We Nelis and Runi live together with our family in the Mecklenburg Forest.
I Nelis am Dutch (so if there are spelling mistakes anywhere on the website it is something I have written and not yet corrected) In 2005 I moved to Mecklenburg to live with Dagmar in a shared flat. My idea was to set up a canoe workshop there. I had worked as a software tester in the Netherlands for six years and now I wanted to do something nice, useful and tangible with my hands. So for me something with wood. After a year my first daughter Loes was born and I had a reasonably furnished workshop of 150m2, my first canoe quickly followed.
Then the flat-sharing community disbanded and we moved.... Several times.
In spring 2009 we (now also Jonna, my second daughter) lived at Lake Tollensesee. I now had a workshop of 6m2 so building canoes was not really possible, I couldn't find a bigger workshop and I was no longer really convinced that I wanted to work with epoxy resin.
A friend who accompanies people on drum journeys saw for herself that I could build a good drum for her. Making drum frames was great to do in a tiny workshop.
First octagonal, later nine and twelve angular and now 24 segments (you really can't call them angular any more). I taught myself (back then as a vegetarian) with books how to make drumheads from freshly peeled animal skin and experimented until I found a good tensioning method for myself.
We then moved twice more.
In 2016 in a former pigsty we built ourselves on the property of a good friend of ours, my son Tonda was born and Runi joined us. since then I have been building the drum together with Runi and since 2017 I have had our son Koran with her.
In 2018, seven of us moved again to our own place in the forest where we now live.
Our drum building method has crystallised quite a bit, but experimenting and playing is still very important to me. There are always a few different projects in the workshop (which fortunately is now a bit bigger than 6m2 again).
I have made cigar box guitars, tin can banjos, various rattles, kanteles (Finnish stringed instrument), cajons, kazoos and more and I will probably make them all again someday and I always have a few projects half finished in the workshop or in a drawer.
I discovered flutes in the summer of 2020 and I'm far from finished with them. So far, I have Indian flutes, overtone flutes and a few experimental flutes.
Who knows what else will be added? I don't but a „few“ ideas are always swirling around in my head 🙂
In any case, I have found one of my great passions through and with drums.