Concertinas, Penny Whistles and other things

 I haven't really touched the concertina since it came back. As it is in a box, it is a faff to get it out so it just sits there looking at me. Plus, there is the same old problem in that I can't play a lot of my music due to the limits imposed by the 20 button instrument.

So, what am I doing with my time - both a lot actually. I seem to spend a lot of time sitting down with my eyes shut - not sleeping but just idle. This has never been me but, I suppose, at 76 it is to be expected. I am spending most of my "spare" time on plastic models (see my Gentle Scale Models blog).  I explain why I am not doing any model railways on my model railway blog.

However, this blog is about other things than models and railways.  I have taken up the Irish tin or penny whistle.  I bought one off Amazon for £9.95 and was finding it a bit of a handful. The problem with a penny whistle, for me, isn't the fingering as it is the same as when I was playing a fife in the cadet band back when I was 14. It's getting to play it without and streaks and whistles (it isn't known as a whistle without a reason!).  I was having some difficulty with this so, unbeknown to me, my wife bought me a better one. This one was a whole £11.18 so it had to be better, didn't it? In fact it was. The beauty of the whistle is that it can play in three keys easily. I comes as a whistle in D (two sharps) but, with simple fingering changes, it can also play in G (one sharp) and C (no sharps). A lot of folk music is written in D to suit the melodion so I have a wider range of music that I can play off the sheet without the mental transposition that I had to go through with the concertina. I still have the option of playing tunes in F (one flat) by doing that mental transposing but not much folk music is written in that key and I am certainly not going to start playing jazz - grin.

In addition, I have started another tapestry. This is a cushion destined for our new armchair. As Valerie is a big Lowry fan, she chose the Bothy "Street Scene".

So far, I have spent a couple of hours on it. The first was sorting out the thread colour patterns and the second was spent putting in around 200 stitches. As the tapestry is 14" x 10" with 12 stitches per inch - equalling - 20,160 stitches - it might take some time at that rate! Never mind, it fills in that hour from 7pm to 8pm when we entertain mother-in-law with something - currently rerunning around 12 series of Michael Portillo's railway journeys! (Not bad the first time round but after 4 times it gets a bit tedious).

Concertinas, Tapestries and Sewing

Apart from my model railway and making scale plastic models, the three activities mentioned above cover pretty much my time - except for reading detective novels, of course.

Ok, so I need to bring the Concertina situation up to date. I did return the 30 button to Hobgoblin in Canterbury. In fact, they even paid the return postage which I thought was excellent. I then travelled up to Stoke-on-Trent to visit one of the main concertina suppliers. I found him quite off-hand considering that I was spending £2,000.00. He gave me £400 for my 20 button, which was more than I paid for it. When I got home, it didn't sound right, so I took it to Mike Acott, who fixed one of the reeds. However, I still felt that the main C reed on the C line wasn't right but couldn't get anyone to listen. However, once you think something is wrong, even if it isn't, the thought won't go away so I asked to revert the transaction. I got my old 20 button back along with a nice payment. The 20 button came back in a nice wooden concertina box and new bellows. I had to accept a reduced price for it as he had made the upgrades. When the concertina came home, I was so fed up with the whole process that I put it away and that is where it stayed for over a year.

This means that I haven't changed my ability to play music (the current concertina doesn't have enough notes to play the type of music that I like) so it has been quite easy for me to let go. I bought some new music the other day so I am getting back in but the problems still won't go away.

I spent some of the last year sewing a tapestry for a tea cosy. Tapestries take quite a time to sew. The particular one that I was sewing here was a 10 stitches to the inch = 10 x 10 = 100 stitches to the square inch. The tea cosy is 12" x 8" = 96 square inches = 96 *100 = 9,600 stitches. We wanted a cosy for the morning coffee pot. We have one I made a few years ago for the teapot so this would make a nice pair.

It is a bit out of shape but I don't really have the means in the flat to do a lot of work in straightening it. However, it needs making up - the inside needs to be a thick wadding to keep the heat in and then there are three sides to be made using a contrasting material. You can just see the red fabric with white dots. The wadding comes from The Cheap Shop down in Tiptree and works wonderfully.

Now we come to the third hobby. I am quite keen on patchwork/quilting. It is a technical exercise as there are patterns to be worked out, sizes to be calculated and some precision sewing to get any item complete. In the past, as you can see from the blog, I have made pillow covers and shopping bags. Now, with the lock down, I found that I still had a sewing kit for a runner that would fit perfectly across the top of our bedroom drawer unit.

Off I went with my normal gusto. However, I forgot that I hadn't done any mitred corners in some years and made a complete mess of it all. I used up some of the material so I had to get some more. Plus, I didn't have any wadding or backing fabric. Some time ago, when we cleared out the Marklin railway, we also threw out all of our unused fabric and wadding! The kit for the runner was bought in Bungay at the SewAndSew shop. I called them and they agreed to put together a pack of stuff - replacement fabric, some backing and wadding plus a small supply of fabric in what are known as "fat quarters". This would enable me to not only finish the kit but to also get some practice under my belt.

That practice hasn't gone too well. I now know the techniques I need to not only do the mitres but also to fit the edge binding. However, the actual processes didn't go too well as my sewing machine is a "cheapish" John Lewis machine. Instead of starting up smoothly, it tends to jump into action making it difficult to control. As a new machine would be £200 - £300 I am reluctant to jump into it. A neighbour has offered to lend me their spare machine so, if that happens, it will show me whether it is me or the machine! We shall see!

That didn't go as planned

From day one, I wasn't happy with the new concertina. The G/D button on the right hand seemed a bit weak. I took it to be fixed but it still seemed to be not right. I tried to arrange with Barleycorn to look at it but I ended up keeping it. Finally, I took it back to Mike who found a small leak. This fixed, I started to play it when the problems with my hands started to arise.

My arthritis seems to be under control through painkillers with the exception of my hands, which hurt all the time. Playing the 20 buttons was no problem but getting my hands across to the new row was causing issues. Finally, I had to admit that it wasn't going to work.

Barleycorn have agreed to take the new concertina back and to give me back my original one (which hasn't sold, thank goodness). I have ended up losing some money, as Barleycorn have done some work on my one which needs to be paid for. It goes back by UPS tomorrow and I am hoping that they don't find any issues as it was recently checked by Mike Acott and issued with a good bill of health.

I am getting my old one back and a nice round sum which will go towards my new model railway project. The world turns and turns!

Prospects of an upgraded Concertina

This was my current concertina. It is a Lachenal 20 button C/G Anglo. It dates from late Victorian times so is a bit precious. It has a lovely tone and plays beautifully. The problem is that it can only play in two keys - C and G.  This makes it very restrictive for playing a lot of the music written between 1900 and 1950 as these often use other keys or lots of "accidentals". The way out of this was to acquire a 30 button concertina - thus giving me all of the required extra note. However, these are normally snapped up by players of Irish music, which uses concertinas as a regular part of the line up in the bands. The result is that there is quite a jump in price to a 30 button, let alone a concertina to match my existing one.

I have had to close down my model railway for the foreseable future so I came up with a "cunning plan". As I couldn't use all of my model railways stuff but was playing my concertina every day, why not dispose of all it and use the funds for my other active hobbies - playing the concertina and making scale plastic models.

The selling of the N gauge stuff went very well - apart from owing EBay £300.00 in fees! It was a shame as I had only bought it all this year but there we are. Suddenly I could look at buying a £750 Lachenal 30 button concertina. 

With my new found finance, I went down to Canterbury to spend £750 and pick up a Lachenal 30 button and then went on to Faversham where they have a very nice model shop. I bought a complex model kit of an A1J Skyraider in 1:32 - it is nice having a large stash fund!

Playing the concertina showed that there were problems with it so, on instruction, I contacted Mike Acott, our local concertina expert. He fixed some of the issues but others soon reared their heads so I arranged to have it returned with a full refund. So far, not so good. On advice from Mike, I contacted Chris Algar, who seems to be the biggest source of traditional concertinas (rather than new ones). I was determined to get a traditional one as, again under advice from Mike, I wanted to avoid a new one. New ones have compromise reeds and don't sound as nice as the older ones that have proper concertina reeds. The £750 concertina was a Lachenal, like my 20 button but had mahogany ends and brass reeds so sounded a bit softer.  Chris didn't have anything in that range so I had to look at spending extra money and get a steel reeded Lachenal. There is always a demand from Ireland for these instruments so the price reflects that demand. There were two that I felt were right but the both cost £1,300! I could only do this by part exchanging my 20 button. I was sad to do this but it was the only way that I could go and keep some stash money behind.

Chris lives in Cheshire, some few miles north of Stoke-on-Trent so it was a bit of a hack. I left home at 7am and got back at 6.30pm! Chris gave me £400 for my 20 button which represented a 33% profit. I have been told that buying a new concertina is like buying a new car - you lose money on it the moment that you buy it - but buying an "antique" concertina is an investment. 

I now have a superb Lachenal 30 button concertina. It does have mahogany ends but has been polished so it looks like my old one. It has bone buttons and steel concertina reeds. Having had a look inside, I have found out that the serial number is 124088 - my old one was 74298 (c1885) - so that puts its manufacture somewhere around 1900. 

The only visible differences between this and the old one are the 30 buttons, of course, and less intricate fretwork so this is one of Lachenal's cheaper models. Getting a true rosewood with full fretwork would have cost another £400 - £500  and wouldn't sound any different.

A Family heirloom - I hope

It was my brother-in-law (and sister-in-law)'s 25th wedding anniversary recently. I was asked to make a present for them so I chose a Jolly Red "Love Birds" kit. This took a few months to make as it had 24,336 stitches, including having to work out the words for the names and date.

Anyway, it was done in time. I used a cushion interior and a fat quarter of fabric from "The Cheap Shop - Tiptree" and made it up on my trusty John Lewis sewing machine.

Commuter Chaos

Just finished a Wasgij (Jigsaw back to front). A Wasgij puzzle is one where the image on the box is NOT the image of the jigsaw. The jigsaw is a connected image but not the same. This means that you have only a small number of clues as to how the puzzle goes together.

I have been doing "Commuting Chaos" over the last few days and, whilst challenging, was great fun.

Cracking on now my Open University has finished

Just completed my Open University degree (in case you were wondering, I got a 2.2). Took the time out to finish this jigsaw that has been sitting there for a few months unloved and untouched.

It is a Gibson puzzle - I Love Autumn.

Just click on the image for a full sized version.