(no subject)

[kareina]

hmmm, my last post indicates that it was my intention to post "regularly". It has been five days. Clearly my definition of "regularly" has changed when I wasn't looking.

So, what have I been up to since then? Lots of stuff, much of which had me thinking when it happened that it would be a good thing to post to LJ about, but I have been busy enough, and away from the computer enough, that I haven't actually made time to do so.

Since archinonlive worked a fair bit of overtime last week he got to take Monday off, so we decided that it was a good chance to combine adventure with errands, and drove to a small town over near the Finnish border, where a shoemaker who does the cute little pointy toed shoes that are used for Swedish folk dancing in this area has a shop. We dropped off his dance shoes to be resoled, ordered a pair for me (the shoemaker traced my feet onto paper and will make them to order as soon as his shipment of leather arrives next week) and ordered archinonlive a second pair with rubber soles this time so that he can wear them outside (the indoor dance shoes have leather soles, and heels which are part rubber, and part leather, to make it easier to do the spinning during dancing). Since this was our first decent length drive during daylight hours when there wasn't a snowstorm involved he had me drive part of the way, to get used to the way the car handles. I gave it back when the muscles in my leg started protesting about holding my foot on the gas pedal for so long. Granted, I could have turned on the cruise control, but I hadn't due to the frequent changes in speed limit each time we passed through a small knot of houses. Once the muscles started protesting about the unusual activity it was probably too late for cruise control to help, anyway, so I just let him drive and picked up my sewing.

We did the trip as a loop, heading north first and then across on the outbound trip, and returning by heading south to the coast and then along the coast home. Not that I actually saw evidence this time that we were following a coast line--the road is a bit inland, and the ocean is still frozen in this area, so any glimpses of it would just look like more snowy fields. We stopped in a town on the border and checked the health food store, where I finally picked up some more nutritional yeast (good thing, too, the stuff I brought with me was nearly gone, and I require it to put on my popcorn and add flavour to some of my foods). Then we stopped into the Ikea and picked up a few small useful items for the house that neither of us already had. Since wandering through the store took an hour I claimed it as 30 minutes of exercise for my log.

We got home on time to head to folk dance class that evening, and had much fun, as usual!

Tuesday I had Swedish class during the day and choir practice in the evening. They reminded us that the choir party scheduled for Friday has a Star Wars theme (since one of the songs we sing is a Star Wars themed tribute to John Williams).

Wednesday morning archinonlive and I both woke up with sleeping injuries. The joint at the base of the big toe on my left food (which I sprained fairly badly many years ago by not paying proper attention when descending a set of stairs and attempting to stride across the room before I had reached the bottom step) was hurting, and his right ankle was hurting. Neither of us remember waking up in the night from kicking the other (or being kicked), so we suspect that the problem arose from sleeping with our legs tangled together and somehow managing to get my left foot and his right foot putting pressure on one another in a bad way for too long at one time. Since it hurt to walk even as far as the kitchen I opted to take the day off and sent my Swedish teacher an apology for missing class. I even went so far as to put on my closed-toed Birkenstocks, anyone who knows me knows that I am not comfortable wearing shoes indoors and always take them off the second I enter a building. Therefore you will know that the discomfort from that toe joint must have been pretty bad to prefer to support it in a shoe while inside the house.

Taking the day off was good for my foot, because by Thursday morning I was feeling good enough that I walked to uni without any complaint from the toe. Granted, I would have gone in anyway, even if it had still hurt, since it was the last session of the class before our exam next week, and as such included the listening comprehension and dictation part of the exam, so I couldn't really miss it. Alas, archinonlive has to be on his feet often at work, so his ankle was still bothering him some on Thursday evening.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday doing costuming. He had pointed out that since the Choir party has a Star Wars theme then jedi robes are in order. He happened to have a bolt of brown polyester fabric in exactly the correct colour that someone else had been going to throw away years ago. Gross stuff to touch, but strangely appropriate for such a use. So we cut out very full robes with a large hood for him, and he did most of the sewing on Wednesday (unlike me, he has no bias against using sewing machines, and has one which is well behaved). On Thursday we decided to use the nice heavy blue cotton he has to make me some robes too. It was a much smaller piece of fabric, so instead of using four times the width of fabric to do a huge t-tunic style robe with a seam in the middle like we did for him I had to use just one width of fabric to do a t-tunic style robe for me, but the fabric is sunggly and nice, and will be used as a bathrobe for years and years. And it is fairly flattering too. Doesn't convey the image "jedi robes" like his does, save for the hood, but I am ok with that.

I really, really love working on project with archinonlive. We seem to approach tasks in the same manner, so it is very easy to work together. He was able to start stitching as soon as we had the first two pieces cut, and I was able to continue to cut fabric while he worked. Both robes went together so fast and easily, and it was lots of fun to do the project. Alas, the choir party has been postponed due to problems with room booking and an illness on the part of an organizer, but we are ready when it happens...

Progress report: been working on an editing project which is much fun, and writing up details of my experience at the request of a potential employer. Hope to finish both soon and return to the other work in progress.

Tomorrow the local SCA has a project day at the forge in Gammelstad which should be lots of fun.

Tonight we need to go grocery shopping and make food to take with us tomorrow, so it might be a good thing the party was canceled. Off to go do just that...