recording this here, or I will never be able to find it again

Today one of my friends on FB posted a link to a video of an Egyptian tunic from the 8th Century, followed by still photos in the comments of other, similar style tunics:

A blue 7 to 9th Century one currently in a museum in Canada:


a plainer, cream coloured one:



and a mosaic showing what they look like when one wears them with a belt:



I have, of course, seen tunics like these before, in photos of the original garment, lying flat on a table, just like in the first part of the video, where she shows cool details of the stitching and weaving. But it wasn't until she had a model wearing a reproduction and I could see how the over-sized garment looks as it drapes over the body, when one wears it with a belt, that I actually wanted one.

so many interesting projects, so little time. Perhaps I should finish the tunic in progress before I start something new...

acroyoga, aerial silks, and awesome fun times

Last night was another Phire practice session. Since we are at the school gym on Fridays we can bring the aerial silks and hang them from the trapeze set. At first I couldn't manage to climb at all. Never mind that last time I tried this, in mid-December, I managed to climb all the way to the top, this time I couldn't get off the ground at all the first many times I tried. The other girls demonstrated several different techniques, but no matter which foot wrap I tried my arms simply weren't pulling me up at all.

So I took a break, did some shoulder rolls with one of the sticks, and then went back to it, and suddenly it clicked, and I climbed easily to the top. Yay!

However, I didn't wind up doing so many tricks on the silks, because soon thereafter several of us started doing hand-stand training stuff and acroyoga poses. I love acroyoga! One of the girls has had a course in circus stuff, so knows how to do a fair few things, so with her as base I did quite a few things. First the basic flying pose, balanced on her feet (as she lays on her back with her legs in the air). I have been doing that one since I was a small child, but she showed me how to get into it without any hands at all. Just hold my body stiff, and lean into her feet and let her do most of the lifting.

From there we went into a "throne" position, were I shift my weight onto only one of her feet, so she can move the other foot to the underside of one of my legs, then I shift the other way so that she can move the other foot, then I sit up, with the bottom of my feet pressing into her shins. From there it is possible to stand up on her shins and balance there. Also from the throne she lifts her arms and puts her hands on my knees, and I shift forward, off of her feet, and kneel upright just held up by her hands under my knees (so far we are doing that part of the transition with my holding the hands of a spotter, but I can see that we aren't long from being able to do that without holding on). And from there it is possible for her to lift her legs and let me shift back around to flying on her feet. Later in the evening I got to stand on her shoulders. Fun! All of it is so much fun!

I also made time to practice a tiny bit of juggling, and picked up the poi and spun them a little for the first time. some of the boys then called us to watch the first part of their choreography they are putting together to get feedback, and that was fun as well, since we are each of us focusing on different aspects. Hopefully the appreciated all of the suggestions.

The end of the practice session came so darn fast. As we were bundling up to head outside I was talking to the girl I had been flying on, and she said that she needs to train her arms/shoulders/upper body. She said that it is easy to hold my weight on her legs, but with the arms it was hard. I told her that I had hired the personal trainer for just that purpose, and if she wants to join me in my work out sessions he gives me she would be welcome.

She was sufficiently keen that three of us agreed to meet this morning at 08:30 at the gym. Which number got bumped a bit, since they don't actually open till 09:00 on Saturdays, but still plenty early enough not to interfere with other plans for the day.

The room with the "jungle gym" in it had a class scheduled to start at 09:30, so we went straight there and did that part of the workout before class started. (Normally I can't even get into the gym on a Saturday, but since the jungle gym I had ordered on Thursday can't arrive this soon, my trainer made special arrangements to let me in the gym today, even though employee free access is normally only during business hours.) Then we moved over to the empty dance/yoga room, and did the head-stad part of the workout (whilst standing on your head, spread your legs out to the side in splits, bring them back to center, then press one forward, the other back in splits, then back to center, then the other direction forward and back, and back to center, and finally (the hard one), bring both legs forward and then lift them back to center.

After we did those several times each we started doing more acroyoga, repeating what we had done yesterday, and then trying lots more stuff. I can now say that I have done a hand-stand up against someone else's back, then have them grab my lower legs over their shoulders, bend forward, and roll/flip me over their back to land on my feet... and so many other fun acroyoga poses. So! Much! Fun! We were working out for just over two hours before we realized the day was elapsing, and perhaps we should head home.

I am so grateful that I have been doing that morning phone-app workout--the extra ab strength I have built up in that is what makes it possible to do these poses on my frist try.

And much of the rest of the day was spent in the kitchen

After leaving the gym today I drove one of the girls over to the larger grocery store near which she lives. I had been considering heading over there anyway, since the little store near the uni does carry Turkish yoghurt, but it doesn't carry the ecological (or organic, if you live in the states) variety. The fact that she would benefit from a lift (since buses don't run very often on Saturdays here) decided me, and off we went.

While I was there I not only got the Turkish yoghurt, filmjölk, and ordinary milk we needed (and some fruit and veg), I also picked up a container of the "traditional", un-homogenized, milk, thinking it might be nice to make some cheese.

Therefore, just after 13:00 today I wandered into the kitchen, set some frozen svartvinbär (black currants) into a pot on the stove with water, and told it to warm up and simmer while I made cheese (since, if I am going to be in the kitchen for quite a while, I may as well accomplish more than one task).

Then I pondered what sort of cheese I wanted to make. Certainly one of the quick varieties--I wanted to be eating it within a couple of hours, not days or even weeks from now. I considered juustoleipä (known in Swedish as kaffe ost because it is a cheese traditionally served with coffee), the yummy Finnish cheese that I learned to make from the recipe my mother's aunt Sally provided, which involves rennet. My family always just called it "juusto", even though that part of the longer name only means "cheese", and applies to everything in the cheese family). I considered a basic soft cheese made by adding lemon juice to warm milk. I considered the Indian cheese paneer, which also uses lemon juice.

All three are good, but they have Very different textures and fill very different niches. I couldn't decide so I asked lord_kjar if he had any input. Nope, none at all, he likes all three.

So I consulted a very old cheese, butter, and yoghurt making book that I inherited from my step father to see if anything in there turned out to be inspiring. Their soft cheeses all required a "starter", which involves heating milk and then leaving it sit for another day before using it. Nope. Not an option. I want my cheese, and I want it now.

However, the book did turn out to be inspiring, since in the section talking about the various ways to get the milk to curdle, it pointed out that liquid rennet loses its effectiveness with time. It has been a long time since I made jussto, so I decided that it might be smart to check and see if the liquid rennet I had in the fridge still works at all. And if it doesn't, we do have lemon juice.

Thus decided I pulled out ( the recipe )

Now, I didn't have 8 quarts of milk, I bought only two liters (which is kinda similar to 2 quarts), and I don't have rennet tablets, only liquid rennet, which, it turns out, has a best by date of January 2013 (which means it has been even longer than I thought since last I made cheese). So I did some modifications. I went to pour in a bit of rennet, and it gushed out of the bottle faster than I expected. I thought out it, and the part about "two years past its best-by date", and poured in a bit more. Since I had only a little milk compared to my great-aunt's recipe, I used only a small amount of cornstarch, even less sugar, and only a bit of salt.

Now, every time I have tried to make juusto before there was never any "press with hands till water comes to top" possible, as the curds were small and scattered--any attempt to press them caused them to separate, and my hands to sink in between them. Therefore I have needed to resort to pouring the liquid through a cheese cloth to catch the cheese. However, it always tasted good, so I just coped. This time, on the other hand, it worked! Very, very soon after stirring suddenly the pot contained a whiteish cohesive blob, which, if gently pressed with hands revealed the whey in which it was floating.

This meant that I didn't need to use a cheese cloth at all. Instead, at first, I just used a ladle to gently push down on the mass of cheese and let the liquid pour into the ladle. Once I had gathered somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of a liter of whey that way it became hard to use the ladle. So at that point we poured everything into a deep baking pan, set a mostly flat (it has a slight rim at the edge) baking pan over it, and gently tipped it to let the liquid pour out of the corner of the pan. This was a kind of slow, and slightly messy process, that involved needing to switch which corner I poured from on a fairly regular basis, as the cheese blob worked its way to the corner and slowed down the pouring. Eventually I had more than a liter of liquid poured off, and the cheese blob was small enough that I could change out the large flatish baking sheet for a small (sandwich size) plate, which I could set only over the cheese and apply a bit of pressure to it, to get the last of the water out.

By the end of the process I think I had about 1.5 liters of whey, and a small blob of cheese the same diameter as the plate (~20 cm) and almost 1 cm thick. At that point I transferred the cheese to the plate long enough to wash the whey off of the deeper pan, then put the cheese onto it and popped it into the broiler.

When I took the milk off of the heat the second time I decided that since the front burner is so much better than the back one that I would move that svartvinbärsylt in progress to the front burner. However, once the cheese was in the oven I realized that while I had done the transfer, I had also turned the wrong knobs, so the berries were sitting and waiting on an off burner, while the other back burner was happily warming the room. Oops. Though, in hind sight, that was probably a very good thing, since I didn't have berries being done and wanting attention at the same time as I was dealing with the cheese. So I re-started the heat under the fruit, and then sat on the floor to watch the cheese so that it didn't over cook. As soon as it developed a few of the characteristic brown spots I pulled out the pan, set that flatish baking dish on top and flipped them over to transfer the cheese to it so I could broil the other side.

When it was done I transferred it to another plate, and set that outside on the porch (inside the wooden box we keep out there just so we can let food cool without being eaten by the neighbourhood cats or wild critters. By this time the berries were boiling again, so I stirred them (pausing only a couple of times to go get another bite of juusto, which is every bit as yummy, and squeaky, as it is supposed to be) and waited till enough water had cooked off.

As I was cooking the berries I considered the whey. I normally bake it into bread (and really yummy bread it is, too), but this time I am also considering making the Norwegian brown cheese from it. I looked on line, and it is made only by heating whey for a long time so that it caramelizes and the liquid cooks off, and then, when it is getting kind of thick, string in cream and continuing to cook till it reaches the desired consistency.

This is really tempting. However, most sources say that this process takes 4 to 6 (or sometimes even 12) hours to accomplish, and I had just spent 4 hours standing in the kitchen, and my legs were stiff enough. Besides I didn't think of this while in the store, so I don't have any cream in the house. Tomorrow is soon enough to decide if the whey wants to be bread or brown cheese (or both).

Tomorrow I need to head to uni to pick up a friend from the Student Choir Aurora around 13:00. We will first go purchase a second hand electric keyboard so that Aurora will have a keyboard of its own, which can live at uni, and we won't have to bring ours any more on the nights that the Uni one has been checked out by one of the other clubs (which happens fairly often). Then I will bring him back here so he can try on costumes before he travels with my apprentice #2 and I to the SCA event in Finland next weekend. That event is being held in conjunction with the Finnish Early music society, which is why the three of us are interested in attending. This will be his first SCA event, I hope he enjoys it.

But, since I will be out during the day, that means I have the option of buying cream on that trip, though when I would have time to use it thereafter, I am not certain.