Lifelines - my new album

You may have noticed that I've been silent for the past year or so. I needed time to reflect on my health and felt the time had come to explore new directions. This doesn't necessarily mean that I won't be knitting any longer, but it does mean that I won't be publishing books, patterns or doing workshops, although the jury is still out on knitters' tours 😍.

Since I was diagnosed with myeloma four years, it's been hard to make any major life decisions, not knowing what the future might hold or how well I would feel. However, I did feel that I needed to keep stress to a minimum and so make a few changes in my lifestyle. Music has always sustained me through the difficult times and has the power to make my spirits soar. As well as listening to  music, I love writing songs, singing and playing my guitar.

So when Tristan, my eldest son, suggested I record some of my songs for the grandchildren, at first I thought I'd do that on my phone. But the more I thought about it, the more excited by the idea I became - if it was worth doing, it was worth doing well.  So not without much apprehension, I reminded myself of an affirmation I'd being doing - fear is the fuel for my success, I take bold action in spite of fear - and took the plunge.   I contacted Melrose Yard Studios and booked my first two-hour session last April!

Eventually after many two-hour sessions with Dom Frazer, my patient and supportive engineer, by September the album was ready to be pressed. It was an all-consuming passion for me over the summer - practising, recording, editing, designing the cover and the little booklet of lyrics and credits. P was ever to hand organising licences and so many other helpful jobs. So when the postman eventually arrived with the two small boxes, we could hardly wait to open the box 🥂😀.

After sending out copies to friends and family, Felix, my youngest son, suggested I put the album on Spotify, mainly as younger people don't seem to have CD players any longer. This was supposed to be a quick process, taking just a few days, but turned out to take months due to various hitches with the licensing of a few cover tracks. However, at the beginning of this week, bingo, there it was, also on itunes and a whole host of other places as well.

Front and back covers

So my plan now in the coming weeks is to feature each of the sixteen tracks as a blogpost, with the back story and lyrics. 

`Inside cover

Meanwhile you can now find the whole album on Spotify, but here's a taster:

                                                    

Great to be back, thanks for listening,