This is something Charlie showed me nearly a year ago and that I hadn't really been working on that hard until recently. Geometrically, it's possible to go through each vertex of an octahedron without repeating any segments and Charlie had created an exercise wherein one does plane-shifts between each of these vertices to define an octahedron via constant 90 degree shifts. Here I demo two of the easier variants in same time same direction, split time same direction, and Charlie's preferred method of quarter-time. Be forewarned: this shit is hard!

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Here's an attempt to tie together a whole bunch of different threads from some recent videos both myself and some others have made. First up, e6 posted a video over the weekend about timing and direction where he pointed out the difficulties in making the traditional T&D combinations work with flowers that have an odd number of petals. In an odd bit of synchronicity, Justin Benson posted a video displaying an example of just that--wherein he takes a pentagram into split opposites by creating two pentagrams that reflect each other across a given axis.

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A couple weeks ago, Poiboi uploaded a new tech video and as I was watching it, I noticed an element of his style that had escaped me before but presented a good opportunity to woodshed a poi element I rarely use: throws. Specifically, I noticed that Poiboi frequently uses isolated throws to accomplish his timing and direction changes rather than 1.5s or stalls. I've been playing in the past week with doing isolated throws in all the same-time configurations I can think of, both in the same direction and not, plane-shifted, etc. Here are some of the results.

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A couple cool ideas based upon triquetra vs pendulum, which kind of fudges the triquetra pattern to create something more akin to two different flowers cut and pasted together. Here I take the same idea and apply it to triquetras and 6-petal antispin flowers to create a new composite and hybridize it both with another triquetra and triquetra's inspin equivalent: 1-petal inspin. Note to self: when recording a video on St. Patrick's Day, do the video before the drinking begins--otherwise I talk a record sped up to double speed :-P

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Last week Charlie posted a video to the Facebook Tech Poi Group of an 8-step CAP based in a 2-petal inspin vs 4-petal antispin hybrid. Having encountered this hybrid before when learning same time same direction hybrids from Yuta at last year's Firedrums, I realized that for any hybrid where you combine an inspin and antispin flower that have the same number of downbeats, they will maintain a constant timing and direction all the way around the pattern. Here are three examples in both same time same direction and split time same direction.

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Here is a grab-bag of combos inspired by Noel's recent vid on horizontal stacking flow and Poiboi's latest opus to his own form of poi wizardry. Some of these even integrate elements of both styles, but by and large I just had a lot of combo ideas and no idea how to present them. Thankfully it also gave me a perfect opportunity to use a track my friend Conway (Mr. Jennings) dropped on New Year's Eve and has been tickling my ears ever since.

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Poiboi and Santiago both have new tech vids out and both feature a wide variety of body contact rolls, so I thought I would demo here two that I've been playing with frequently myself. Both are shoulder rolls that return the poi to native hand and both really utilize horizontal momentum rather than vertical momentum unlike most of the other contact rolls I've demoed here before.

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I started playing with this trick earlier in the week...it incorporates elements of the quarter-time floats/stalls that Poiboi and Mel have been using, but drops in and out of a horizontal cateye vs isolation antibrid at each end. I've been sticking pendulum vs CAPs in the same spot and figured I would just skip the middle figure. I like that it has an interesting start-stop dynamic to it.

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I ran across a cool performance video of Yuta in the Flowspace last week that reminded me of something I'd begun playing with months ago but hadn't pursued very far: moves that involve wrapping one or both poi around their own hand. I spent a good portion of the weekend playing around with these moves in same time same direction and split time same direction, pulling out some moves I've seen both Ronan and Yuta do in their performances as well as and idea of my own.

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Last week I uploaded a tutorial on horizontal cateyes performed in split opposites and got some feedback that the cateyes were looking a little too much like floats, so I've spent a big part of the past week working on cleaning them up both by doing some older tricks I'm a big fan of and trying some newer ones. I used horizontal cateye vs isolation hybrids to check my hand spacing, horizontal cateye vs extension to check my hands' timing and direction, and a pair of triquetras arranged in a Star of David configuration to get a rough idea of what they should look like.

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