"Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it." - Andrei Tarkovsky
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Apologies for my absence. I took a short trip to Duluth to support my ultramarathon-running friend. He ran 62 miles (!!!) in 16.5 hours, which, to me, is a breathtaking accomplishment. Most of those miles followed the course of the Superior Hiking Trail, which can be a gnarly mess of roots and rocks and slippery fresh-fallen leaves. I'm immensely proud of him.
Back to business. And by business, I mean play. Remember the Nine Man's Morris boards I made the other night? Well, they were for a kids' class.
Our students sewed their boards together, stamped them with wooden stamps they carved themselves, and made their own playing-pieces out of wood and stone.
It worked out wonderfully, the kids had a great time, and now there are six more Morris boards in the world!
On to game number two! I was throwing around that little yellow shuttlecock the other day with friends, and someone mentioned how excellent the simple game of Catch can be. All present were in agreement. So, today's mission was to make the most catchable and throwable ball.
If you take the overlap of two equally-sized circles spaced so that the center of one is on the edge of the other, you get the shape in green here. If you cut out four of those and sew them together, it makes a perfect sphere.
So, my thought was to make something a little more football-shaped by narrowing the pattern. This yellow shape is an attempt at flattening the spherical pattern into something more footballey.
All sewn together and stuffed with sawdust, it looks amazingly like a yam.
I was really going for a Nerf football kind of thing here, you know?
Okay, a second try: a shape that is a little bigger, and a rounded front end for more whomp and less whizz.
Sort of an egg-ish profile going on here which I really like. It even stands up straight when you set it on the table.
Now With More Fletching™️! This actually flies great, and it feels good to catch too. A winner! Perhaps I'll make a whole set? It was fun to sew the feathers into the seams on this one. Much to experiment with later.
Okay, on to the third and final project for today! This is a game from R.C. Bell's endlessly rich book, Old Board Games. This game is particularly interesting to me because pieces have to jump over other friendly pieces to capture enemy pieces. So, to win, players have to set up a sort of leapfrog attack formation.
I split some lovely fresh Pine this morning, and flattened out the faces with my carving axe.
I'm always surprised by how many games like this are in the world. A square grid, black and white pieces, and a couple simple rules for movement and (sometimes) capture. There seem to be infinite variations on that basic idea all over the world and from all points in history.
Chess, Checkers, Go, Fidchell, Hnefatafl, Pong Hau K'i, Three Man's Morris, Nine Man's Morris, Tic-Tac-Toe, Fox and Geese... and those are just the ones you've probably heard of. There's zillions.
I've been playing with a lot of chip-carving lately. Especially making these little triangles. Once you get the hang of it, it's hard to stop.
Boom! I played a little game on my own, and it was indeed an interesting mechanic to leapfrog my own people in order to attack.
In case you're wondering, I did win the game against myself.
Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you stick around til the end.
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"The first expressions of love take the form of play: the secret exchange of glances, dancing, the interplay of thoughts and emotions, the yielding of partners to each other. In Sanskrit, the union of lovers is called kridaratnam, 'the jewel of games.'" - Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler, Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance (1975)
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