Learning New Things

   When C and I were in Door County last year, we saw a musical called 'Victory Farm'. It's about three German prisoners of war who are sent to the United States to help the farmers(something that did happen during World War II by the way) The musical is about three German POWs who find themselves in Ellison Bay harvesting cherries. In one scene, Josef, a baker from Berlin, enthuses over the fact that he has learned a lot that day.
  I can relate to Josef. I feel like I learned a lot the past few weeks. Let me tell you what I learned.
  After a gap of way too long, I am getting back in to practicing my instruments. I have learned how to do arpeggios on the dulcimer. An arpeggio is when you play several notes quickly. On many instruments you can play the notes at the same time and they would be called a chord. On a hammered dulcimer, you are limited to two notes at a time. Since the notes resonate after the string is hit all the sounds blend together. It's really beautiful. I'm also practicing two new hammering techniques, the bounce and the roll. A bounce is when you take one hammer and allow it to bounce on the string several times instead of striking the string just once. If you do this with both hammers, it is called a roll. I'm not very good yet, but I know that if I can keep getting regular practice I will improve.
   I've also advanced in my harp book as well. I'm learning four finger skipped placement. It sounds really complicated doesn't it? Placement means positioning you fingers on the strings before playing them. Skipped placement is when your fingers are not next to each other. There is one string that is skipped. It doesn't sound hard, but it is not easy as it looks. You have to get all the fingers on the right strings at the same time. That way there are no skips in the song while the player gets their fingers into the right spots. I can tell that I'm getting better at it.
   Last week I found two new knitting projects. I'm over half done with the bag I am making and the strap that goes with it. I felt safe looking for my next project. With some help from my friend and knitting teacher, I found some nice yarn. (But then almost all yarn is nice.) One of them is in what I call peacock colours blues, greens and yellows. I'm going to knit it into a scarf. Before I could start it, I needed to learn a couple of things. Once of them is slip, slip knit. This is a technique for making something narrow. You knit two stitches together. The other thing I needed to learn was how to increase or make something wider. This means I have to add stitches to what I'm doing. One way to do this is using a bar increase or knit one front and back. It means that you knit the same stitch twice. I tried teaching myself out of the book, but it didn't turn out. Knitting teacher to the rescue. She figured out how to do it and then was able to show me how. I've been trying to practice it at least five minutes a day. I'm also getting better at purling. It's a necessary skill in knitting and one that I'm a bit awkward at.
  The other scarf is one that I'm going to try knitting in the round. That means that I'll use a set of circular needles and will be knitting a tube. What I have to do is wrap the yarn twice around my needle. It's supposed to be a quick project. If it stays cold, I'll do it soon so I can wear it this year.
  I feel like I have a bunch of new skills. I'm looking forward to practicing them and getting good at all of them. Then I will be able to learn more new things.