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FYI, I have been extremely busy over the last two days working on this project. I’ve obviously had to take a break from the 28 Days project, but I will begin blogging again tomorrow (Friday).

This time of year is a busy season for yo-yo shows and I’ve been very fortunate to really take advantage of it this year.

In fact, I’ve been performing so much lately that I’ve reblistered both of my middle fingers. This is the first time in 5 years I’ve gotten blisters on my well calloused fingers.

With my recent performances, I’ve decided to amp up my two handed yo-yo skills. I started with some modified Raiders, but got bored and decided to dig up all my old Double A yos to practice with.

In honor of this recent loop-mania, I’ve decided to focus on looping yo-yos throughout the week.

Enjoy.

Sorry if my last post seem ed a bit “rambly”. I had a 5 hour yo-yo gig that day, so I wanted to write it in the morning (in case I wouldn’t have time later that day to blog).

Speaking of that gig, I was absolutely thrilled to wake up this morning and not be sore. Lucky me, I was really worried I might have overworked myself.

During my last visit to Minneapolis, Josh asked me to try one of his new yo-yos which happened to have Bungee String on it. Bungee String is the creation of Mathew Thoemke (aka YoYoFargo) and is created out of nylon blends. Mathew sent me a sample many months ago, and I thought it was fun but not really my style. When you first try it out, Bungee String is extremely stretchy which makes eli hops really fun, but consistent play is a bit difficult. After a few hours I put the string away and didn’t really mess with it again. Josh, on the other hand, kept playing with his Bungee for a month before I tried it.

I usually change string every half an hour of solid play, but Bungee String actually gets better with age. It retains it’s smoothness, but the elasticity goes away, making it play more like an ordinary piece of string. As a yo-yo performer, who often does day long walk around performances, this string is ideal, so I pulled my piece of Bungee String out yesterday morning and used it all day. Not only did it keep me from constantly changing my string, but I’d also credit it with preventing any new string burns.

I believe the only place to get Bungee String from is Joe Mitchell’s Train and Beanie Baby store in Deleware, let me know if I’m wrong though.

BTW, my eBay auctions will all be ending within the next 24 hours.

I sell a lot of modified Bolt’s through this site, but I always like to help teach folks how to modify their own yo-yos, so I’ve published How to Mod a Bolt Yo-Yo on Instructables.com.

Any feedback is always appreciated. I’d love to see more yo-yo instructables.

For those of you in the Bay Area, I’ll be doing a yo-yo demo and a yo-yo workshop at the Maker Faire this weekend. If you are at the Faire, stop by and say hi.

I have been booked for a performance at this year MONDO in Minneapolis.

MONDO is this nice big juggling festival that happens this time of year in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately this will take me out of the Bay Area during BAC, but if you live in Northern California, you should still be sure to catch that.

I’ll be teaching a few workshops and performing on the Main Stage for MONDO’s open to the public event. I will also have yo-yos, comics, and clothes for sale and will hopefully be running a Yolympics contest.

Instructables.com is a wonderful tool for “showing what you make and how others can make it”, but I also believe that it could also become a tool used by yo-yoers to share what they do and how others can do it as well.

I started with a basic trick, Rock The Baby, just to try it out as an instructable.

Now I have just finished uploading all the details you really need to do the Washing Machine. Check it out HERE.

The Washing Machine was created about 7 years ago, and it’s still one of the neatest looking tricks in my arsenal. It’s an offstring trick, that doesn’t require you to start offstring. In fact you can do it in the middle of a normal one handed performance with very little set up.

Adding this trick to the website is more than just an exercise in how useful instructables.com can be for yo-yoers, it’s also an attempt to make one of my favorite tricks more accessible. The Washing Machine intimidates many players, but I’m telling you that any intermediate player can do the basics of the trick (removing the yo-yo and putting it back on).

So please check out my instructable, try it out, and let me know if any of the steps are confusing or could be worded better.

REEDIT:
Alright, I just found out there are a few different versions of this Cartoon Network video.
One is only 1:15 long and I appear at the end doing the “Martini”.
The other is 3:15 and I get a few good quotes.
So… I’m still trying to catch the good version. But I can’t watch all that anime for one more second.
Below is the shorter version.

I posted about Phil’s recent accident and I just wanted to update ya’ll.

He’s much better, in fact he’s back at work now.

Is this a pic from yesterday? Yes, Absolutely.

Dazzling Dave Schulte has listed a bunch of great yo-yos on eBay recently. I’d highly suggest checking out his stuff listed here, there are some great deals on new and old yo-yos and Dave is a very trustworthy seller so bid with confidence and all that stuff.