St. Patrick's Day--A Day for Pipers

St. Patrick's Day is a busy day for Celtic Cross Pipes and Drums. We started the day by gathering at the parade site by 10:00 AM. The band leads the parade along with city officials and cheerleaders from the local parochial high school. These photos were taken as our Pipe Major, Kevin, tuned our pipes before the parade. The morning was chilly and foggy, but the sun came out and burned off the fog. By the afternoon we were quite comfortable in just our shirt sleeves.

As we were tuning I wore a blue lace shawl over my jacket. The Oak Leaf and Acorn shawl was knitted over 25 years ago from a pattern in Knitting World by Linda Carlson. It is still one of my favorite shawls and is the perfect blue for our Flower of Scotland tartan. Before we headed to the front of the parade I loaned it out to one of our band "support staff" as she was shivering in the cold. I'll try to get a photo of it when she brings it back to me.

After marching through Peoria's downtown we played at Sully's, a popular bar downtown. Then we hiked back to the beginning of the parade route and drove to the second bar of the day. In all we played about 10 places. By the end of the day (8 PM) my shoulder and arm were sore from putting pressure on the bag and my feet and legs were sore from wearing ghillies all day. Still, it was a fun day and we were able to add a sizeable sum to the band coffers.