ALTThe Next Generation joined the juggling club at her school; to my surprise, though, they don’t have “loaner” juggling stuff. I’d seen a video on YouTube about making these Japanese beanbags called otedama (the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcwBUCPZ4kA) and used this as an opportunity to try something new.
The video suffers from the thing where people set up the camera so that you, the audience, are watching the crafter from a position opposite where they are (as opposed to, say, over the shoulder or from above). This means that everything they do is opposite of what you’re seeing (and if/when you do it, you will have to mentally flip the pieces around, which I found challenging, even though the shapes are simple; with folding and pinning added to the process, it got a bit hairy for me). They’d done an inset of someone else doing the same steps, only zoomed in for a clearer view…but it was from the same perspective, which was not as helpful as it could have been.
But no matter: the thing about YouTube is that you can pause and rewind and eventually figure it out.
Now she’s got three nice beanbags to practice with, and they’re filled with dried lentils which make a really nice sound and have a great feel and heft (79 grams each, very felicitous). She’s already gotten to the one-two stage of passing the bags to opposite hands, which tells me that they’re a hit. : )
