September 6 - Hamster

Oh, Harvey, Harvey
Harvey the Wonder Hamster
He doesn't bite and he doesn't squeal
He just runs around on his hamster wheel
Harvey, Harvey
Harvey the Wonder Hamster
Hey, Harvey!

~ Weird Al Yankovic Harvey the Wonder Hamster
  (link)

(I'm taking my sons to see Weird Al Yankovic this Friday, but I can't imagine he'll be playing this song ...)

Matt Falloon is not only a great balloon artist and designer. He has also helped me invent a few new swear word sequences.

This design took first place in the small sculpture competition at Twist & Shout in 2013. It uses some of the most complicated twists all in the one design - inverting, marriage, frumple, raisins ... I'm twitching as I recall.

This is by far the hardest balloon I've built to date. I should take a picture of the debris I created during my attempts.  Each twist into the Geo center is a knuckle biter, I had one pop on the very last raisin twist. I really can only blame myself - like any balloon, it got easier as I worked through it repeatedly, but it's really hard to gauge sizes when dealing with non-standard balloons.

As difficult as it was, it was a fantastic challenge.  Will I ever build it again?  Hahahahahahahhahahah! ... haha! ... hahaha.. heh .. no. But that's fine, a formula for a balloon animal is far less worthwhile than the techniques you learn from building it. I've practiced a lot of frumply, marriagy, raisiny, inversions on a geo, and am confident I will use the techniques with more confidence on other things in the future.

Only one more to go on OCD to call myself complete!

Heading to Amsterdam to build a Hamster Dam.	A horde of hard hamsters
We're both hamsters!

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Other posts with Matt's designs:


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