I've finally got my Highland Pipe chanter in A (440 Hz) working, and took it out to play for the first time this weekend. It's still a little twitchy about pressure - there's nothing uglier than a F# suddenly becoming an F-natural in the middle of a tune. And my hands aren't used to the larger distance between fingerholes, so I get some squeaks and squalls when I go from the high hand to low A. But when I'm cooking with it, it sounds great, and the drones are really nice, despite kludging them to tune to A with two sets of drone extenders. I'm thinking of having Anders do a simple recording of me soon, maybe playing Highland Wedding, and put it up on the site.

I've also been doing a lot of research on period costuming since the Potomac festival, and placed a couple of orders. Soon, I'll have everything I need to reenact every period from 1650 to 1820, with the exception the currans (leather rawhide shoes) - and I'll order those within a week or two. Weapons are a different matter, I'll need to start investing in some flintlock muskets and pistols, and get a basket-hilt fitting a man of more modest means. Mine's just too nice for anyone but a clan gentleman.

I've also got the basic info I need to make a leine and brat, which means I'll be able to extend the coming period backwards to about 1200.

Work on converting the website to frames proceeds, and hopefully Jay will work out the bugs in my basic template, so I can convert all the pages over.