Woodside Farm Creamery
D’Addario Helicore Violin Strings
Through a summer haze of bug bites, various skin infections and rashes, even intermittent sun poisoning despite the best efforts of La Roche-Posay, we’ve again dropped into the lap of another week. Without a story. But we are close. Like this week, stringing newly acquired ½ and ¼ size fiddles. The bench is littered with wrappings from D’Addario, their Helicore strings. Nearly every fiddle refurbishment gets Helicores.
While competitors put “student quality” strings on their fiddles, Helicores have proven, again and again, to product better tones, making my efforts so much more satisfying. The thrilling grin of a teacher giving feedback on a fiddle unplayed for decades, the student who buys or borrows the instrument, even myself, largely untrained.
Constant improvement, meticulous attention to quality, a true value despite their cost. It’s D’Addario for me. Mandolin, guitar, violin, even Pete’s bouzouki wears D’Addario.
Helicore violin strings are crafted with a multi-stranded steel core, resulting in optimal playability while producing a clear, warm tone. The smaller string diameter provides quick bow response. Premium quality materials combined with skilled workmanship produces strings known for excellent pitch stability and longevity. D’Addario
Woodside Farm Creamery
A FAMOUS WRITER ONCE told me, “You always want to have a couple of stories in your back pocket. You don’t want to be out with your buddies, everyone savoring their own delicious tale, and come up empty”. Same goes true for money. This weekend, however, I came up blank. Pocket lint. 88˚ and triple-digit humidity boils the brain. Creative juices squeezed out, my skull resembles an original Denis Papin steam digester, c. 1679.
When it is time to cool off, to bring about brain freeze, most iced drinks can satisfy. Though isn’t life about enhancements. Ice cream, please. If we are going to consume sugar calories, why not make it the best ice cream this side of the Monongahela River! To the source we travel. With carriage and four-in-hand, back in time we clatter, through Delaware’s Arc to the 1700s farm of the Mitchell family.
With milk-fat levels approaching my cholesterol numbers, this is real ice cream. It sits upon the tongue, infusing smiles and euphoria. Where kids can be kids, clocks slow, and the bluegrass circle plays on. Under the big oak tree, mature even in colonial times. We eat our treasure, cows looking on. Children’s laughter sets the beat, as faithful renditions of Doc Watson’s honest clarity measure time.
Farm fresh ice cream ~ Worth the trip!
American Toolbox 