Violins and Fiddles

I've frequently been asked what's the difference between a violin and a fiddle.  The answer is nothing, actually.  Fiddle music is played on a violin...or a fiddle...same instrument, different names.  It's all in who you're hanging out and playing with at the time.  :)

We've been busy the past few weekends attending fairs.  The Common Ground Country Fair is a fun one, sponsored by MOFGA.  The Maine Suzuki Association was asked to play on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday turned out to be a rainy day, but we put our muck boots on and slogged around the fairground in the rain after TBear was done playing.  There was lots to see, but it was all under tents, and the crowd was minimal, which we thought was great.  We really enjoyed watching the sheepdog demonstrations too.  There are a lot of days when I wish we had a good Border Collie to help us herd our animals.


Today, TBear's fiddle group, the Pineland Fiddlers, was invited to play at the Pettingill Farm Historic Fair down in Freeport.  The farm is a museum dating to sometime in the 1800's.  It was pretty low key, but the kids had a good time playing, and I always enjoy listening!  We got there early to tune and warm up.

They had a good time, I think.  Besides, lunch was free for us.  Good music and food...you can't beat that!

 

A Very Busy Weekend

It seems like it's feast or famine around here. For the past few weeks, life has been ho-hum status quo. However, on Wednesday we had some more snow, which is still actually status quo, except that Whit wasn't around for it this time. That's actually not uncommon either. But anyway, it suddenly got kind of busy around here on Thursday. We had such a nice day watching it snow, drinking hot chocolate (or tea) and working on history projects, that I didn't bother plowing on Wednesday evening. After all, it was supposed to keep snowing all night too. Thursday morning dawned bright and beautiful, as it does around here after our snowstorms, and we needed to leave for a day of co-op and music lessons shortly after 9am. I have to admit, I slightly misjudged how much snow I was going to have to try to push back with our Bolens tractor. (Well, it looked light and fluffy when it was coming down!) Whit made it look easy the week before, when we had about 8" of snow.

I, on the other hand, got the Bolens stuck on a patch of ice coming out of the barn. (No, I don't have a picture of that, thank you.) My neighbor across the street took one look at me behind that pile of snow and very kindly made a quick pass with his plow so I could at least get out of my driveway. However, I was in charge of snow removal this week, by golly, so I backed that traitorous Bolens back into the barn and fired up the Ford backhoe. Forget this messing around business. I was going for the big gun. After about half an hour, I had the driveway and our parking area clear, and we were off and running. You can see the additional snow we got. My cat Schmitty is lurking on the path. Just to the right, out of the picture, is my birdfeeder. I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to feed the birds this winter, but I felt really sorry for the blue jays which were picking at leftover pumpkin seeds in my front yard, and which also had flown into our woodshed to take shelter from the snowstorm. (You want to know how they're finding pumpkin seeds under two feet of snow, don't you? I don't know the answer to that, except that I hear them pecking next to the front door in the morning when it's quiet and I'm drinking my coffee.) So, I filled the feeder for them, but I've also noticed, they're on to Schmitty lurking there. I think blue jays are pretty smart.

On Friday, TBear spent the day at Barnes & Noble, playing music for, and also performing in, two shadow puppet shows. Later in the afternoon and evening, the kids fiddled in the store. It was a fundraiser for the Pineland Fiddlers' trip to Ireland this spring. Our Barnes & Noble donated a percentage of their sales that day to the Fiddlers. (Thank you Barnes & Noble!) In between the 10am puppet show, and the 3pm puppet show and fiddling, TBear sat with me in the book store coffee shop and did his schoolwork. It was actually a really nice day. Look at that boy. Doesn't he look like he's having a good time? No smiling allowed. Well, okay, smiling is encouraged, but they forget sometimes. : )

After lots of hockey on Saturday, I took TBear to a nursing home this afternoon where he and some other Pineland Suzuki students performed some more beautiful music for the patients. This performance has been postponed twice since December due to snowstorms, so it was especially nice that this last snowstorm missed the rescheduled date this time. They did, however, skip playing Christmas music, with the exception of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. It was wonderful to see the residents enjoying these kids' music as much as I do.
It'll be nice to go back to school tomorrow. We need the rest. : )

A Quilter, A Fiddler, and Ireland

I taught both of my daughters to sew when they were in middle school, never dreaming that my quilting passion would be so contagious. (Although I have no idea why not. After all, our kids easily pick up our bad habits, why not good ones? :) My girls started out making dresses and baby quilts. Since then, both of them have made full-sized quilts, though Rissie tends to be a little busy these days with my very active grandson, and hasn't had much of a chance to get back to her sewing yet.

Nutmeg, on the other hand, has become quite the prolific quilter. Her first major project was a marvelous sampler quilt, which she created as a senior project. She did a beautiful job, and even entered it in a county fair, winning second prize. I'd love to inherit it some day...except that's backwards, isn't it. Oh well. Here's a picture of that sampler. She has a great picture of it on my bed. It looked very nice on my bed, Nutmeg, so when you get tired of looking at it, you can put it right back on again. :)

She has created quite a few quilts since then, and I definitely have my favorites. I'd like to share a few more of them before I tell you about my fiddler and Ireland. Nutmeg made me a beautiful wall hanging called a Carpenter's Wheel, which is pretty nifty given that her dad is a carpenter.

Another one of my favorites was a kind of marvelous memory quilt that Nutmeg created to commemorate her brother's tenth birthday. It is a bookcase with shelves full of jars containing various items special to TBear, his favorite books from that year, and other odds and ends. He loves his quilt as much as I do.

Here is a close up of some jars on the front. Note the jar with the fishing theme, and the one with the escaping butterflies on the shelf below it. The back of the quilt is black, and Nutmeg quilted neat things into the jars too. It's very cool.

Finally, the quilt Nutmeg recently finished piecing is the one I am hoping will help get TBear to Ireland in June, where he will play his fiddle with his teacher and her group of Pineland Fiddlers, and learn some Irish fiddle tunes too. Raffle tickets are being sold by the fiddlers. Not only will someone be blessed by Nutmeg's beautiful handiwork, but it will help defray the cost of traveling overseas. I'm not sure what a trip to Ireland is going to do to our haying season, but I guess we'll worry about that in June...

Nutmeg told me this rainbow-colored pinwheel quilt is her favorite...except for the gorgeous wedding quilt she's currently working on for a dear childhood buddy who is getting married in February. In case you're wondering what Nutmeg does in her spare time, she's working on getting a master's degree in secondary education.