Hi All!

I am so glad I stumbled upon this site!  It looks great, and I am looking forward to checking it out further and hopefully can pick up a few tips here and there!  To introduce myself, I am a 55 yr old gramma, who for some odd reason, decided to start learning the fiddle!  I had never been around fiddle music in my life.  Perhaps I got the idea because I had started listening to Finnish folk/symphonic metal? My dad had bought an old rough fiddle at an auction years and years ago, so I was able to get that from him, and find a teacher.  I had never as much as held a fiddle before, so my first lesson consisted of only being shown these basics, after my teacher tuned it for me.  I felt so dumb I was practically in tears. That was 3 yrs ago on Mar 15.  I only had lessons for a very short time as my teacher, still a teenager, started university and no longer had the time to teach.  So I continue on, on my own, but there have been times I have not even touched the fiddle in months. I got through the first 2 books the teach recommended and now am still learning songs from a Cape Breton collection of 267 tunes.  That'll keep me going for awhile.  Lucikily I already knew how to read music. 

However, since watching "Hatfield and McCoys' on NY's eve, I have been listening to the soundtrack and loving that music, and that is a sweet sounding fiddle on those tunes!  So i have caught the bug again, and really want to upgrade at a minimum, my bow.  I did put better quality strings on my fiddle last summer and that helped some, but just not getting the best sound and it is so irritating . I sometimes go back to the old wrecked bow that came with the fiddle as it has a warmer sound.

Well again, looking forward to getting to know this site and everyone on it!

- Cindy aka Helvetika Eclectika