The rest of this is a blur...one BIG smiling "Mudcat Magic" blur........

After playing Kendall's guitar, I relaxed about replacing mine...resigned a bit I guess...that it wouldn't be happening soon. I continued playing the borrowed autoharp a lot...and the borrowed guitar seldom...cuz it hurt my hands to play it. And the months went by...

In the radio and Paltalk chat rooms (and threads??) we learned that kat wanted to get an instrument..and we encouraged her to find a Dulcimer. She did .....and within a week she was playing tunes WELL with it in Paltalk. It was and still IS a "match".

Soon after, she found an old Autoharp for sale on e-bay, and again.....we encouraged her to get it. It was NOT a match. Myself and a few other autoharp players argued with her in the chat rooms....and the threads...trying to convince her to give it more of a chance...maybe she wasn't holding it right...sitting right...etc.,etc. We suggested that before she gave up on it, she wait until she could get together with another autoharp player, to help her with it. She kept saying, it simply wasn't the instrument for her. I let her know that if she was SURE she didn't want it..I might be interested in buying it from her.

Within a couple of days I received an e-mail from her saying....."You will please allow my heart to do this for you...check your mail in a few days."

Within a few days kat's autoharp arrived in the mail. She's beautiful...an old Oscar Schmidt...with the "right" mellow sound...BUT someone had replaced the bars on it and the buttons weren't in the right places to evenly press the bars down. So....I called kat to let her know that the autoharp itself had a gorgeous sound. I described what the problem was that she had been having with it and told her that I would fix it and send it back to her.

She gave me ANOTHER (bg) lecture on learning to "receive" more graciously and so...I took the FIRST step to replacing my instruments and......muttered....."thank-you".

A little late with this, but I want to SHOUT......

THANK-YOU KAT!!!!!......the autoharp continues to give me pleasure and sounds purrrrfect to my ear.