Violin workshop

The lunatic lutherie learnin' vacation is keeping us very busy. It's only barely an overstatement to say that it's 24/7 violin building. There is little structure to the workshop, with a couple of short lectures each week, and a certain amount of scheduled one-on-one time with the instructor. Mainly, though, it's just everybody beavering away at their particular project or talking about violin building. The shop opens at 8 and closes at 11, and the whole time it sounds like a combination of the woodworking section of Santa's workshop and a kaffeeklatsch.

We have joined right in to the mania. We both know that we should go out and get some exercise, or eat, or sleep, or write postcards, but dang it--the fiddle isn't done yet. Lutherie is a good exercise for obsessives, since it encourages fussing over tenths of millimeters. As beginners in the hobby, it is interesting to plunge into such a crowd of maniacs; it reminds me of visiting a lunatic asylum, and feeling as if you could fit right in. It's starting to creep into my dreams as well: after working during the day on cutting out the F-holes on my fiddle while somebody mentioned the album "This Year's Model," last night I dreamt that I got into fisticuffs with Elvis Costello over the subject of F-hole placement.