Underhand weave
(This will probably be largely incomprehensible to people who don't know anything about poi spinning; sorry.)
A couple weeks ago, it occurred to me that the three-beat poi-spinning weave I had learned involved spinning the poi in the "overhand" direction, and that it ought to be possible to do a variant on the same thing in the underhand direction. But I couldn't figure it out.
Then a few days ago, I found a video in the Temple of Poi computer-based training class I've been taking that showed the preliminary steps in learning an underhand weave. So I started trying that, and following Gerry's advice that had led me to the overhand weave (doing a figure 8 with one poi trailing the other, then spinning an extra circle with the trailing poi). I spent a couple of days almost getting it, but not quite.
Today was juggling day at work. I hadn't gone to juggle with them in about two months (what with being on leave and all, plus a couple weeks missed for other reasons), but I went today. Did some juggling, trying to get back in practice, and then pulled out the poi and tried various things with them. And eventually tried the underhand weave. And it worked!
It's far from smooth; it still feels a little weird to go in that direction. But somehow I slipped over the threshold from not-quite-getting-it to my hands/arms understanding how to move even though I still can't quite consciously track the paths of both the poi at once.
I was very pleased. And even more so when, a little later, W.H. showed up--he being a firedancer who takes lots of cool photos, and whom I hadn't previously met, though I'd seen his photos. He showed me a couple cool poi moves that I didn't figure out how to do but that I can look forward to learning eventually.
All very pleasing. I'm still a long way from being able to smoothly transition from one move to another, and I still have no desire to use actual fire, even though it looks very very cool, but I'm enjoying the non-fire spinning more and more as I get better at it.
