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Well, John Barr's banjo is just about wrapped up. You can see the final photos in the gallery, 5th from the left. It's a real nice one - real nice, indeed.

Anyhow, the first heavy snows are falling something awful outside the banjo factory here in Jamaica Plain. Happy holidays. This is the time of year when your faithful banjo maker finds himself in an annual winter melancholy. Inevitably due, if nothing else, to the short, cold, and dark New England days of December, the only cure seems to be a strict course of laying on the floor and listening to the carters until the sun starts shining again in April.

Meanwhile, the workshop is a little bit colder, and I can't sit outside on the front step carving away at my banjo necks, as I am wont to do under friendlier climates. But the work is still peaceful, and the banjos still roll off the line as true to form as ever. Rick's is next up on the bench along with a little number I've been working on for myself.