Some Helpful hints for the Kettle

Posting Again

We have been working on some new projects at the Clown Brigade. First we have been working on knitting with the Apprentices in the Brigade. For the last couple years we have had a knitting group on the South Side.

With all of our young Apprentices who live in Homestead we have had the Knitting Group at the Corps the last couple weeks. This is Apprentice Brimage working on her first swatch.

An of course the every popular Salvation Army Holiday activity, Standing Kettle. This is Sergeant Thurman, Apprentice Brimage and Cadet Brimage at out Kettle Stand at Century Three Mall. All of the pictures of them standing in front of the Kettle turned out blurry.

We have been making balloons juggling and doing clown type stuff on Kettles. Sadly we cannot have a bell.. Everyone is terribly broken up that we don't have bell.

Well God Bless and be kind to the people with the red buckets.

A Very Busy Couple of Months

Recently we have been working on several projects. First we have had several shows in the last month that have taken up our time. We have also doubled out training schedule this summer because we have many enthusiastic cadets most of which are now Apprentices.

We have started working on building stilts and training kittens to work with us as humor therapy animals. We have also been working on some infrastructure items namely; improving our set, storage areas and teaching materials. It is one of our hopes to have a sort of clown retreat at the Steel Valley Corps in the Spring. We would teach classes and it would give us the opportunity to jump ahead in our skills. In order to do this we have to get some things down in writing first.

There is not a clown hand book out there, let alone a hand book for christian clowns. There are so many areas of study that we use that we have a small library of books that we have to use. In balloons alone there are twenty six books that we use to teach balloon sculptures from. You get into Ledgermain or something more complicated and there is just too much to know.

In the last six months we have gone from having one child in the brigade to have the brigade half full of children. This has been a big adjustment for us. In the real circus there are families and children of all ages. So I suppose it is only fitting that the Corps children have joined us.

It is very interesting how we have been blessed the summer. Besides the opportunity to perform we have had lots of time to train. This has not only been useful for building skills but also the group. It has truly been an interesting ride.

We have also recently been given and office and computer here at the Steel Valley Corps. That has also been very helpful to get us more organised. Just the ability to leave something on a desk from one day to the next is a tremendous help. Also it will will give the new young people the opportunity to post to this blog.

Have a good day evening and thank you for checking in.

Army Clown Episode 3

Army Clown 3 @ Yahoo! Video

Army Clowns Episode 2

Cotton Candy Hats

musik video

Hats

Cadet Thurman's Hat
Cadet Wilson's Hat with Apprentice Stewart wearing it.

Army Clowns - Episode 1

June 4th Practice

Chief Weekly Address

May Slide Show

May 17th at Practice

I would like to welcome Yvonne Chasko as our newest Junior Clown. Cadet Thurman is nearly half way through her Balloon Animals. At this rate we are going to have to make her an Apprentice soon.
Apprentice K it a quarter or a third of the way through his ballons for the Ballon Proficiency as well. I think I might have to make that Proficiency harder. To many people are doing to well at it.

On other fronts we are starting to put insignia on our practice uniforms. This is great fun if you are into this sort of thing. JC Chasko suggested using an iron on thing to make the Shield for the Brigade. The first round of them have been put on Cadet Shirts. I am currently sewing the stars onto my shirt. Since I have been at this so long I have a bloody absurd amount of stars. I will have pictures of Uniform stuff after practice Wednesday. We will have some folks who are wearing the shirts and such.

I would like to take a moment to mention how blessed the Brigade we have been so far this year. Every year we set goals. The first couple years we have just barely made them. This year we have already met most of our goals. We wanted to have 12 to fifteen people in the Brigade and we have 11. We are just about finished with the set, That was next year's goal.

Good Times Good times.

mothers day

i gave mom a vase of tullips for mothers day. Happy mothers day everyone .
kiddo

Weekly report on May 6th

We have another busy day of building stuff with the Clown Brigade. Up first is my weekly report to you the clown interested viewing public.

Bellow is Apprentice Prealu and my self sanding set pieces before they get painted.

We set up the puppet stage and painted it with several coats of white paint today. We will be decorating the puppet stage to look like it is part of a river boat.

While we were sanding and paint Apprentice K was assembling the pillar that will make up part of the stage setting. If is working on the bracket that will attach the pillars to their weights. The pillars will give us the ability to make any stage no matter the size appear to be the SS Garabedian.

Sunday Brigade Practice.

We had a sunday practice yesterday. This is some of usng the balloon section of the practice.

With our new session of three Cadets the Brigade is up to ten members. In aiddtion to balloon and makeup we also did a walk through of the up coming show. We added a couple thing and have changed a bit of the staging for some other stuff. All and all everyone is very happy with this show.

Pictured bellow are two of our new Cadet. Cadet Thurmon to the left and Cadet Wilson to the right. They have both chosen clown names and were working on their faces during the practice. Cadet Thurmon has taken the name Alakazi and Cadet Wilson took the name Silly Lilly.

Good times. God Bless and keep laughing

Weekly Address

Brigade Practice April 30th

walts clown scarf

here is a picture of the almost complete clown scarf i designed for my funny scarf proficiency

what I did was the first row was 1 knit stitch and for the second row i added a knit stitch and for the 3rd row i added a knit stitch at the beginning of the row and so on till i got the triangle for the center i chose to make the triangle 28 stitches

after i had the triangle i picked 3 rib patterns 1 for each arm of the scarfafter completing the rib pattern i reduced to the triangle like at the beginning knitting 2 together at the beginning of each row untill i got down to 1 stitch

then i picked up 28 stitches on the second side of the triangle and proceeded with the second rib pattern following the same procedure as before just with the new rib

and the same for the 3rd side of the triangle.after the 3 arms were finished and knotted off i made 3 big pom poms for the ends

but a word of advice from my mistake make sure your choice of rib pattern isnt mostly stockinette as it will curl as my 1 arm is.

walt

aka kiddo

Chief's Weekly Address

Clown Practice

howdy doo to you

Well I am Kiddo and i am verry happy to be along for the ride with my commander Brigadeer Blue Beard.

looking forward to many great adventures

L8r