Ich hab' ja das letze Märzwochenende damit zugebracht, mir meine ganz tolle eigene Harfe zu bauen. Ich hatte das hier schon auf Englisch geschrieben und bin zu faul, es zu übersetzen. Aber im Zweifelsfall sprechen die Bilder für sich ^^

This is pretty Frau von Lerchenfeld!



*beams*

As you can see, she's pretty tall too - almost goes up to my shoulder. 34 strings, standard spacing (blah) and made of ash. Excpept for the soundboard, which is made of spruce and which is the reason for my harp being Frau von Lerchenfeld. See, the soundboard is essential for the tone of the harp. And as the workshop instructor told us, this particular spruce wood stems from the Fichtelgebirge, from a wood which belongs to a Baron von Lerchenfeld. And since I had been pondering what my lovely new harp should be called, I thought: Here we go, that's a perfect last name for a harp! (I had considered calling her "Wolfi vom Eschenbaum" unless something more fitting came up.)

She doesn't have a first name yet though. Well, technically speaking she does, because this harp model is called "Gwendolin". But ... dunno :D

Okay, I didn't build the whole harp on my own of course. The harp maker who held the course had already prepared the sound box as well as the pillar and neck with all the holes drilled, so basically what we had to do was:

1. Think up a design for the sound holes and cut them out.



My initial intention was to carve some leaves onto the front of the pillar, in which case I would have made the design of the sound holes very simple with only three circles. But I was afraid the carving wouldn't turn out the way I wanted, so I refrained from that, meaning I now needed to have something a bit mor ornamental on the back. I thought about ivy leaveas, I thought about a snake or a lizard, but again I was afrraid it wouldn't turn out the way I wanted. (Humm. I had known for months that I was going to design the sound holes, but somehow I couldn't be bothered to make a proper pattern in advance - I guess I needed to have the wood in front of me or something like that). So as the evening wore on and I had to make up my mind, I decided to stick with the circles instead, but make many-many of them. (Air bubbles, water drops, planets, the perfect form - can you feel the symbolism? ^^)



And since the couse instructor had this box full of delicate rosettes, I decided to adorn my harp with three triskels. And isn't it a conicidence that the logo of my folk band sports a triskel as well ...

2. Glue the base to the sound box.



Look, it's a bondage harp! *g*

3. And from then on it was basically sanding, sanding sanding by hand for about eight hours straight.

Until the wood was all smoooooooth. *caresses*
And look, my harp is an Xbox!



Isn't that cool? (Especially as I never owned any kind of Play Station thingy.)

4. Oiling the harp from tip to toe, which smelled really nice (and still does).

And then of course the inevitable (which was actually far less exerting than the sanding) ...

5. Put on 34 strings.

6. Tune them.

7. Tune them again.

8. And again.

9. etc. pp.

So now Frau von Lerchenfeld has been lodging with me for two weeks, she almost stays in tune and the sound is developing beautifully. And yesterday the first string cracked (with a rather frightful sound) – I think Mylady was a bit miffed that I left here alone over Easter ...

... which brings me to a nice phrase I read at the Harfenforum: "Harps are like potato crisps: You can never have just one." Meaning sooner or later I might just have to get a cute little travel harp ... or as someone in the workshop said: "Der Trend geht zur Zweitharfe!" XD

Anyway, this is me and Frau von Lerchenfeld right at the end of the workshop:



*off to pluck some more*