Hammers

of various makes, woods, weights and lengths.  The gentleman whose make is very popular, a pair of which is my favourite, is nearing his eightieth year and has an ailing wife.  I may have to find other hammers I like. I have a pair of longer ones that I like, not pictured here, and a pair of very flexible hammers which I haven't really tried.  The general wisdom is to find a pair of a weight, length and balance that you like and stay with those.

       Chrysanthemum planted the idea to picture most of my dulcimer hammers.

       In my casual browsing I find quite a few new blippers and a few new Blip Central welcome greetings; but I don't know if these are automatically generated.  I didn't see them for quite a while.

       I have finally started making some progress learning attempting new tunes I like.  If I can't manage them on the dulcimer I can at least play them on the recorder or mandolin.  I like The Gallowglass  an Irish jig the tune of which sounds well, to my ears anyway, at waltz speed.  And after picking out a few phrases of Spirit of the Border  by ear I found the dots-on-paper to learn the rest.  It is a lovely Northumbrian pipe tune that sounds very well on fiddle and recorder.   So when I get to the session on Saturday afternoon there might be a couple more tunes I know well enough to join in with.  I have a few questions about a few of the  tunes on their list that may go by multiple names as I haven't found them in my collections - yet.

       We'll have the company of Kathy's older sister and a her husband in a couple of weeks.