I was invited down to a party

And brought my old bagpipes by chance

They asked me to sing, but I said, "Ah, no,

I'll play you a bit of a dance."

So I picked up my pipes, and started to play

But someone was foolin' about

They poked a big hole in the bag o' me pipes

And that was the tune that came out

After a year and a half of faithful service, my Gannaway cowhide bag finally gave out. I discovered a 3/4" tear in the bag right below the blowpipe stock Thursday night. Naturally, this rendered the instrument unplayable. I immediately ordered 2 Bannatyne hide/gortex hybrid bags (one for my Krons, one for the Dunbar I'll eventually get), and hopefully they'll arrive today, and I can tie the thing in tomorrow. So I haven't got much piping in this last week.

I did have a lot of fun at a slow Irish session on Saturday night. Elise Kress, a flute instructor and friend of Philippe Varlet's, held a slow session for her flute students, and contacted some of Philippe's students to get a few fiddlers in the group. The tunes she teaches are almost the same as those Philippe does, and most of her students are still playing mostly jigs and polkas, so I knew almost all of the tunes we played. It looks like it's going to be a semi-regular event, and Elise wants to hold monthly repertoire workshops as well. I did notice that I find it harder to learn tunes from listening to a flute than from a fiddle. It may be that I'm not just listening to match pitch, but timbre as well. Another skill to work on.

The fiddle club meeting gave us some nice Strathspey/Reel sets. My sight-reading-on-the-spot skills are definitely improving, but odd keys and lots of string changes still throw me. There were a lot of new faces at fiddle club, including one we recruited from the Irish session the night before. By spring, once I've finished up remodelling the upstairs of my house, I should be sticking around for the potluck session afterwards.

All this means no slacking off on practice during the week! If I'm going to be out at sessions and workshops every other weekend (or more), I can't rely on weekends to get caught up on my missed practice time anymore.