Hi everyone! Thanks for sharing in my enthusiasm. 🙂 I am very excited! I am actually not sleeping all that well because of the anticipation, Sherj!

Lyn, a family friend recently gave us their minivan to help me move the pedal harp and my lever harp to my school in Virginia. It only has 83,000 miles on it and mechanically it works fine. There’s some rust underneath and they were told it won’t pass inspection unless the rust is gone. They were quoted $3,000 for repairs so they were just going to scrap it! My dad actually has a sandblaster and a truck lift so we will be able to repair it for the price of the time we spend under it. 🙂

I feel a little bit bad about my lever harp, though. I saved up for 5 years for it and spent many, many hours practicing on it. Now it’s going to be a bit neglected for the first little while that I have the big harp…. I’m still going to work on Scottish music to compete in Highland Games near where I live though. 🙂

IT’S HERE!!!! It showed up as a surprise delivery this afternoon!! (I say surprise because I was supposed to get a call from the shipping company to arrange when they could deliver it, and we never got a call, and we were expecting it to arrive at their facility *next* week.) But I’ve never had a better surprise in my life!!!! The delivery truck driver was unbelievably nice. He helped my dad carry the box up the stairs to our porch and into our living room for no extra charge. He said he’d never delivered a harp before and he was very interested in it. He actually stayed around after I signed his forms to watch me unpack it, and even asked me if I could play a little tune because he’d never seen a harp played live before. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the harp was still mostly in tune even after being shipped, so I played him a Scottish tune I’d arranged for a competition a while ago. When he left to make another delivery, he said, “I’m sure you’ll have a great weekend now, won’t you?” He has NO idea! haha 🙂

I’ve already played it for a while today and the sound is even better in my living room than it was at the harp store! I took lots of pictures and I will try to post them tomorrow. 🙂

Oh no, I’m NEVER selling my lever harp. In fact, it will most likely be the harp I regularly take with me to perform until I can afford to drive myself. I put blood, sweat and tears into getting it and it really is a great harp. Most of the harpists in this area that I’ve talked to all say they’re jealous because they’ve always wanted a Dusty too! 🙂 I have to put new bass wires on the lever harp, so daily tuning should help it not feel too abandoned. 😉

I just can’t get over how big and warm the sound is from the Salvi! I can’t believe that it is only going to keep getting bigger, because it is a brand new harp. It was actually a favorite among the ladies who work at the Harp Connection. I’m going to have to make a recording and put it up here somehow so you all can see why! 😉