Since completing our 8-spliced project last June, we have turned our attention to another spliced challenge - that of ringing Horton's 4 (Glasgow, Bristol, Belfast, London) in hand.   Well.  After some detours into other little projects and the odd handbell day.

The impetus to get started was provided by the...

After ringing a quarter of Bristol on the handbell day, we hatched a plan for Julia to come up from Penrith to ring a peal. It was the half term holiday down there (a week later than ours), so she was able to bring her daughters for an overnight trip. We gave...

This week we tried something new, with a quarter of cyclic spliced Kent and Oxford. "Cyclic" refers to a 7-part composition in which the part ends are 12345678, 13456782, 14567823, 15678234, 16782345, 17823456, 18234567. Cyclic spliced has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in Maximus and usually with...

We have been working on our current project, a peal of 8-spliced, for a while. We rang our first quarter in November 2012, and since then we've rung several more quarters, and lost a peal a few times. We find it difficult to get together for peal attempts, so we...

Last week started well on Sunday with a quarter of Primrose in the tower, and continued well on Monday with a date touch of 8-spliced. The date touch was a textbook operation: we sat down, started ringing, continued until the end, and stopped. Some of the leads of London...

Well, maybe not. But in our continuing 8-spliced project, we decided that these are the methods we need more practice at, so we rang them in a quarter with a nice palindromic six-part composition:

1344 Spliced Surprise Major (4m)
Simon J Gay
   2345678
----------
S  5738264
P- 7864523
B- 6784523...

A few weeks ago I attended my first module of the ITTS (Integrated Teaching Training Scheme), and while I am not sure I ever gained mastery over the many acronyms floating about, I came away with some interesting ideas, which have some applications to handbell ringing.

The most productive concept...

On Saturday we had another successful Scottish Handbell Day, which Tina will write about soon. On Sunday we had a session of trying to make progress with our 8-spliced project. As we have been out of practice over the summer, rather than going for a peal we decided to ring...

Yesterday evening we rang with Marcus; we had agreed to go for a quarter of Pudsey. I decided that we all need more practice at all the positions in Pudsey, so I put together a composition in which each handbell pair rings at least a whole course of every position...

This morning I came across an interesting blog post on productivity, which is titled 'The McDonald's Theory' (there's a link at the bottom of this post).  The theme is how to get started on a project, particularly a difficult, long, or still rather amorphous project.  The conclusion: just start, even...