fairies stealing me plectrums

Do the fairies steal my plectrums are am I just a highly disorganised, forgetful and scruffy?

I believe it’s the fairies, did you know they steel rosin as well?
Gee, what could you possibly do with plectrums AND rosin??

Mary

Sorry, that was supposed to be steal rosin not steel rosin.

Mary

They bring the plectrums over to my house and exchange them for socks.

They slip through cracks in the space-time continuum and migrate to the planet of Plectropia, where they live happy and fulfilled lives, growing vegetables and raising families, alongside their neighbours, the rosin people.

In Plectropia it is considered bad taste to even mention the word string.

I vote for scruffy. All plectrum players seem to leave a scattering of plectrums behind them, like dandruff, only bigger. My husband now plays the banjo as well as the mando and the zouk and a bit of guitar. I’m getting used to finding the things everywhere. The cats play with them and then they get even more everywhere.

I think you have a fairy infestation. The best way to deal with is to bribe them with whiskey. I find that usually helps. I find my hairbrush within seconds of pouring them up a shot.

The do, they turn up in the most peculiar of places…..most peculiar….ahem.

Whiskey?

The best thing to get rid of fairies is permethrin. Sprinke it all round the edges of the room and the edges of rugs and carpets, and they’ll all be dead in the morning.

or is that silverfish? I always get them mixed up.

I mean it. Every time I do the laundry. I open up the washer are there are four or five picks bouncing around in there and four or five socks missing. Could be I have a magic washer. If you’re suffering from plectrum loss, come on over and do a load of socks.

So, who has all the socks, is what I want to know. That isn’t so bad when it’s just, say, black socks, but when you’ve a jillion poodle socks and all of them different lengths and widths and they’re all supposed to match….

According to local tradition they also stole a child from my neighbourhood called Roisin. Probably an honest mistake. But whatever you do don’t name you kids anything like Plecta or Picko - could be very dodgy.

Mind, are you sure it wasn’t johno trying to follow my advice about picking guitarists’ brains over on the accordion advice thread a few days back? https://thesession.org/discussions/5448

You could try leaving an open penknife in your case - they don’t like those one bit (the fairies - not the silverfish), and it doubles as a bodhran player inhibitor at sessions.

Make your plecs out of iron?

…and then put a really big magnet in the bottom of your husband’s case. Or in your husband?

My husband’s bottom? I’m not sure I want to think about that, Greg. ;)

What I want to know is why this piper I know leaves a scattering of plectrums behind him.Perhaps he is a fairy.

I wouldn’t ask him, if I were you.

Not only do they steal my plectra, they also steal half my good socks and replace them with ones with holes, worn elastic, and ones which are too big or small …. not to mention cover everything with thich dust every 5 years.

Get our resident wizard David A to devise an appropriate spell.
Trevor

They probably steal reeds too.

Zina, you could buy your husband one of these plectrum holders that you just stick on the back of the instrument. They’re very neat and hold about six standard size plectrums. Also, it’s a nice cheap Birthday or Christmas present. 🙂

Andy Irvine’s got a song about being given plectrums by…fairies.Green ones.So if anyone’s lost any green ones better get in touch with him.

so the fairies have syndacated, and Andy Irvine’s the godfather!

That figures…

Zina - these fairies are clever little b*ggers. They hang out in the factories where they make those plaecturm holders and hop in just as their being assembled.

I like the idea of seisflutes asking this piper if he is a fairy.

Is he a big guy in a kilt?

Please get someone to film the event.

While on the subject of plectrums…
What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on one?
I felt sorry for someone in a pub one evening who was offering
turtle shell picks. I shelled over $30 in a drunken moment of
charity and delusions of grandeur. I still have the plectrum and I guard it jealously. It does provide a nice ‘pop’ as was advertised to me. I hope to pass it on to a worthy picker someday way in the future. By the way, I’ve never spent more than $1 on a plectrum before or since.

This may take years for all you youngsters to attain.

I now *find* the same number of flatpicks that that I *lose*

They are everywhere. In my glove box, in the seat cushions, in the pockets of old suits, in the washroom, dresser drawers, garage, tool boxes.

It has taken all my life so far and is one of my proudest accomplishments.

Don’t quit buying picks….buy buy buy.

One day you too will cease to suffer the personal embarrasment of

Pickopenia

LOLOLOL

Since none of the instruments I play require a plectrumtrum, I don’t suppose I could contribute anything of any worth on this thread.

Although, one time I did discover 3 plectrums, a bodhran stick and a beer mat in my whistle bag.

I think the fairies were a little tipsy that night.

just re-read my post (note to self: read them BEFORE I post them) and realised that i put plectrumtrum.

……………..oh my god……………

That’s all right. Isn’t this whole thread a plectantrum? 🙂

Is a plectrumtrum a special plectrum for playing doublets? Is a plectrantum something you do (throw) before burning your Bouzouki?

I gave up using plecs because I inevitably found they’d shoot through the sound hole of the guitar in the middle of a performance, leaving me in a complete flap. I like the idea of a piece of string attached to the plectrum and up your sleeve, etc. Better then a rattling guitar full of plecs (never any socks in there though)

Bristol, nobody, and I mean nobody, buys plectrums. I think that’s what the thread is about. I’ve a house full of them, and don’t play the guitar.

That’s not true, bodhranbliss! If you DON’T play with the things, you’ll end up with a house scattered round with them. If you DO play with the things, you will never be able to find your favorite one, any of the backup ones, or anything remotely close — all you’ll have is the kind you’ve rejected as not worth playing with in the past, so then you have to go down and buy even more of your favorite kind, only to watch them gradually disappear into the sunset over the next week…

Zooks, this was one of the best threads ever. I’d say that, for a good number of folks here, if the Irish trad. music market dries up, you could do a good turn as stand-up comics. And I think that there should be a "rim-shot" MP3 function available on this Web site to accentuate some of these wittier responses.

Jim, the problem with nails is, as you get older, have kids, mortgage, more responsibilities, etc., you tend to chew ‘em (the nails, that is).
Plus, I find that trying to type with prominent nails is real difficult.

Re opening beer bottles: A former roommate of mine, in the midst of laying waste to a case of brewskis, declared to me that he had been taking "Spartan lessons" and was now ready to do the open-the-beer-bottle-in-the-crook-of-your-elbow trick. So he placed the head of the bottle in the appropriate place and made the prescribed movements.

…and proceeded to scream in pain, rush for the bathroom, and apply copious bandages.

Me, I’ll stick with the church key, tanxveramuch.

I play mandolin, recently lost a plectrum I got in 1973, so you could be right, Zina. As for finger nails, I lost those the same year.

My fairies are just malicious little brats. Knowing that I guard my plectra like own life, In critical moments they replace them with others of a wrong thickness, so that I notice only when I’m on stage or in a session and it’s too late. I don’t even know where they get them from. So there I end up trying to keep the beat and the delicate feel with a plectrum-shaped piece of SWAT urban-combat shield.

Well, for now at least I seem the have the fairies at bay. I bought a little box that wasn’t intended specifically for picks, so they didn’t know to move into it in advance, and I changed to using florescent yellow picks. They apparently don’t care for the color. Niether do I, but you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Since that time I was actually able to wear out a delrin pick. Took me some years. The down side is that we had grown so worn in together that it took me some days to learn to play all over again when I decided the time had come to replace.

The weird thing is that, looking in my pick box, even though I’ve only bought three picks in the last several years, all Fender florescent yellow delrin, it seems to be filling up with picks of all shapes, sizes, materials and colors. I guess they think I’ve finally blown the old head gasket by using ugly arse picks and are trying to get me to improve myself.

Fairies is funny little critters, ain’t they?

KFG

See? You *do* have fairies, or maybe that’s silverfish. (I’ve made several people laugh quite hard with your permethrin thing, Dave. Heh.) They just happen to *like* you, KFG.

Oh, goody. Liked by fairies. Now *there’s* something to be happy about. I’ve heard the tales ( and read Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies.)

Next thing you know I’ll find myself crawling out of a barrow and saying, "Hey, where’d everybody go?" only to find out 200 years have gone by.

But at least I’ll be well supplied with guitar picks I don’t like.

"Liked" by fairies. You might just as well shoot me now.

KFG

KFG: Kentucky Fried Goat? I just wondered.

Another goat? What’s with all the goats all of a sudden? (KFG, I just re-read Lords and Ladies the other night, how funny you should bring it up.) At least 200 years would give you plenty of time to practice. ;)

"KFG: Kentucky Fried Goat? I just wondered."

Oh man, you guys are slow. I usually only have to wait no longer than my second post at a new forum for the "Kentucky Fried…" stuff to start.

As it happens they’re my actual initials, so you can blame my parents. I know I do. Going by your initials is an old UNIX wizardy sort of thing. I seem to have rendered my login name in upper case though. That’s weird. I may have my wizard status revoked over that which will also mean having change my login name to a nonwizard variety. They take longer to type.

"(KFG, I just re-read Lords and Ladies the other night, how funny you should bring it up.)"

I am possessed by a cat. I think of that one all the time.

"At least 200 years would give you plenty of time to practice. ;)"

Ok, so maybe the fairies would boot me out after only 100 years. There’s only so much of me practicing one can stand, even if you’re a fairy. I’ve got a relatively new upstairs neighbor. I’ve been waiting for months for him to bang on the floor or something and yell, "Shut the hell up already!" Instead the landlady came up to me the other day and told me, "Stephen came up to me the other day and asked, ‘How many instruments does Kevin play?" Maybe he’s just taken to wearing earplugs around the house. Especially when I get the PVC horns going. (The answer is all of them, except double reeds. I’ll have to make a PVC oboe to deal with that issue).

It would have its advantages though. When I followed up a quaker hymn with Escape Club’s Wild Wild West people wouldn’t look at me so funny. It would just be another traditional song.

And I could really work the scratchy old timer schtick when I play fiddle.

Of course you can bet there’ll be some "purist" who comes up to me to tell me that I don’t play my own tunes right. When you start getting to be an old timer (not that that describes *me* you understand. I still have several years to go before I can celebrate the Golden Anniversary of first picking up a stick) you notice a funny thing about tradition. It’s never quite the same after the fact as it was when you were there.

KFG

That’s because it’s not tradition while you’re there, of course. The whole point of tradition is that you weren’t there and you’re carrying "it" (whatever definition of "it" you choose to use) on. 🙂

Terry Pratchett says that he understands that Greebo has his own all-female fan club, and he doesn’t quite get it. 🙂

My working definition for traditional has come to be:

"Whatever you misremember your grandparents doing."

And watching the neo-hippies go by I’m starting to understand why my grandparents spent so much time laughing at me.

KFG

"Whatever you misremember your grandparents doing" - not bad.

Mostly I remember my grandparents wore uncomfortable clothes and smelled of talcum powder and latex, and all conversations came around to the war (they had lived in London through WWII). And my father argued with his parents and was unspeakably rude to my mother’s.

My grandparents lived a long way away and so they were never really a close part of my upbringing. They, along with aunts and uncles and cousins, were some strangers who we visited about once a year. Cousins we were expected to like just because they were related - although in reality they were mostly pale snivelly kids with runny noses and no idea what to do in a tight spot. Of course, when we visited them we were all dressed in our best clothes, and then sent out to play but warned not to get dirty. How the heck does that work?

enough.

Not to dispel anyone’s belief in fairies, but a few years ago, I bought a little plastic pick holder that had a little spring inside it to keep the things secure, and holds 3 or 4 picks. It came with double sticky tape, but I couldn’t bear to stick it on my guitar, so I drilled some holes in the back and fastened it to my strap with sail twine. Since then, I am no longer visited by fairies or gremlins or any other pick-stealing phantoms.
AL Brown

bloody hell KFG, what a thing to admit to! not many old school unix wizards around here. oh usenix, sigh.

Brings back memories of the Appellation Mountains and of playing bluegrass banjo with Kaiser metal banjo picks. Got into some good home brew. I enjoyed the evening, but felt a certain pain in the butt. I found my lost Kaiser the next morning stuck in my right cheek. So I can at least recommend these picks for not getting lost. I suppose you could magnitize them and mount them on your refrigerator beside the grocery list. Do they make metal plectrums?