[this has been sitting in my drafts since November 2024 and I just noticed it. The photos weren't attached, so I've had to guess at which ones I was describing. It looks like the text was copy pasted from an Instagram post. I didn't end up continuing to play with them once the novelty wore off. Straight back to begleri for me :) ]
After loads of experimenting with different lengths and widths, I finally settled on this bone shape for that set of #chetki I've been working on.
The heads are weighted with some recycled meccano to further boost their momentum for better flipping. 2x1 plates visible here on the outsides, so that the corner beads stay aligned, plus some of those itty bitty meccano hex nuts in between the wooden beads.
My muscle memory is defaulting to #begleri moves, but imma keep playing with it and seeking that uniqueness that I know is in here.
Playing with them, the sense that I get is that chetki are like Polarised Begleri.
If I just flow with them and let my begleri muscle memory take the wheel, then I keep ending up with a twist in the chetki and that, y'know, Feels Bad. So with chetki you really have to be respectfully disciplined with your planes. Your prop is two dimensional now, and not just a 1D line-segment where you can safely disregard any and all twisting accumulated by the rotation of your hand/wrist/arm.
Like, begleri flipping has the absolute sloppiest planes out of all of the flow arts. Practically non-existent, even. Most people who play with begleri wouldn't even know they're there or what the fuck I'm even talking about, beyond maybe having some loose vague intuition of, like, inside/outside or over/under. That's a whole mode of thinking right there which you can only develop from spinning with other circus toys and then transferring over to begleri; it's not native to begleri.
But chetki says "that sloppy carefree attitude is no good here. Pay attention to your torque or fuck off!"
And that is really interesting. :)
