It's time to let go...

Yesterday I spent the day with some fantastic friends John and Tracy.  Tracy is the proprietor of Sparkle Connection and I can truly recommend all that she offers from her website. You'll notice when you get there that it's not an "airy fairy" sort of a website - Tracy is a very down to earth person, and takes what she does very seriously - I think that comes through in the products and services that she provides...
 
Anyway - how yesterday got started is quite a few years in the making.  My good friend Michelle plays the Bodhran (an Irish drum) and I have enjoyed having a bash at hers from time to time.  Then when we were in Glen Innes in May this year for the Australian Celtic Festival, Kathy and I attended a Bodhran playing workshop, and we both loved it.  So much so that Kathy has now purchased her own Bodhran from Ireland (to which she actually received two - go figure!!!).  I also decided that I wanted one, but didn't kind of get around to buying one...  which turned out to be a good thing!
 
I saw on the Sparkle Connection newsletter earlier this year that she was running Drum making workshops - one in Victoria, and one in Brisbane.  Less than 30 seconds later I'd shot back an e-mail registering for it...
 
Here are some of the pictures that I have taken and a brief description of them.  I am still absolutely amazed with my Drum, and I am now excitedly waiting for a month for it to dry out so that I can play it!!!
 

 



 

By this stage, we had journeyed to meet the Deer who had gifted it's hide to us, and I had received a message from the Deer for my drum. I had cut out the circle from the centre of the hide, and at this point was (successfully this time!!!) cutting the lacing in one continuous strip like a Mintie wrapper (I was never very good at that and on the first try promptly cut once around the hide and cut my lacing off -d'oh!!!)

 

 

 

 

This is a bit closer up of the lacing that I am creating from the hide. 

 

 

 

 

 

It actually took quite a bit of effort cutting out all that hide! The day was quite physical...

 

 

 

 

There's always room for a little silliness!!!!!

 

 

 

 

Some of the other ladies who didn't want to sit on the floor to do their drum, working on the tables.

 
 

 

This is Di - we shared a table together for our cutting out.  Tracy nicknamed us the "green pants" table...

 

 

 

My pile of lacing and the drum hide.We had punched 24 holes evenly around the edge of the drum so that the lacing could go through.

 

 

I'm starting to lace the drum here.This was really hard to do if you're just one person - I didn't manage it and needed both John and Tracy's help.If you’re doing it yourself, you need to sit on the floor as you need to use both your feet and your hands to hang onto the slippery laces. It turned into a bit of a contortionist effort, but the laces kept slipping away from me!

 

 

Getting closer to the end of the lacing!!!

 

 

 

The lacing’s finished!

 
 
 

 
 

Here I'm tightening and neatening up the laces on the back.  You wind the rest of the lacings around and around, and make a lovely Celtic shape from them.  This helps to keep the drum and the lacing taught. 

 

 

Here's the after photo - the drum's still quite wet, and we're holding it quite carefully!!!  Note it's quite light in colour here...

 

 

The back of the drum when it was still very wet yesterday...

 

This is some of the gorgeous Medicine that Tracy makes. I was really drawn to the smudge fan in the front of the two smudge bowls and so it made its way home with me!!!
 
 
 

 

Tracy has made this gorgeous pouch.  I was really drawn to this too, it's just so lovely and soft. 

 

 

This is my drum today, the morning after the workshop. It's darkening up, and you can see that it's getting tighter as it dries. 

 

 

 

 

The back of my drum today - you can see it's dried out quite a bit already.  It will still take a full month though before I can play it...

And the message from my Deer?  "It's time to let go"...  I have a good idea already of what that will mean for me, and it will be really interesting to see what else comes from that message.  It's really all about the journey that I've been on the past 12 months or so, with some additional connotations.  I understand a couple of them clearly already - now to put them into practice! 

 

I'll let you know how I go...