North Texas Irish Festival 2008

[Ronusan]

You're probably right about the Guinness being $6. I just remembered it was a dollar more than the rest. Then the Irish Stew was like another $7, and the Haggis & Tatties, and some more Guinness, and the Fish & Chips....

Anybody make it to the "swap meet" that was supposedly there on Sunday? I remembered reading a mention of it on the NTIF website but we didn't run across it. Sounded interesting.

[Cynthia]

I didn't even know about a swap meet, so I don't remember seeing anything like that (now watch... I probably walked right past it ).

How were the workshops? I was a little bummed I didn't get to go to the fiddle workshop.

[Ronusan]

Mandolin workshop the guy went off on tangents quite a bit and it was difficult to hear but overall pretty informative, worth it just for the easy arrangements of a Jig and Reel that he provided to practice with and the good advice of "this is not bluegrass, don't try and play it like bluegrass."

Penny Whistle was fun but it felt (and sounded) a little like a class full of elementary school kids playing Recorder. She provided some to play on during the workshop for any that wanted to borrow one and also gave us a nice packet of fairly simple whistle sheet music with some very helpful notes on techniques. I got lost quite a bit during her teaching as she referred a lot to the techniques by their Celtic/piping terms (cut, tip, roll, etc) that I don't know well enough yet. Very informative though and should up the "authenticity" of my playing quite a bit!

Missed the Bodhran one earlier in the day as I think it was during a performance we were trying to catch.