All about flowers

Pendulums in flowers,,,who'd have thunk it? not me, but I'm liking it.

I find this is my new way to end my flowers,,picture this, spinning a normal forward flower, stop with the left hand low and right hand high doing a pendulum. Step forward with the right leg, and put your weight on this leg. Now,,stall the right hand pendulum straight down and beside your calf, bring the left leg forward and kick the stalled poi with the instep of your left foot as you turn 90 degrees to the left,,,pop into the butterfly.

I find a 500 petal flower is a useful training aid, especially when it comes to those " weird" areas, the ones behind you, but for practical purposes, I think both you and your audience might die of boredom if you did this in a performance..Sure would make a nice photograph though..

I'm a 6 petal flower kinda guy, and lately I've been trying to figure out something to interrupt the flower pattern when both my arms are horizontal. I thought stopping for a circle or two and trying to incorporate some kind ow wave that goes from the hand behind me along my arm, through my shoulders, and out along my other arm might do the trick, but I haven't got it down yet, it still feels like I'm being electrocuted. Bending my legs and going low while my arms are horizontal ( doing one circle with my hands ) seems to work ok though,,,,any suggestions??

I can't help wondering about antispin. I can do it ,but I find the only time I do do it is if I'm spinning a normal flower,,,bring my arms vertical, stop my arms for one circle of my hands, and then continue my flower, but with antispin. I't reverses the direction of the whole pattern. I've never seen myself spin so can't help wondering if the whole antispin thing might be over rated. Does it look any different than a normal flower? I mean when done live,, not for photography purposes.

I like the butterfly flower, the one where your arms meet at the top, i find it's a great thing to add in to a low seperated butterfly pattern, sort of a low circles--> butterfly flower--> back to low circles, and I plan on torturing myself with the other, more difficult version described in the PIP article. Do these look any different than a normal flower?

antispin definately looks different.

If you're not spinning fast enough, the audience will not be able to distinguish the antispin flower shape, but they'll be able to see something "different" in your spinning. Let me try to upload a video without trails...

Also, I've worked out 5 petal antispin, for some reason my arms don't like to do 4 petaled antispin flowers. I think it's because I learned my anti spin flowers with glowsticks, which spin much lighter than regular poi, and thus I don't have rotation points at the 12, 3, 6, 9 times of the clock.

http://www.homeofpoi.com/gallery/showpho...=500&page=1
http://www.homeofpoi.com/gallery/showpho...=500&page=1

mmmmmmmmm got those pendulums today

Still working on Antispin but it's gonna be sooo smooooth when I get there - 3 and 5 points seem easier than 4 though.

I'd have thought that odd numbers would be trickier, as your arms would have to be less than 180 degrees apart; harder to keep even.

Could be wrong; mebbe the shallower angle is easier to maintain... off to try it...

Yeah.. feels a bit odd with my arms 120 degrees apart. Sort of like my shoulders are hunching.

Or I could just be doing it wrong.

actually your arms are always 180 degrees apart.

the matter is of the timing when the poi heads make a full rotation to point in towards you. If you do this 4 times, at the 12, 3, 6, 9 o'clock positions, then you'll have 4 flowers. If you do it 8 times - 12, 1:30, 3, 4:30, 6, 7:30, 9 ,10:30, back to 12, then you'll have 8 petals. the arms are always pointed in different directions (180 degrees apart)

I do it 5 times. I'm too lazy to do the math.

EDIT- I go indepth here, with instruction videos with glowsticks
http://www.glowsticking.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4423
sorry for plugging, but I don't want to copy/paste all the links and picture information

'Kay.. I already got the logic of how that works for even numbers.

Say if your right poi made circles at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock, then your left would make circles at 6, 9, 12, and 3; the same positions but with a 180 degree separation, giving you four petals.

Now for three petal flowers (i'm not going to work this out for five right now) your right poi could make circles at 12, 4, and 8, but if your arms were 180 degrees apart, your left would make circles at 6, 10 and 2, giving you six petals instead of three.

Unless, of course your poi rotations aren't synchronised...

Yeah... Kael; that point where the poi are pointing towards you... is it happening at the same time for both poi or not?

Yes on regular flowers and no on antispin odd petals... If you're doing odd amounts of petals on antispin, the timing of the spin must be a bit off, but the paths of the poi are still the same.

If you do 4 petals, it becomes loads easier in my opinion. However, that's just me.

Ah. I figured that you could make those patterns (like in your pics) either way.

Thanks for the explanation. Odd-numbered ones make sense now.

Not that I can do them yet...

Noooo... it's just a spirograph equation.

If it takes one second for your poi to spin around and you take 4 deconds to rotate your arms all the way, you'll get a 4 petaled flower.

If you're spinning at one rep per second and your arms take a minute to go around, you'll get a 60 petaled flower.

If you're spinning at one rep per second and your arms take a second to go around... then you've made a large circle.

Umm... NYC; I think you're missing the point of what I'm getting at.

You'not just got one spirograph; you've got two. In my last example... heck, I'll just repeat what I said earlier with a fwe minor mods:

Your right poi could make circles at 12, 4, and 8, and if your arms were 180 degrees apart, your left arm could make circles at 6, 10 and 2, giving you six petals instead of three; each poi doing three petals, but appearing as six if you overlaid the two patterns... which they would be, providing your arms are both still attached to your body...

... wait what?

I think I get what you're getting at Gav and I agree but I didn't understand how/why you were suggesting that there was no way that Garthy's arms could be at 180 degrees.

Now I'm all confused.

I'll reneg all I said on the topic if someone tells me what we're talking about.

This is what I get for not drinking enough alcohol during the weekends.

Gav is right - if you do 3 circles with your arms apart you'll end up with circles at

L 12 R 6
L 4 R 10
L 8 R 2

as you go round - 6 petals. To get just 3 petals you'd need to have your arms 120 degrees apart to get

L 12 R 4
L 4 R 8
L 8 R 12

S'ok, NYC

Kael alreay explained how he did flowers with odd numbered petals; by desychronising the inward swings. I'd already alluded to that in my previous post:

Written by: Gav486

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Unless, of course your poi rotations aren't synchronised...

Yeah... Kael; that point where the poi are pointing towards you... is it happening at the same time for both poi or not?

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And I even thanked him for clarifying that.

I was just asking Garthy if he did his three petal flowers the same way. I never actually said that he couldn't possibly have his arms 180 degrees apart; Kael had already put paid to that idea.

And thanx Spiralx! Glad someone knows what I'm on about.. *phew*

Thanks Kael,,,sometimes I just need a little assurance that antispin does indeed look different to an observer, rather than just being a more difficult way of creating a pattern that I already do.

Now to work on this rotating your arms at different rates thing....

Hmm...

Sorry. I ment 3 petals per arm! so 6 in all!

Sorry for the confusion!

I've knocked up a little Script yesterday that Draws Flowers given various parameters.

I've put some photos up in my gallery...... The lines are the arms and poi. I'll clean it up a bit and add an interface to if when I'm back from falmouth so you can vary stuff and see what it looks like!

At the moment you have to edit code.

Of course these could be wrong as my maths is shaky!