am making balls for juggling. he is a lovely basket full of sewing jugggling balls As you may not they are not round. these are balls for people that are learning how to juggle. And cubes are the best thing for people that are learning how to juggle. First and foremost when you drop them they stay where you drop them. if you drop a ball it will go whee ever it can roll. this may not sound like much. Still, if you are jugling this gets annoying when you are running all over the place looking for your balls. Make up your own jokes if you must at this point.

The other thing that was have been trying to do is sew round balls. I have tried a four segment style and a two piece style modeled on the base ball. It is a real pain to make them round. I am not be good enough with the sewing machine to do this. even so I am giving it a show with some scrap fabric from a bag making project. Neither came out round.

Well as stated the sewing them round is not working. So i am trying knitting them round. This is my first attempt at knitting a round ball. It was too loose to hold the stuffng. As I type this I have a half finished balls make with a smaller gauge set of needles. hopefully it will hold the stuffing better. the stuff is wood fuel pellets that are used in wood burning stoves.

As you can see it is round. It also does not take foreever to knit. The down side is that knitting one of these take the same amount of time as sewing three cubes. Well when i get better I will put up a completed set that looks nice.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Rabbit

This is another animation experiment.

GoAnimate.com: Zeeppo%26%23039%3Bs+Animation by Zeeppo


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

My First Attempt

This is my first attempt at animating something with the computer. Actually I have never animated anything in any other way. So this is the first attempt at anything

GoAnimate.com: Random+Trek by Zeeppo


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Rambling Some More

Once again I am blogging on the bus while I am enroute to somewhere. In this case I heading to Homestead for our regular Tuesday Practice. We have a couple of the young folks coming along on the juggling and stilting. The balloons as always are going well. nce again I am blogging on the bus while I am enroute to somewhere. In this case I heading to Homestead for our regular Tuesday Practice. We have a couple of the young folks coming along on the juggling and stilting. The balloons as always are going well.

On other blogging fronts I have started a blog just for my singing activities with the Trinity Choir. I found it very interesting to be nominated and elected as President of the Choir. Of course this is an administrative post. So I will not be making any creative decision. I would not have accepted if that were the case. Frankly there is not much for me to do unless we are rewriting bylaws and that was done last year. I suppose if the weather is really bad I have the authority to call off the meeting. Still, with this mild winter that has not been an issue. Anyway this blog Notes From My Choir is about my adventures with the Gospel Music.

I have continued to work on The Last Great General. I am pleased with the progress of this book. Working McRandal into it has been difficult. On some level I just want to leave him out. Still, the events of his time are directly tied the events of this book. One would think that he was somehow involved in the events of this book. I am not sure if the part I have him playing in these books is in character for him. I will have to kick that around some more.

On the up side I figure there will be three books in this story arc. They will deal with in these books is in character for him. I will have to kick that around some more.

On the up side I figure there will be three books in this story arc. The first will deal with Evangeline’s origin. The second will deal with the Yamato’s origin and the third will dal with how Brengle got mixed up in all of this. Since they have lost Mason her origin will be spaced out over all three books. One of the up sides of this series is the way we are only dealing with a hand full of ships. In the later books there are so many ships and I do not think that I am doing any of them justice. The Sarah, Yamato and Tojo Maru get a great deal of attention in the first book. We also get to see how the Excaliber comes about.

Well I have rambled about all of that enough about that. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Friday, February 03, 2012

New Jimmy John's

I am in the new Jimmy John’s Shop on Grant Street in Downtown. They do not have the wifi so this is being type into a word processor to be posted later. The place has all the ambiance of a jiffy lube. They are blasting a radio station too loud and since the place has tile floor and wall it is echoing all over the place. It is weird the place on Liberty Ave does not have these problems. And if I want my Pepe I will be going to that one until the fix the bugs in this place.

I do really like the bread they make their sandwiches on. And the staff is always relatively nice. At the Downtown McDonald’s you are as likely to get stabbed by the staff as you are to get a burger. So this is nice here except for the music that sounds like it is playing in a bucket. If I was ever going to buy a fast food franchise this might be the one that I did. Not that I would I know little about the restaurant business.

I am working my fingers to the bone on juggling balls these days. There are a couple college kids at the CMU Juggling group that do not have decent Juggling Balls and very few folks at COAI have good balls either. So a few more sets and there will be good juggling for everyone. Well at least those that want to juggle.

Many jugglers who have trouble blame what they are juggling. Much of the time this is horse hooey. Great jugglers can juggle just about anything. New jugglers do need a decent set of bean bags with a wee bit of weight to them. I love the Dube Squosh balls (their bean bags) still, they are ten bucks a ball. If you are just starting out you do not want to spend thirty bucks on a set of balls.

Well that is probably all you want to know about juggling balls. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Sewing Stuff

Something that is odd with a new Apparatus Bag is the fact that you have to break in the handle. Once you have worn it a while the handle is just where it needs to be. My new bag is not broken in yet. So occasionally it slides off my shoulder. It is a bit annoying.

All of the clown folk in my life have complimented the new bag. Even though it is virtually identical to the old one not having holes in it is attractive.

Also on the sewing front is the making of new juggling balls. Actually they are cubes but we call them balls. Young Apprentice Brimage wants all black juggling balls. So I am in the middle of making those. He has done such a great job at the juggling he deserves to have practice balls just the way he likes them. I am also making a batch of blue denim balls for the COAI. They are having an auction at the next meeting. Last year a couple of the items that we made were the top earners at this event. So I want to make sure we have a good rang of juggling equipment at this one. They have started having a regular juggling practice at the monthly meetings. So things are really looking up on this front.

I will post pictures when I get around to it now that I have figured out the camera in the phone thing. Granted the balls are not that exciting. Still they are what they are.

Well once again thank all five of you for tuning in. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice

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