Thanks Arnie and Jon for some practical suggestions. I'll look into them this week, and let ya know.

I have been developing, what may be bad habits, but it owrks for me ... using a combination of 3 fingered style picking and some thumb picking with brushing. Since I use my nails on fingers and a thumb pick, it seems to work out OK. It also makes it easy fro me to switch back-and-forth from brushing to picking within the same song.

I've even tried using a flat pick for some ... had an interesting sound when plucking out melodies along with the fiddle - plectrum style. I may be wandering a bit in my development, but I'm having fun! Still the comments here can help me from straying too far off the beaten path!