Don’t blind your friends! :)

Flowtoys co-founder Sean von Stade loves his wheels - bikes, skates, electric unicycles, you name it. He also loves beautiful lighting. 

Sean and our daughter Kiro were riding their EUCs all over Oregon Country Fair, and after the first night, he realized they needed a headlight solution that didn’t suck for everyone else, and didn’t kill their own night-vision and vibe. 

He did a bunch of searching and product testing, figured out some fairly optimized options for under $40, and is sharing his findings with y'all.

From weddings to family visits to festivals, most of the flowtoys crew have planned to take their vacation the last week of August through early September 2022.

Made-to-order props and lead times: Many of our props are handmade to order, including all full vision props and most staff options. We will do our best to communicate the expected delays, but if you think you'll want to get some full vision props in late August or early September, please place your orders by 7 August. 

No customer care services from 27 August - 5 September: Our amazing Customer Care team will be at Burning Man performing in the fire conclave and helping participants learn to fire dance! This means we will NOT be shipping orders, responding to support emails, or processing warranty during this time. We will do our best to ship everything we can up until we leave for vacation. 

The webstore will still be operational during our break, but please note that we will not be shipping orders until the team returns from Burning Man in early September. At that point, we will prioritize orders with Express shipping followed by Priority, and lastly free shipping. If you are in a hurry, please plan accordingly.

We are a small family business and are grateful for your understanding. Thank you for enabling our team to take their well-earned vacation!

Ah the perfect wand string - durable, invisible, comfortable ... the list of requirements goes on and it's much longer than the needs for a magician's dancing cane, as many contemporary wands are heavy and its practitioners use their wands for long stretches of time at a go. 

Since inspiring the contemporary levi-wand movement with our first flow-wands in the early 2000s, we've been paying attention to the needs and desires of the top wanderers and advances in materials science.

We are happy to have found the best balance of properties in a particular braided black "Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene" (UHMWPE aka Dyneema) string, we call “stealth string” and offer it 2 sizes, depending on how you use your wand:

• 0.44mm for short-string, lightweight flow-wands 
• 1mm for all long-string, contact, and heavier wands

When selecting a wand string, there are a few factors you will probably want to consider:

Fire? if you have a fire wand, you need fire-resistant string. Kevlar works but wears down easily. check your string for wear before every use! Technora, AKA “Shadow Cord” is much better.

Visibility: No string strong enough to use on a wand is truly invisible, and strings that attempt to be are uncomfortable and difficult to work with. Clear string can reflect light and is typically monofilament, which easily kinks and twists. Black string is best in most conditions. Thinner string is less visible, but also more painful in terms of cutting into our skin, difficult to work with and less durable.

Comfort: Thicker string is more comfortable when interacting with your hands and body. Smoothness also helps - some strings are quite rough/abrasive due to the material and/or number of strands/braid, and twisted string tends to be rougher than braided string. In some situations your string could cut you.

Ease of use: Thicker string is easier to handle, to a point. It needs to easily fit in your wand/swivel, or you need to modify them, and it should be supple enough to easily tie. String thicker than 2mm can feel bulky when wrapped up around your hand.

Handling: We covered comfort above, but basically it should be thick enough not to hurt or discourage you from doing any moves, and thin enough to not feel too bulky when wrapping up etc. There are some moves that utilize the friction of the string in the hole, like slides, but even considering that, smoother is generally better.

Twisting: If you are not using a swivel, as is common in long-string wandering, then as you play and spin your wand the string will twist up, and the thicker the string, the faster this will affect how the wand handles. A thinner string can twist more times before it closes the bottom of the loop enough to touch and push the wand during use. Also some very stiff or coated strings can hold the twist in a way that makes them harder to untwist.

Stretch: This is rarely a factor you can feel, and probably not going to determine which string you choose, but if your string is too weak for the weight of your wand, you may feel some give. Some materials stretch more than others of the same thickness, for example: aramids have very low stretch, but also low abrasion resistance. Nylon has a lot of give for its size.

Durability: Especially if your string is secured to a swivel, and/or do a lot of spins, the point where it exits the wand can take a lot of abuse. Thicker is generally more durable than thinner. Braided is more durable than twisted. Plastic is more durable than natural or aramid (fire resistant). UV resistance is also a factor, some materials, like Vectran, breakdown quickly with sun exposure, others are almost immune to it.

Color-fastness: Some strings are dyed or coated in a way that leave marks on wands and/or clothing. The best string has the color mixed in during the fiber production and can not transfer or bleed.

Coatings: Some strings have coatings that can require break-in, or break down over time, affect the way they handle, cause twisting to “stick", or transfer onto your wand when not in use.

Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) is commonly used in synthetic tow lines, high-performance fabrics and bullet proof vests. It is highly abrasion resistant, up to 15 times stronger than steel and 40% stronger than aramid fibers by weight.

Basically it’s super strong, but more importantly for our use in levi-wands, our braided UHMWPE string is very abrasion resistant, low stretch, smooth, easy to tie and melt, and the color will not bleed.

For long-string, contact, and heavier wands, the 1mm diameter (300lb test) size provides a great balance of thickness for comfort, and thinness for great handling, easy twisting and untwisting, and relative invisibility.

Short string, long string, contact, LED - we make them all here in Emeryville by hand. Click here to check out our range of high performance wands. 

Choosing your hoop size and diameter can be quite daunting as there are so many options! Here's a guide to help you get started on finding the right hoop size for you :)

Super simple hoop size recommendations:

For an adult beginner dance hoop - we recommend 3/4": measure from the floor to your belly button - that is your hoop diameter :) If you have a small waist, you can go 2” smaller; large waist: 2” larger.

Still not sure? You pretty much can’t go wrong with a 90cm/36” dance hoop, or even larger if you really want to take it slow.

For an intermediate or “trick" hoop - choose 5/8": 81cm/32” is a safe bet.

For off-body manipulation and juggling of 2+ hoops - choose 5/8": go with 69cm/27"

We had seen Xander in and around the flow community, but it wasn't until early 2019 that we got to work with him. We were doing a photo and videoshoot, and needed a martial flow jedi for showcasing the vision chucks and dart - Xander was a natural choice. Not only does he wield both props with martial precision, he has the soul of a flow artist. He also happened to be in the Bay and was about to leave for an extended trip to Southeast Asia. We caught him just before he left, and got to spend a weekend getting to know the solid person that he is. We're stoked to share his flow story here ...