cold hands are not anyone's playthings

For three days, I played no banjo. My fingers got all soft and flabby. There was moping. But the (un)motivating factor was extreme exhaustion, so if I had pushed myself to practice, it likely would not have gone anywhere satisfying.

Then I broke my fast and played. I played the songs that I know the tunes to well enough that I can actually tell how close I am to how I want to sound ("Good Night Ladies" and "Cripple Creek"), which are also my slide songs. Even if I haven't mastered other songs that came before these, it's not like I don't need to practice my slides. So that was where I spent most of my time. I also decided to treat myself to a little skipping ahead to read about and try out the next two techniques: pull-offs and hammer-ons. And they are, in fact, just as you would imagine from the name. It's still a strange new coordination to learn, though, when to apply the left-hand finger with respect to when the right hand hits the string. But that was a lovely and nutritious little jelly donut for my brain. Wow. Weird metaphor. Sorry.

The big new thing, as we move into fall, I must rely on technology to keep my hands warm enough for me to play at all. Right now I'm using a combination of some drugstore stretchy gloves that my dad cut the fingers off of, and a pair of nice wooly wristbands that my mother-in-law brought back from Scandinavia. It's great for my right hand, but the glove part sometimes dampens the first string, which is not all that helpful. I'm trying to figure out if there is some way to make something that is both palmless and mostly fingerless but still skin-covering enough that my fingers will be able to move at a reasonably swift pace. This calls for some knitting/crochet experimentation. If only that wouldn't cut into my pickin' time.