Muffinman

Keep a diary of what you're hitting, what's frustrating you, and your goals.
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Zac Miley
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Post by Zac Miley » 10 Dec 2007 18:53

Congratulations on retiring from stitching! :D
Jay (8:06:01 PM): Bu-bu-buu-buug--Looks up, and the feeling goes away like a sneeze-bu-buuuh-BULLLSHITTT
Jay (8:06:14 PM): *wipes bellybutton*

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Post by Muffinman » 15 Dec 2007 23:52

I just went through this real rough patch. Maybe I am still stuck in it. I just made three crap bags in a row. What the heck?? Frustrating! What a waste of time and energy :( I think I know what the problem is. I think I need to change my template. I have a bigger template that is awesome, but just a TOUCH too big. I think I will make one in between them both. I don't really want to experiment when I still have bags to make for people though. Hrmm. I just hope the next one comes out better. How did I lose it like that?

Oh, on a related note, I went to the weekly jam today (and stitched). Manna had a reject bag that I'd made, except... it was AWESOME!!! It stretched out perfectly and it was soooo choice. The stretching also helped hide the crappiness :) I was so happy with it! Even Andrew played with it!

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Post by mc » 16 Dec 2007 10:12

I've had some ugly, crappily stitched bags that have been consistently great-playing bags. Too bad I can't really say by whom they were made, because it's not quite a compliment ;)
BRICK!

rfa::never give up::
nyfa

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Post by Muffinman » 17 Dec 2007 00:50

I just started another bag.
The first pent was great -- perfect, even. But as soon as I added the second pent it went back to this crap that's been plaguing me all week! WHAT'S WRONG??? I'm gonna try to up my gather and see if that helps. Geez, this sucks!!

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Post by Pengu » 17 Dec 2007 09:27

Sometimes it's the differences of fabrics interacting with each others' physics that make bags ugly. You could be doing everything the same as you did on your good-looking bags.

Sometimes, ugly looking bags look pretty decent, sometimes even good, after they are filled.

Don't be discouraged.
Pengpeng Du

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Post by Muffinman » 20 Dec 2007 03:01

Random, non-footbag stuff
Well I have a nice break for Christmas, but it's kinda really busy so far. Marita came in on Monday night, so it's been really nice to spend time with her. My best friend from high school recently moved back to the city a couple of months ago with his girlfriend from Whitehorse (in the Yukon, where she says it is not nearly as cold as here...). They both went back to Whitehorse for a couple of months to make some money, but they have a 12-month lease on their apartment, so we're gonna stay there some times, which will be nice. It's also the same building as one of my brothers, so he's offered us a key to his place too, and his food and stuff. Score!

I've been having crap sleep. Like... I can't I'm always sooo tired. I fell asleep around midnight tonight on a couch, which is great, because, like, the same morning I'd gone to bed at 9AM, so I was really messed up. I was excited to fix that, but then I woke up all hot and uncomfortable and fidgeted for, like, an hour or more. So I'm up again and it sucks.

I might do some more Christmas baking. I love baking. I couldn't sleep the other night, so I made eggnog cookies and soft ginger cookies. Apparently both are awesome, and the eggnog ones taste like eggnog. Success! They also have eggnog icing... and we ate them with eggnog :D I've always wanted to make a gingerbread house. I think I may do that when things calm down, like, after Christmas, when there's no shopping and stuff to do anymore. Umm, I still have, like, at least 4 more cookies to make, some sugar cookies with icing, and this m&m mint shortbread thing that looks yummy. My mom also wants me to make.. shortbread cookies and gingerbread cookies.



More random
It's, like... 4 days before Christmas day (not to mention my Mom's birthday and wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve...) and I JUST started some shopping tonight, 2 hours before the mall closed. I got a couple things, and felt productive. I'm excited for a present for one of my brothers. My uncle also wants to buy me a $200 coat for helping him out at his coffee shop, so that's awesome, and we looked. There was a nice peacoat at The Gap. Then we looked in Club Monaco, and found this way even nicer one, for, like, 4 times the price. Marita convinced me that it's awesome. So, if she's willing to pay $100 as my Christmas present, I may shovel out the rest and look awesome. I also need some other clothes. Oh money.

I've read a couple Shirow books lately that I'd never read before. I read Ghost in the Shell 1.5. It was sooo incredible! I LOVE GITS, but this I enjoyed much more than the original, or Man-Machine Interface. Man. Now I am reading Appleseed Hypernotes, and it is also great, and more enjoyable than the Appleseed series. I need Appleseed ID. I also really want to re-read GITS and Appleseed for the bajillionth times. Awesome.



Stitching
I'm trying to stitch again, after taking a couple days due to frustration. I feel badly for taking so long. I owe Dat 2 bags, and I'm just so not delivering. One of my "reject" bags is okay, and looks better the more I work it in... I'm contemplating giving him this one, but don't feel 100% good about it. We'll see. I may send this one I'm doing now if it turns out well and then take a bit more time even for a second, just to make sure it's perfect. I'm stoked on the colour combo I'm doing now. Lately I've done a handful of, like, 1 or 2-pent bags and thrown them aside. I feel so wasteful and lame.



Christmas should be fun.
I keep having these fantasies of being able to afford a wicked camcorder and making awesome videos. I have 2 sessions worth of Andrew and Manna footage captured, pre-camcorder-death, so I want to make a video in the near future. I am sooo excited for Kevin's Christmas Calendar video. Oh man. Man alive!



PS: Pengpeng, what do you think of Koma??
PPS: Here's something that Byrin had to say about a bag I gave him:
That awesome kid from Edmonton wrote:My thoughts so far on your bag are good. The weight, the size and the overall visibility of the bag are exactly what I look for in a good bag. Stitching seems really consistant, not too tight so it'll actually break in (unlike my Aiden bag :() and wasn't this part of a new batch where you fixed the end knot? Or something?
PPPS: I've wanted to make a stitching video for a while. Some people asked me, and I said I would. My camcorder is dead now, so I wish I'd done it before. But I have a perfect song for the video!! It's "Stitch", by Apoptygma Berzerk. If I recall, the song has a similar vibe to a drawing video I made a couple years ago.

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Post by mc » 20 Dec 2007 12:20

hey buddy,

I say finish those imperfect bags. or, take that handful of 1/2 pent bags you mentioned and put a bunch of them together. Imperfect looking bags can still shred like a dream. i've had some downright crappily stitched bags that have been my choice session bags.

as long as they aren't falling apart, they're mostly roundish, and they stall pretty easily, they're worth playing with.
BRICK!

rfa::never give up::
nyfa

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Wasabi
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Post by Wasabi » 20 Dec 2007 12:41

Keep at it Erik. I know I've had my share of the footbag stitching blues. You just need to take a careful look at what's imperfect to you, why it is so, and dissect it.

That's why I tell everyone that it takes a good eye to make improvements on technique. For example, if your templates look imperfect, use a good nail filer to smooth out some of the edges (for plastic templates). Make your pentagons and hexagons as close to perfection as possible. If it's your actually technique, dissect it. Do your bleed hole stitches match from one pentagon edge to the other? Are your sewing paths even, conformed, respecting the the depth from the edge? How are you beginning and ending your pentagon? How are stitches around the corners of the pentagon?

If you want my opinion on the integrity of some facile colors, it helps to match supple to supple and strong/stiff to the same respective feel. However, this may not be the case for all colors, since some supple colors can match really well with stronger variants. I mean, I've had my troubles with Blue Hawaii, Saffron and Dark Jade, since they stretch a bit when I try stitching with them, but you should try to adapt to it. Learn how you use your templates (a good tip here is to press your pent and hex template and imagine how your edges complement the two panels with your stitching).

Really, though, you shouldn't get frustrated and give up. When it comes to sewing footbags, everything has a simple solution. And even if you make a crappy footbag, if it's round and it feels good, it will break in well. That's the true quality of a footbag, Erik.

Learn from the RFA slogan: "Never give up." :lol: :wink:

PS: I still owe you and Ben Roscoe a stitching tutorial!
Waylon Lew - maker of Wasabi bags
NYFA represent.
"Footbag can be pretty frustrating when it's supposed to be fun. I was partly driven by this forum - practice, practice, practice... As that is true, I think someone can be too focused on progressing and training that they miss the fun aspect of it." - Bander87

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Post by Muffinman » 24 Dec 2007 02:41

Rah!
Everything footbag just sucks for me.
I have two sessions worth of footage of Andrew and Manna from two months ago, that I was really excited to put together. But my computer is so lame-ass and broken that I can't even do that. Oh, that's frustrating :(

I guess maybe life is trying to tell me to get off my ass and draw. I haven't drawn in a good three weeks, I'd say. Maybe more. I feel useless for that. I was at my brother's the other night and glanced at his bookshelf and saw a figure drawing book that Mike Faille lent me in Toronto. I was, like, "Where did you get that??" And then he lent it to me indefinitely. So that's neat. I had a bath and finished Appleseed Hypernotes, read some Merlin, and read some of this figure drawing book. I also got $40 of candy from Bulk Barn for Christmas. $4 of that was 3 kg of epson salts! (Like... a quarter the price as at Costco!) So I tried some of that with this eucalyptus bath gel stuff.

I also am starting some bags for trades. I am going to do this differently, with less pressure. I am going to just do a handful of bags and then contact people and confirm trades once I actually have the bags ready. I'm excited to get this stitching done. 8 bags or so? Shouldn't take long. I'm also excited to try something that Andrew dared me. To do a bag super fast, as fast as I can. I wanna see how fast I can do it in one sitting, going for speed. I guess 2.5 including cutting and stuff. I wonder how ugly it will look :D

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Post by Muffinman » 27 Dec 2007 14:10

I got a TV tuner for Christmas.
I just set it up and I've been backing up old shred VHS tapes. It's great! Now I will actually watch these old videos that I "grew up" on. I'm having trouble with some that are really worn out though. Like I can't rewind this one part because it is so beat up from watching like a maniac!

Buuuuutt. So I am super stoked. There is this particular shred video of my footbag hero. I have been trying to track it down for, like, 5 years. There exists only one copy in the world. A couple of years ago it was offered to me, because my fandom of this player is known. It was recently found after being lost for some time, and offered to me again if I could produce a digital replication. The time has come! I am so excited to watch this video!!!!



So yeah.
SWAAAAG.
Stuff We All Get:
What else did I get? I got a Guitar Hero guitar. I figured I don't need the game 'cause I can just copy it or whatever, and it would be cheaper. But after trying to copy, like, 5 different games/discs, I realized that there must be some special protection that I don't know how to break. So now I have a guitar and I have still never played Guitar Hero. I think I will rent it until I can buy a copy somewhere.
I got another Nightwish DVD, "End of an Era". I only briefly started watching it, but it is lots of songs from the second last album, which I love (my second favourite song of all time is off this album). I love to sit and watch my other DVD. It's something where I watch one song, and I can't stop, because every single one of their songs is incredible and I get sucked in and utterly captivated.
I got a poster of a comic done by my favourite artist that just came out, and is his first work in, like, 5 years. It's awesome. I was kind of disappointed, because I was under the impression that there were two versions of the poster, original pencils, and coloured. But it turns out that the black and white is actually just a greyscale copy of the coloured poster (even though in the preview picture it was just the pencils). Oh well. It's still very awesome.
Umm, I got a couple other comics. My mom got me this really amazing fully water-coloured The Hobbit. I love it. Thing is, she bought the same book for me a couple of years ago. It is a different edition... I think I will just keep it instead of exchanging or whatever. It was from this Christian store, and my mom was, like, "There's probably nothing else there that you would like." I dunno. My brother also got me a hardcover Hulk book. He said it was just a backup present. I guess, 'cause everyone knows that I get books for the drawings, so I think that's his way of excusing that. Actually, the first half is okay, and I'm getting kind of into it.



Image
Here's a Christmassy bag that I made on Christmas. I don't have a picture of it finished, I guess. It's #050.

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Here's a joke that I got in a cracker thingy.

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Here is a bunch of this bath thing that I used to use when my tight hip flexor was my most major footbag injury. It's like Tiger Balm in bath form. Very pungent.

Image
A frog thing.

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My guitar.

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The Hobbit.

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The Hulk.

Image
End of an Era.

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Ultimates 3. "Villains" panoramic poster, black and white.

Image
And here are the two original covers to issue #1, beside each other. I just subscribed to this book. I have never, ever made a subscription through the publisher to a comic before. It's exciting.

Image
My TV tuner.

Image
If you've never seen me in person before, this is what I actually look like.

Image
And my big brother. My parents are reeeaaalllly ugly.





EDIT: Fixed Guitar Hero. It's so much fun! My brother also got me the "Shivering Isles" expansion to Oblivion, which I am about to play for the first time now. I guess he did his shopping, post-Christmas, after flying in from Vancouver.
I also started a bag that is going to be ultimate. It may go to Johnny Suderman, but like I said, I'm gonna collect a bunch and then send out. I may be minus a bag too, since that one discount sale apparently never arrived... I guess it's not SO bad, since I do have another crap bag that is actually awesome except two stitches... I also gotta send out a replacement bag to my FAT buddy, Alex Venis, so I think he will get the Christmassy bag. It's a bit of a thicker bag, but looks quite good. The solid red hexes looks bang-on.
Anyway.
We're gonna have a games night at my brother's tomorrow, and he wants me to bring Guitar Hero. He always gets his friend to bring his Wii too. And we're gonna LAN and stuff, which is always great. Maybe Call of Duty 4. Or Orange Box? I'm not sure how that works, but I bought it for him for Christmas. He played Portal while we all watched. Hilarious. Awesome. I'm so glad Kevin Regamey told me about it. "You will be baked. There will be cake." Haha. The song at the end is so incredible! I gotta download before I play Shivering Isles, actually!!!!!!
Last edited by Muffinman on 29 Dec 2007 01:24, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by hacksterbator » 27 Dec 2007 21:36

are you guys wearing fake teeth? i dunno why you look so odd.
A.G.

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Post by Psilocybe » 30 Dec 2007 10:54

Soooo....its been 2.5 months. How'r the stress fractures?

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Post by Muffinman » 01 Jan 2008 18:06

Stress fractures. Oh gee. Gotta remember my appointment tomorrow! Finally. Dave seemed distraught that it took this long. He said he had his MRI for his back within, like, 3 hours. Yes. Gotta set an alarm on my phone.

I guess my legs feel not too raw or anything.
I just hit pixie sole stall > handcatch > pixie sole stall. First time hitting that trick both sides. I also just hit Pixie flapper both sides. Just in, like, pants, and everything, with a cooking apron on.

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Post by Muffinman » 08 Jan 2008 23:10

Image
Image

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Post by david » 09 Jan 2008 00:04

beautiful!
david

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Post by BenRea » 09 Jan 2008 08:14

Make a few bags for yourself, it'll make you feel better and it'll take care of that "I'm a slave", feeling.
Ben Rea

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Post by hacksterbator » 09 Jan 2008 10:22

yo erik, when is manna getting back? and when are we back to shredding group wise? remember that guy steve who came out a couple times this summer and came to hackrifice? hes got his saturdays off now and wants to come out.
A.G.

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Post by Muffinman » 09 Jan 2008 10:33

Manna should be back already. Or, like, JUST got back. I think he left a day before Marita arrived. He was gone for 3 weeks, and Marita was staying for 3 weeks, so... that time is up now.

I may be down for Saturday.
Not sure yet. It's hard to stay motivated when I can't play. MRI follow-up appointment next Thursday. I may be playing in the near future?... I'll know soon, I hope. I may end up working on footbag videos instead. I will have to switch some internal harddrives around to work on a different computer, 'cause mine is dumb, but I've been wanting to use that footage I managed to get of you guys, and it will be a big ordeal, trying to switch around some hardware just to make a video...

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Post by Muffinman » 12 Jan 2008 14:23

Image

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Wasabi
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Post by Wasabi » 12 Jan 2008 14:31

I see 9 panels of a 26 panel on that window frame! 8O
Waylon Lew - maker of Wasabi bags
NYFA represent.
"Footbag can be pretty frustrating when it's supposed to be fun. I was partly driven by this forum - practice, practice, practice... As that is true, I think someone can be too focused on progressing and training that they miss the fun aspect of it." - Bander87

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