Here is a summary of handbell ringing activity for February 2014, based on performances published on Bell Board.  In doing the roundup I look at all lengths, since for any growing handbell band, peals only tell a small part of the story.

First some significant milestones.....

• John Jelley has...

A few thoughts based on our experiences.

• Not enough people. We don't have a large pool of ringers to draw on, so it's difficult to get a 12-bell band together often enough to be able to steadily improve from session to session. In our Kent Maximus attempt last Saturday, Nick...

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...

Here is a quick roundup of the handbell highlights in January 2014.  My source for these is The Ringing World's Bell Board.  I'll be developing this as the year goes on, so suggestions and comments are very welcome, and if you have a performance you would like to see...

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...

Another piece of my early handbell ringing history has fallen away with the death of Edward W Martin last year on 18 November.  As extensive tributes from the North America Guild of Change Ringers show (see www.nagcr.org), Eddie and his wife Ann were hugely influential in early years of the...

We had a little extra handbell focus over the Christmas holidays, due to an invitation to a handbell weekend on Tulloch Farm.

Tulloch is possibly more well-known as the location of a quite new ring of 12 bells, but owners Peter Bevis and Helen McGregor are widely known as very...

We haven't reported on any of our ringing since the handbell day, so here's a quick summary of what we have been up to.

• We succeeded with a quarter of Superlative Major with Marcus, using a simple and easy composition (six homes, called sbbsbb). The exotic compositions from a previous...

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...

By most standards, scoring less than half of one's scheduled quarter peal attempts would be considered a bit of a letdown.  However, our haul of five quarters from thirteen attempts felt – and was – very successful.  And the mix of Plain Bob and Kent on 6 and 8 represented...