Today I played at the Farmers Market.

Very humid, but cool and breezy enough that I didn’t feel too worn down until around 1:30 or so.

First, my student Emory and I played together for about forty minutes. He’s eleven, and has been taking lessons for about two years. He’s one of those kids with aptitude for and interest in a variety of things. He’s been playing piano for years, recently took up oboe, and is also learning lampworking — a method of making glass objects. He’s already composed some nice and creative original hammered dulcimer tunes. We divided our time among his solo pieces, one of mine, duets where we take turns on melody while the other accompanies, and others where he played melody and I played chords. We had fun and folks at the market were properly impressed; I am pleased.

Then my trio arrived, and we played together for a little over two and a half hours. We still make more mistakes than I’d like, but we also still have a lot of fun playing together, and people seemed to enjoy our music. Our arrangements and playing are definitely improving because of the work we’re putting in for our home recording. One thing that was fun today was that we set up in a rather tight triangle instead of our usual line. The fiddler and I were basically face to face. I have to look at my instrument a lot in order to keep my place and play accurately, and he often plays with his eyes closed. We made eye contact fairly often, though; another form of the paying attention to one another that makes doing music with other people such a pleasure.

To my surprise, I sold twice as many of my debut CD as I had the previous best-selling market day this season — I actually sold all of that one that I’d brought with me. I ordered a thousand when I recorded it in 2002, and now I have fewer than 200 left. I really never thought I’d ever sell them all, but now that’s not such a bizarre idea.

The Belgian waffle with whipped cream and strawberries was a nice way to end the market day, and it was nice of Christi Sobel, an artist who helped me with the graphic design on my second CD, to help me eat it.