One string at a time

After moving to a rented apartment, I decided to finally get around to replacing the missing string of my Celtic harp. I had the string, but the tuning key had gotten misplaced in the move.

I had already ordered and returned one from Amazon (the wrong size) and was getting frustrated at finding keys I could order from the U.S. but they were either super-expensive when you took customs and shipping into account, or the shop had a policy of not shipping to Canada (likely because of Canada Post's unpredictability last year as well as potential tariff complications).

In the old days, I'd turn to the Twitter hivemind, but I'm not posting on Twitter anymore.

So I posted on Bluesky!

And wow, I was floored by all the kind reposts and replies. Special thanks to Michael Ian Black for reposting. So many suggestions as well as one person who even volunteered to send me one of their own tuning keys. I ended up ordering one from Long & McQuade, a Canadian music shop (thanks for the reminder, @kerrycornelius.bsky.social) - the Toronto shop had none, so they shipped one from another part of Canada...Nanaimo, I think?

Anyway, I was finally able to replace the string on Friday, with the help of my husband. My challenge these days is tendinitis in one arm and an injured rotator cuff in the other. Both are gradually recovering, but I'm being super-careful and not wanting to suffer a relapse.

As you can tell from the photo at the top, I have some pretty old strings on my harp that need replacing! The new string is the second one from the left, but you can see the rust (!) on the one beside it, ugh. So embarrassing.

The harp is a lever harp made by Larry Fisher in Winnipeg, Canada. It was custom-made for me, including the hand-painted decoration. As for the how and why behind this harp....that's a story best saved for another post.

Above: an old photo of me playing my harp. I can tell it's old because of my glasses, and because my hair has no grey in it. 😂

But I digress.

For those who have never changed their strings on a harp before, you can't just put the string on and expect to start playing as normal. The string, especially one of the bass strings, will stubbornly resist staying in tune. Every day, I've been re-tuning it; for those curious, I use the Tuner T1 app on my iPhone.

However, I'm still going through and gradually tuning. I'm also going to gradually go through and gradually replace some of the older strings. It will take a while, but I know that if I push myself and do everything at once, my wimpy tendons will not be happy.

So...patience.

And much gratitude for the Bluesky community.

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