it’s been how long now since i started hooping? let’s check flickr… ok, i got my hoop on march 5 so that means i’ve been hooping for less than 3 months now. this weekend was the first time that i got more than 2 days in a row to go outside and hoop on grass and not worry about breaking anything.

here’s a video of my 3 days work condensed into a 5 min music video (i love imovie!) music is “my girls” by animal collective which i listened to a lot on my trusty shuffle.

3 days of hooping from gleek on Vimeo.

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maybe you’re sick of hooping, but i’m not i actually have very little knitting content to show you right now because i just finished a secret popknits project (not so secret anymore) and just started knitting on ishbel. in the meantime, let me expound on my trip to central park to hoop with some girl friends.

i joined the hoopnotica meetup.com group a while back and i heard that there would be a meeting in central park on the first really HOT day of the “summer”. i packed up a bag, my travel hoop and an extra hoop for tina and set off.

photo courtesy of ms. m

i arrived at the sheep’s meadow in central park to find 1 billion people sunning themselves and a group of people hooping away. my new friend, lindsay, was already in the middle of a lesson so i joined her as quickly as i could. i seemed to be one of the more advanced people in the group so i just hooped along as best i could.

photo courtesy of misplacedpom

then tina arrived and i passed off a hoop to her so that she could join in the fun!

at first, things did not go so well, but then she got right back in the groove of things!

so i gave her the hoop to take home as a gift. there was even a camera crew there from GMTV (britain) to do a segment on hooping’s growing popularity!

eventually, our other friend julie showed up and we all took some time to take silly pictures of ourselves.

photo courtesy of susiejulie

photo courtesy of susiejulie

all in all, a spectacularly fun day! i hope we can all do it again soon!

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continuing on with my hooping, once i learned to move around and turn, i really wanted to learn corkscrews. this is the move of going from your waist up to halo and then back down again. it’s really fun and fun to watch. the only problem was trying to do halos indoors. the play area (which is supposed to be the dining room but we will never use it for that) has a ceiling fan and the pull chains were always getting in the way. so i got on a ladder and flipped them up on top! i guess this will only work until summertime

my first time doing this trick, i did it outside because i was worried about the hoop flying across the room and breaking something. but i worked and worked on it and now i almost never drop it. i tried watching as many online video tutorials as i could but i really understood it best by watching the hoopnotica vol 1 video. i can’t recommend their DVD series enough!

over easter, i hooped a lot in my parents’ garage. even though it was SO COLD, i loved having all that space to move around in.

so here i am putting together all the tricks that i know so far (and even today, i just learned some more!)

hooping – working on tricks from gleek on Vimeo.

can you believe that i’ve started making my own hoops? yeah, you probably can. i’ll talk about that more later.

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before i get to corkscrews, i thought that i would list out some resources in case you want to try hooping too. first, if you’re thinking about buying a hoop, check out all the comments on flickr from my friends who have also picked up hooping. there are lots of great indie sellers online and on etsy that sell hoops, too, so do all the research before you plunk down the cash. thankfully, hooping is not as expensive as buying a set of weights or a treadmill but can give you a low-impact workout just the same.

i also have been bookmarking hooping links online in my delicious account. if you have hooping links that you’d like to share with me through delicious, send them my way! i’d love to see them.

one of the most helpful resources so far for hooping has been youtube! over the past few weeks, i’ve been favoriting videos on youtube that inspire or teach me about hooping. here are a few of my all-time favorites:

alaskanamy has a couple of hooping tutorials worth watching including just videos of her having a great time while hooping.

if you’re just getting started, be sure to check out the hooping tutorials from expertvillage. here’s the very first lesson on keeping the hoop up:

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once i was able to keep the hoop going for more than a couple of minutes, i decided that i needed more instruction on how the darn thing works and what my next steps were to learn to move around while hooping. because let’s face it, all i could do was stand in one position and hoop in one direction. if i tried to move at all, it would drop.

i jumped on over to amazon and bought the hoopnotica hoop dance DVD and i’m glad i did. it does a great job of explaining basic hooping, the power points on your body that are used to keep it going, and the basics of hoopdance, which is moving while hooping.

after some trial and error, and watching the video OVER AND OVER while peanut napped, it clicked! and i was able to move around while hooping!

hooping – turning and moving from gleek on Vimeo.

huzzah! success! confidence in myself was restored and i felt like i could move on and learn even more tricks.

next up: corkscrews are fun but make me dizzy

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a little less than a year ago, i saw kristen at mediatinker.com pick up a hula hoop and give it a try while she was on vacation in australia. i had heard that hooping was fun but i never thought that it would be something that i could be interested in trying myself. i’m a horrible dancer and generally have very little rhythm or skill, so i put the thought aside for many months.

then i saw kim werker tweet that she was going to give it a try and my interest was renewed. i started looking around online at different kinds of hoops, sizes, tutorials, videos, and, wow, i was sucked in really quick! i mentioned to KP that i was going to give it a shot and he just laughed. all the more reason to buy one, methinks.

after much anticipation, the hula hoop arrives!

i invested in a 42″ collapsible hoop from spirithoops and i love it (be warned that if you order from them, their shipping is SLOW! if you want your hoop fast, i suggest ordering from hoopnotica or even etsy!) i got it and immediately wanted to hoop, and you know what, i sucked, just as i thought i would. it did nothing but hit the floor the first few days i hooped.

i was not discouraged though and, after i had talked about buying the hoop on flickr, and then posted my picture of it, more people started to gain interest. it inspired me to keep going with the hoop and prove that someone even as uncoordinated as i could pick it up and make it work.

after working on it for a day, i was able to keep the hoop going long enough for some pictures! mission accomplished!

next up: i learn to move around while hooping. not an easy task!

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