Sunday, February 18, 2018

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 16th February 2018


The host for the evening, David Whitson, led off with an attention-getting trick using a drink can that he smashed into his forehead.  (The can had flexible plastic sides.)

Since the Theme was “Ropes, Strings, and Things”, David moved on to several ways of tying knots in a rope without using his hands.  One method was crossing his arms first, and picking up the ends of the rope while his arms were crossed, then uncrossing them.

Noel Clair did several items with rope.  He threaded a shoelace through a plastic frame, then moved the frame so that it cut the shoelace into two parts, then moved the parts together and extracted the shoelace restored whole.   He did ring off rope and ring on rope by several methods with very neat flourishes.  Next was finger ring on and off his finger.

Moving into his rope routine, he performed appearing knots on ends of rope, one full knot to two half knots, rope to circle of rope and back to straight rope.  He took the ends off the rope and put them back on again.

Noel’s use of a finger ring led to a general discussion among the members of whether to use a borrowed ring in these days of suing and litigation.  There was a danger of being sued for damage to a ring by a dishonest person when no damage had actually been caused by the magician.

In response to a question from Noel, we discussed how to achieve a talon of eight known cards on the bottom of the deck in the middle of a card trick when the deck has been in use.