Collard greens and black-eyed peas. What else can we do to ensure good luck in 2012?

I found a little lost gingerbread boy at the market, and brought him home to meet his parents for the holidays...

Take a break and enjoy the sunrise this morning in Sandbridge VA

A dragonfly came into the house last night, and spent nearly a full day trying to get back out. I finally got it outside, and photographed it while it was recovering on the deck. Shortly after the photo shoot, it flew away

I'm heading for the beach on Saturday! Aside from playing music and eating well, I plan on lots of walks and lots of photographs. One of my favorite things is photographing dogs having fun on the beach. Here's one in advance.

Everyone is talking about being in the cloud these days. So today, I'm in the clouds. Who knows, I might be in even more clouds next week. I'm pretty fond of these though. This might look really nice as a large print. What do you think?

It's my birthday... I've decided to declare that it is also National Hammered Mbira Day. I keep hearing lately that I don't tell people about what I do nearly enough. So today I am posting one of the tracks from the CD I am [very, very slowly] recording!

The hammered mbira is a cool instrument that is a cross between a hammered dulcimer and an african thumb piano. (Don MacLane in Portland, Oregon has made only about 30 of these custom-designed instruments and I am honored to own one!) It is laid out exactly like a hammered dulcimer, but doesn't need tuning every day like most dulcimers.

If you are curious about what it looks like, this is me playing in 2009 during a sound check at the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium, accompanied by Ken Lovelett on percussion and Tom White doing the mic adjustment dance.

And here are a couple of pics I took this week during Dulcimer Week at the Swannanoa Gathering:

In case you can't tell (ha), that's Mark Grobner, who has a new CD called SunRise (I designed the CD art) in pic #1, and Sue Wilson, who just published an article in this month's Dulcimer Player's News in pic #2

I'm taking a drawing class! (and hopelessly behind I might add) Perhaps I will be brave enough, and caught up enough to post a drawing here soon! This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the class (except we were drawing leaves):

A scene from Lake Durant in the Adirondack Park. 

(Northeast Dulcimer Symposium)