Weekly News: Medievalish Music paralysed Monty's Caravan

Last week was a bit strange. One the one hand not busier than most weeks before but on the other hand I wasn't able to manage anything mentionable on the workbench.

On Monday I listed up my Bretonnian forces for the upcoming game on Good Friday and helped Kalle a friend of mine to sort his Dwarves. Simultaneously I watched our sewing-machine when it prepared an embroided sample batch for the new THS-shirts:

First sample... Just on an oddment of linen.

I'm rather happy with the result although the linen curled away a bit near the letters and the black part of the face isn't perfect. During the rest of the week I optimized the pattern file and I hope to get a better result this afternoon.
 
On Tuesday I assembled some British Lineinfatrymen which shall form the 3rd bataillon of the Royal Scots for my Waterloo project. A good start but nothing to stress your eagle eyes with.

Wednesday evening was heavily interesting because another Bernhard, friend of mine, asked me to help him with some historical research for a 1812 Russia retreat skirmish game he has been working on since last year. Perfect timing though that the Perry twins presented some new greens for this setting last week (link).

But the highlight was yesterday. At about 3 o'clock Viktoria (our heartly beloved, two-and-a-half-year jackanapes-daughter as some of you might remember) phoned me in at work and told me that the postman brought a parcel which must contain a bagpipe whithout any doubt.
Obviously she was waiting for it even more urgently than I did myself:

My bagpipe "Hümmelchen".

This small thing is of course no Great Highland Bagpipe as you see but a small German Renaissance backpipe called "Hümmelchen". It has just one drone and a flute that can be played similarly as a recorder with German fingering. It's rather popular among medieval or Renaissance musicians and those you make music on medieval fairs. Not all pieces I want to play are truely medieval but at least sound kind of medievalish. Maro Siegismund a crafted instrument maker from Ore Mountains in Saxony made it for me and after five or six weeks of waiting I received this wonderful workpiece made of pear wood and leather.

Whoever of you is bold enough may turn your ears to one of my first tries:

Actually it went a bit better than I feared but it's really complicated to hold constant pressure from the bag. Additionally the flute takes a bit for me to get used to because it's holes are smaller are more difficult to sense than those of my old recorder. However I'll keep practicing and maybe it'll sound a bit like that one day: Sample from Mario himself.

Well then... Enough news for now. I hope to get more hobby things done this weekend or next week and I'll keep you in the loop.