I’ve never been wild about competitions, particularly Bardic competitions, because of a myriad of reasons.  We all do things differently; we have different styles and time-periods that interest us; we focus more or less on spoken or sung pieces; favor different vocal styles; and on and on and on.  I think I’ve participated in six as […]

So, this happened:  Mine is the penultimate piece.   It was interesting to be recorded.  Like many people, I had a hard time getting used to the sound of myself, but I think I’ve now messed with recordings enough now that I do indeed recognize my own voice at a remove. Everyone involved with this […]

This year, I’m trying to focus more clearly on music than I have since, well, since the world went all pear-shaped in 2009.  I’ve also been doing more research on early medieval Scandinavia than usual.  It feels right, then, to give you a song that circles through my brain, particularly as the ground starts to […]

Lord a’mercy, I do let things slide.  I’ve finished a couple of pairs of socks I haven’t shown you, added a beautiful new tree to the garden to whom I have not introduced you, been to a fantastic music festival I haven’t talked about, read some huge number of books I haven’t reviewed, experienced a […]

I keep neglecting to review the books I’ve been reading. I have been reading, picking books over knitting needles more often than not, and a lot of what I’ve been reading has either come directly from Mike’s shelves or from recommendations he made over the years. My attempts to burn through our unread books and […]

As promised, video of Bruce Molksy playing at the Potomac Celtic Festival last weekend. His beautiful finger-style guitar rendition of his original tune “Brothers and Sisters:” And his fantastic clawhammer banjo and vocal for the traditional old-time classic “John Brown’s Dream:” Next time, I’ll try to try to bring the actual video camera, tons of […]

My period of mandatory silence is over.  I didn’t intend for it to spill over here onto the blog, but my desperate need to plant whenever it’s not raining, my new obsession with learning to build dry-stack walls, and some news I haven’t yet processed coalesced into me thinking a lot and saying little.  I […]

For a while there my Google Reader was showing me four digit numbers. I couldn’t read most friends’ blogs from work, and I was working a lot of overtime just in case Scott’s job search didn’t move as fast as we hoped. Last weekend while I was editing the new blog CSS, trying to build […]

We spent the long wekend with dear friends in Canaan Valley, West Virginia.  We wandered around Blackwater Falls and the park surrounding it.  We’ve had unseasonably warm weather in the DC area over the last few weeks, but thankfully West Virginia is holding on to some winter.  I flirted with birches, like I do.   They flirted back. The […]