Juggling Clubs

I am getting truely annoyed with the Juggling clubs of Pittsburgh. For some reason by the time they advertise where and when they will they break up. Someone just emailed me about a club that pactices in Oakland. I went to the place and time they were supposed to meet and there was no one there. When I Yahoo. juggling Pittsburgh half he links are back to this blog or the Brigade's blog. I find it hard to beleive that there is not a single group of people that are juggling in Pittsburgh.

I did read about something in the Post Gazette in Sewikly. I read about that the week end that it happened. I emailed the person who was supposedly running that and they never got back to me. There is also some kind of club that appears to be an after school activity in the middle school. So even if I wanted to trek out there strangers would probably not be welcome. It is little wonder that i cannot get some of the clown that i know to think that juggling is important. The juggling world does not appear to think that it is important.

On other front i have sent another email to the Internation Jugglers' Association. They usually do not reply to me. Well this will be the thid person that I have contacted. Well we will see how that goes.

Be safe out there and keep you stick on the ice.

Various Randomness

Working on several project at once at the moment. The one that has been consuming a great deal of time is juggling batons. The rub with these things is that it appears that the size of the stick in some way helps or hinders the person that is using it. And our group has people of several different sizes making it hard to pick the right size for each person.

To add to the complication of this we have come up with several styles for the heads. This mean that the size had to be right and then the ends of the thing also have to be right. Juggling balls are a lot simpler. they come in three sizes and you just pick one. Juggling clubs primarily come in one size so you are just stuck with what ever you have.

Today I was making a stick for one of the shorter members of our group. So it a shorted stick with a smaller diameter. the heads on this stick are also smaller. I am a bit worried that we might not have any idea what we are doing. the companies that make these thing make them all at around two feet in length. If you are under four feet tall you spen all of you time hitting yourselvf in the head. This of course turns off most people.

In the end I suppose what we are making is better than what we can buy. The down side is that we are experiimenting on inexperince jugglers. Thus it is hard to tell if it is the skill or the stick.

Well I will let you all know how it is going.

The four armed stick is coming along very slowly. I have had more sucess with rolling trick rather than flipping tricks. The thing that it the most difficult is that my control stick always are in the way. I am simply going to have to be better at this before I know if it is a lost cause or not. As soon as i stop hitting myself in the head I might take some video. If I think about it i will post it.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

New Meeting Times

I finished the first Apparatus Bag today. The newer shoulder strap is very nice. I will put up pictures of it after I take them.

We had a really great Brigade Meeting this evening. We have two new candidates. So that is always a really nice thing. Tonight we did some Christmas carols and had a bit of a sing song in addition to the stuff we normally do. We also got a chance for some of our folks to work on a dance routine. I have never really thought of clowns as dancers. So this is a new thing for me. Still a hundred years ago clowns did not really do balloon animals. So it is something that is always evolving. So maybe some day clowns will be dancing. That is something that is a bit odd to me still. I also have a young person that wants to do skate boarding. So things are changing.

I also had a chance to visit the local Clown of America International meeting yesterday. This was a really neat little meeting. They were very friendly and even invited us to their Christmas Party. I have never been invited to a Christmas Party at my first meeting with a group.

On the up side moving the meeting to Tuesday appears to have gotten a couple of people that have not been to Wednesdays for a while to the meeting. So that was a bonus as well. So just a note for any of the Brigade members reading this. The Brigade Practice will be on Tuesday from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at Second Baptist The Knitting and Production Practice will be on Wednesday at the same time at the Barnes and Nobles at the Waterfront. Church is still at Second Baptist at 11:00 AM.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Kettles Again

 

We were out on the Kettle again this week end. One again back to the Century III Mall. Here I am juggling on the kettle. One of the kids figured out how to get the samera to take action pictures. You will note that the picture is clear and crisp. That mean that someone who knows how to take pictures was using the Camera. It was Apprentice Brimage. She is Seven. 

  

Here is Walt. He was making inflatible wildlife. At least that is the politically correct way to refer to balloon animals these day. They got a lawyer and you know the rest of the story. 

Here was the rest of our crew thsi week end. Sergesnt Thurman is in the back. She is doing wicked stuff with scarves these days. She has only been at them a couple weeks and her routines are pretty impressive. In fron are Apprentice Brimage and Apprentice Brimage. They are sisters hence the same last name. Being that I don't like using you people first names on the old blog the five Aprentice Brimigaes that are in the Brigade is going to be confussing as time goes on. Actually now that I think of it one of them is still a Cadet.

This is Apprentice Brigade trying on a coat. We are starting to think about getting a real uniform for the Brigade. So we will need a coat. Being that we are supposed to be on a boat during out shows this may be the way that we go. By the way this is the Apprentice Brimage that knows how to use my camera better than I do.

And the cyber kettle is up to fourty bucks. That is fourty bucks more than I thought i was going to make the Corps on the Cyber Kettle. Cool Beans.

We will be out there this weekend if you still want to catch the dog and pony show. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Apprentice Bags - 230 Pages - Cat Stuff

Once again more evidence more evidence that the newest and best cameras can have fuzzy pictures taken by me. This week we have started making bag for our Apprentice clowns. They need to be able to get their pumps, notebooks and balls back and forth from out meetings.

Some may have seen my spiffy apparatus bag that does this for my juggling kit. Since they don't have to tote clubs around they need a smaller bag.

Spread out on the Corps Air Hocky table are the cut out peices for the bags. It is basically like a regular tote bag with an extra pocket for the pump. For some reason the pumps frequently get broken if they are carried around loose in a bag. So they get their own pcoket panzies.

Here is Walt after a meeting iorn the hem on one of the bag. He did a great deal of work sewing the bags together. These bags were his first real sewing project on the machine. Please make you own biker Martha Stewart joke.

We did not have the canvas webbing for the straps. We will get to that latter. All together we are going to make ten bags. We will also be making two larger bags that are between the apparatus bags and apprentice bags.

These bags will be used by the Brigade's Chaplain and Music Sergeant. They are not jugglers so they don't need the thing with all the pockets. They just need to be able to take some note books and a Bible around with them.

By the way if you are keeping track the bags are in Salvation Army Colors. We are going to stick the Brigade Logo on it as well. Perhapse we will put the person's name on it or something like that. You never can tell. I am sure it will be something useful and helful. Or maybe we will stick with pointless and useless.

By the way here are a couple random pictures of kittens. To the left it Lydia. She was sleeping until I bothered her. Well what can you do. Cat don't pick their owners they are inflicted upon them.

The other cat pictue is Jamie on a bus. She is investigating a small child that wanted to know what was in the cage. Well you know what curiosity gets you.

Oh the book is over 220 typed pages. There are only seven or eight chapters that need to be put in at this point. That mean that someone is going to have to edit it. I will take the first crack at it. Then we will see what happens next. I have had a couple victems, I mean volunteers to do that. I feel sorry for them. So I would like everyone to say a prayer for those that have to try and figure out what I am saying. Maybe they will tell me what I mean.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Practice Practice Practice.

It was another exciting evening of practice at The Steel Valley Corps in Homestead. You can't see it in all of the pictures but this is juggling practice. Since I am taking the pictures there are none of me juggling. I should probably take the video thing of people juggling. It would be more interesting than the pictures. Amazing that we are going into out third year and have no video of us juggling.

This is my wife juggling. You can't see the balls because they are over her head.
This is Sergeant K and he is blurry because I am a bad photographer.
Sergeant Chasko is doing very well at this. Cadet Harris was also doing very week at juggling. She has only been juggling for a week or so and she is up to three balls. This is impressive in the juggling world.

And just for it's random torture value here is my progress on the accordion. After this you will think I should have taken Juggling video and not the accordion. This is going to be last segment in the Army Clowns video.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Make Up

We were working on the face today. One might think that this is the first a clown would work on is their face. The reality is that anyone can wear make up. Some not so well still they can stick it on.

Not everyone can juggle and ride a unicycle though. So we start on the clown skills before we get into the face. Also when a clown does decide the area of skill they want to concentrate on this sometimes effects their face. You can tell everyone is truly excited by this lesson.


This is just another random blurry picture. I know you guys live for the blurry pictures.

We do have a show coming up this week end. We will be doing some light entertainment at mostly balloons maybe some juggling. I am sure we will get some pictures of it. It is looking like it will be Sergent K and Apprentice Prealue's first show. So this could be really exciting.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.