playing through the pain

"music washes away

from the soul

the dust

of everyday life."

-red auerbach

a few days ago, a log was dropped on my right foot, breaking two toes and smashing two others. talk about an extreme way to slow oneself down!  even though occupational rehab seems to think that the weekend is all i needed away from the craziness at my construction job to heal enough to return to climbing ladders and hauling steel, i'm still finding ways to take it easy.

i wanted to stitch this weekend...the gods know how much i miss my needle chanting!  but the pain just wouldn't allow me to focus.  so i turned to music.  strumming quietly upon one of my treasured dulcimers. it got me to thinking. i have a wonderful dulcimer collection, but have never catalogued them.  so i started rounding them all up and tracking down the various scraps of paper and digital files containing what information i have on each of them (some are better documented than others). 

these two lovelies are the ones that started my love affair with appalachian dulcimers.  the one on the left is by a wonderful luthier by the name of joe sanguinette (now deceased). it is made of walnut with a purpleheart fret board and dogwood inlaid centers on the hand-cut dogwood pattern sound holes.  it is one of two prototypes that he never put into production because they were too time intensive.  i was lucky enough to acquire this one, with the help of my mother, while he kept the other one (which ended up on ebay some years ago and sadly escaped my bids to be shipped to a buyer in england).  the one of the left is by jack lyle of waynesville, nc (also, now deceased).  this one is made from spalted wormy maple and has a quilted maple back and a mahogany fret board.  where the sanguinette has a lovely, mellow voice, the lyle has a bright, cheerful one.

as i began assembling all of my dulcimers in one place in my home (until now, they've always been scattered throughout the house - tucked in closets, under beds, displayed on shelves, in cabinets and on walls), i realized that i had quite a few more than i thought i did. thirty-six, to be exact. unless there are others lurking about that i don't remember owning...

the most recently acquired, and the most unusual, is this mandolin-dulcimer hybrid by eric holland of dark star guitars in eastern kansas.  eric started by deconstructing a pre-1895 bowl-back mandolin by luigi ricca, then completely rebuilding and restructuring it into a new walk-about style dulcimer.  his workmanship is superb and the sound is amazing!  i can hardly wait to get acclimated to its nuances and subtle differences from a traditional dulcimer, at which time i'll record something with it and post it here on my blog.

meanwhile, as i get them each photographed and documented, i am going to start a dulcimer page on this blog that will chronicle my collection in the coming months. look for it in the tabs at the top of the page.  and as the pain in my foot decreases and i am able to focus on my stitching, i have a couple newly started projects on my workbench that i will be sharing in the coming weeks as well...

namaste'