Week 2: Begleri
Skill based fidget toys are always interesting to me. There’s enough cognitive and physical dexterity skill development that it remains a challenging and not entirely mindless toy but easy enough that muscle memory makes the grind fun and appear impressive.
Now, I already play around with kendamas (although not very well and likely will add them to my list of weekly trials) but the begleri looks like a quiet, inconspicuous toy I can spend hours playing with while sitting on a plane, riding the subway, or on a work break. Similar to cardistry or finger tutting, there’s a level of creativity, complexity and performance to it that at least distinguishes one’s proficiency.
We all have our favorite hobbies and pastimes, but sometimes it's fun to branch out and try something new.
The begleri is a skill toy originating in Greece, and was originally derived from the komboloi, which serves the function of worry beads, and are often flipped around to pass the time or keep the hands busy.
Begleri beads are threaded on an open strand, usually in a symmetrical formation, with equal weighting at either end.
The basic idea behind the begleri is to have the two weighted ends of toy wrap and fling around your fingers and hand.
In this fashion, what I imagine would be similar to poi balls, cardistry, contact juggling, finger tutting and the sort, it’s a form of fidgeting or self-soothing for me. If none of those words mean anything to you, think of it like a yo-yo.
It’s a toy you play with by manipulating it with the fingers but it is smaller.
Now, at first, it can feel like there’s nothing to master with the toy. It’s just 2 balls or weights attached by string.
Check it out.
So far, I’ve stumbled upon https://begleritricks.com/progression-ladder and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcH_xQ-HtxrdzkoPZHxShywhPLrmeP6nE for my trick progression but still remain in the basic fundamentals section.
I’m still at the point where I can’t really sequence moves together seamlessly or repeatedly for it to be worth filming at this point but hope to post something in a couple months when I feel more confident in my skill. I’ll update this post once I get a little string of moves together though. 😄
In the meantime, imagine my skills currently to be similar to:
The cool thing though is the lower price curve for entry into the hobby. There are a ton of YouTube videos on it but just some hex nuts and a string of paracord can get you pretty far!
