OK, so last summer I spent a day learning to do diabolo. My sister got me a pair of diabolos for Christmas, and I’ve been practising ever since.

So where am I up to now? Well, I’ve got open and wrapped acceleration down (the latter is what I mostly use). I’m getting reasonably good at open orbits. I can do them, it’s just not always that tidy. But it’s unusual for me to drop now. I can do stick grinds on both sides, and switch from one to the other. I’ve had a go at butterfly grins (i.e., grins on the backhand), but I’m currently very bad at that. Obviously, there’s the trapeze and the cat’s cradle.

• I can do open and wrapped accelerations. (The latter is my main acceleration.)
• I’m getting quite good at open orbits. It’s not always tidy, but it’s now unusual for me to drop. Quite often I do a floor-start straight into some open orbits to bring up speed.
• I’m quite good at stick grinds. Both sticks, swapping back and forth, correcting for tilt. I’m hopeless at the backhand though.
• Obviously, the trapeze and the cat’s cradle. Indeed, sometimes I do a fast floor-start straight into a cat’s cradle. (You’ve got to be fairly quick at such low speeds though.)
• I can occasionally get the double-trapeze right. But not often. And getting out sometimes results in a huge tangle of string that takes forever to sort out.
• I can do the Chinese suicide fairly modestly well. Attempting a trapeze suicide just results in devastation.
• The magic knot. Woopee dodah.

Yesterday I started trying to use my foot and/or leg to partition the string in half, and throw from one half to the other. But I was rubbish. I even tried using a chair leg, but basically I suck. Today I had a go at open orbits around my dominant leg, and eventually managed to get to the point where I can do several orbits before the diabolo hits my leg, the floor, or just tilts too much.

Part of the problem is keeping the diabolo high enough, but still reacting fast enough. Part of the problem is trying to keep the string vertical rather than horizontal. You can actually shift the diabolo horizontally by a surprising margin. Still, this is very much a work in progress. I managed to go around my foot once or twice, but now I have to keep my balance as well! I did try around an arm, but that failed epically.

I’m fairly sure at this point that my string is utterly knackered. It looks frayed to hell, and feels slightly gritty. Hopefully next week I can address that, and maybe get some new handsticks. (Presumably that will mean relearning half of what I’ve already learned…)