![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
…and a week to recover
Sunday morning Carola and I went for another walk along the trail at Borgardalsbadet, where we had camped, and then drove in to Uppsala to Morgaine’s house. Morgaine cooked us breakfast (my second for the day), Carola took a shower, and then she got back on the road to head home. I took the time to re-pack, take a shower, and enjoy some time with Morgaine, and then we walked into the city centre and went to one of the museums on campus (the one with the fossils, rocks, and minerals. Then we were both hungry, so rather than walking the 45 minutes back to the apartment we went to an Indian restaurant and shared some spinach panner, a 3-bean dhal, rice, and some naan bread. Then we went back to the apartment, to hang our for the rest of the evening, and I also helped with Morgaine’s weekly cleaning (the five house-mates have a rotation of duties each week—this week it was M’s turn to vacuum and mop the floors, so I did the vacuuming while M. Mopped). Around 22:00 Morgaine walked me to the bus stop so I could catch the bus to the train station, and then went home to get some sleep before work the next day (M works at a pre-school, being the extra adult in the class to help one of the children who needs extra help/attention, but since it is a brand-new school, there are many additional things that need doing just now over and above focusing on the kids).
My train wasn’t due to depart till 23:35, so I used the extra time to take out my nålbinding project, figure out what my past self must have been thinking when she started the project, and then worked happily on it till the train arrived. This is an unusual project, I decided I wanted to try doing a shawl that pulls on over the head, so my past self had started by using some lovely dark blue “baby wool” to make a circle in two rows of Dalarna stitch just big enough to go over my head and sit comfortably on my shoulders. Then I started the next row in York stitch, and the project got set aside to make that hat for Villiam (which he wears daily, and not just with his jester costume). So while waiting for the train I finished the lap of York stitch and went back to Dalarna stitch, this time attaching two Dalarna stitches to every one York stitch, which allowed for a very quick increase in diameter, but also introduces a ripple effect.
When I boarded the train everyone else in my cabin was already laying down for the night, so I got my stuff situated and the sheets on my bunk (and my own pillows out of the suitcase to supplement the one the train provides) as quietly as possible. I was disappointed to note that while I had requested an upper bunk when I did the booking, they gave me the middle bunk instead. However, I sleep fairly well on a train when I get to lay down and cover myself with the nice clean sheets they provide, so I can’t really complain.
Not only did the others in my car board the train before I did, they also got off the train at earlier stops, so by the time I woke up at 07:00 there was only one other passenger left in my cabin (six bunks to a cabin at this price class), which meant I was free to toss the used bedding onto the top bunk, fold my bunk back against the wall and sit down and continue nålbindning. I managed to complete that row of two-Dalarna to one York stitches on the train, and started the nice, no-thinking-required next lap of one Dalarna stitch attached to one Dalarna stitch. This is good, as this means it is now a good project to take with me to choir, seminars, and meetings as I can fidget and still pay full attention to what I am listening to. I am now on the third circuit of Dalarna stitches since the circuit of York stitches, and expect I will do a few more, till that bit gets wide enough that outer edge of the fabric soon won’t be able to sit flat if I don’t increase, and then I can do another row of York stitch, followed by another row of the 2-1 attachments. In theory doing it this way should give only a slight ruffle at each place the number of stitches around doubles. Given how open York stitch is, I suspect that if I were to iron the project that the ruffle would disappear, but I haven’t tested this theory yet.
Monday Ellinor picked me up from the train station (using David’s car). I had considered going first to Uni to drop off rocks at my office and let Ellinor go straight back to studying, but David needed his car at the apartment when he got home from work so that he could go to Nyckleharpa night, but I was planning on taking Villiam to the first session of the beginning Swedish Folk Dance class, so the logistics would have been difficult to have both David’s car and mine at the house. So instead Ellinor dropped me off at home, took the car back to its parking place at Caroline’s apartment, and then returned to her normal Monday activities.
I spent the hours between getting home and heading out for dance to unpack and put everything away, cook some food, do the vacuuming, change the water filter, clean the bathroom, and all the other things that need doing after one has been gone for a week. The dance session was fun and interesting. There were 18 students, the teacher and his wife, and four of us from Danskul (the advanced folk dance group I dance with) to serve as experienced dancers to help and dance with the students. I have never before attended such a “down to the basics” session of Swedish folk dance. I moved to Sweden in January of 2011, and they always teach the complete intro course in the autumn, and the “continuing beginning” course in January, so I started with the “continuing” course at the same time as I also joined Danskul, and found them both easy enough to just jump into. The year David and I taught the intro course (2012) there were only three students signed up, so we were able to race quickly through the very basics and jump straight to the actual dances. Monday’s course, on the other hand, had enough new people in it, some of whom have clearly not danced at all, so we needed to start with just walking in a circle to the music for long enough for everyone to get used to actually stepping in time to the music. Then he had us add a hint of a bounce to the step, and let the knees bend a bit, and so on, gradually working us towards actually doing the basic walking steps with a partner. Most folk caught on reasonably quickly, but there was one poor guy in a pink shirt who really couldn’t get the basic steps. He told me when I was “dancing with him” that “I am always the slowest”. I hope he had fun anyway.
Tuesday was a long day. I got up at 06:15, made it to the office by 08:00 (took the trike, even though I had a big bag of rocks to carry) and worked till Phire practice started at 17:00. I was smart enough to do my yoga for the day as a warm up, so I wouldn’t need to do it later, and then I did acroyoga with Helena, one of the new exchange students. Phire is officially over at 18:30, but everyone continued to hang out in the room after fika (this week was a home-made “Princess Cake” <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/princess_cake> and some Afghani Sherpera* that I found on my desk along with a thank you note from Zmar, the PhD student who defended on the Friday I went south) till time for choir. A few of the exchange students who have joined Phire stay for choir, and we have at least 20 attending choir on the weeks I have been there, which is really a nice change after a couple of years ago when it almost died from apathy. This year we are thriving so much that we are doing little mini-concerts to raise awareness of us on campus, and one was scheduled for Thursday during lunch, so I put it on my calendar, and agreed to book us a room to do a quick last-minute warm-up and rehearsal.
After choir I spent an hour and a half coping the posts I did while on the filed trip into Scrivener and catching up a bit reading email and FB, and didn’t get to bed till just after midnight, even though yoga had already been done for the day.
Wednesday I still made it to work before 08:00, in part because it was raining just enough that I wasn’t motivated to take the trike, so instead I loaded up the car with the recycling that needed to go out and drove in. I worked till the lunch time acroyoga session with Ellinor, and then worked till time to head to the Wednesday Phire parkour etc. session at 17:00 (dropping the recycling off on my way there). Two hours of mixed parkour, aerial silks and acroyoga with some of the exchange students is a great way to recover from a day sitting at a desk! Then I went home and, even though it was already after 19:00, I felt hungry enough to curl up with a book and a bowl of popcorn, nutritional yeast, spinach, tomato, and cucumber for the better part of an hour before doing another hour and a half of post-field trip paperwork sorts of tasks, followed by yoga and getting to bed just after midnight.
Thursday it was only barely raining, and I was more motivated, so I took the trike in again (and the rain was so gentle that my rain pants, which are getting kinda old, was enough to keep my jeans dry). My plan for the day had been to cut all of the rock samples I collected last week into small blocks so that we could mount them in epoxy on Friday morning. I managed to get all of them cut and into labelled bags before time for that lunch time choir performance (which Villiam was nice enough to record for us), and then, even though I could have gone home, spent the afternoon in the office working, and didn’t head home till 17:30, where I spent a nice evening reading, doing useful things around the house, and getting slightly caught up on email and FB.
I didn’t go to bed till 01:00 Thursday night/Friday morning, and thus slept in till almost 07:30, when David arrived to gather stuff to take to his parent’s place for the weekend. He will start the new job at the Uni in December, but in the meanwhile he will be using up some of his banked vacation at the old job by taking most (if not all) Fridays off. His plan for this weekend was to head out to his dad’s forest and cut down some trees on Friday, then cut them into boards on Saturday and Sunday to fix our sheds—the east facing wall of the bicycle shed in particular is in bad shape—it needs a new base beam and most of the wall boards replaced. It is the sort of weekend that I would have enjoyed accompanying him, but I couldn’t spare the time—too much to do here. They don’t actually need my help, either, they are both quite good at those sorts of tasks, and I have never cut down a tree nor used a saw mill.
Friday morning I met one of the professors in Minerals Processing who helped me mount most of my samples into epoxy (three to six samples per epoxy plug). Then we ran out of molds, so the rest will have to be done on Monday. I finished up in good time for my 12:00 skype meeting with one of my advisors in Durham, but not early enough to trike home before the meeting, so I just stayed in the office (never mind that the sound quality on that computer isn’t good, and it won’t talk to my bluetooth adaptor for my hearing aids, so I am forced to use the built in computer speakers). I had thought to head home directly afterwards, but just wanted to finish up a couple of “little things”, and the next thing I knew it was already 14:20. So I went home then, curled up on the couch with a book (and popcorn and salad) for a while, and then got a message from one of the exchange students wondering if we would have the aerial silks at practice that afternoon/evening. We exchanged messages and convinced one another that it would be worth getting up and heading in for practice, and I arrived just on time to meet the guys at the storage room to get the silks before some of them headed to Skellefteå for a fire performance and I went over to the gym for practice.
It was a good session, where I played a tiny bit on the slack line (actually managed to let go of the hand I held to get up there and walk a couple of steps before slipping/jumping off), played a bit on the silks, and worked with some of the new students to learn acroyoga. Ellinor joined us for that after she had done enough poi practice to have sore arms, after which it became easier for the others to learn, as having both a really talented and experienced base and an experienced flier to demonstrate things really helps. I had heard that there were plans to do a bbq and outdoor practice session with fire staffs and poi, but hadn’t planned on attending, as I knew I wouldn’t be hungry, and it is getting cold. However, as the practice wound to a close they announced that after the bbq people would head to Ellinor’s apartment to work on sewing projects and other crafts. This sounded fun, so while the others walked to the grocery store next door to get stuff for the bbq I went home to get my sewing (and did my yoga while there, since I figured that it could be a late night).
I arrived back at the bbq around 20:00 and hung out for a while, then some of us left the fire to go to the soccer field to play with the fire toys, but after a while I was feeling cold (I had worn my normal long wool winter coat, but it is better for walking in than standing still, and I hadn’t bothered with my winter boots, as it was only -1 C). I checked in with Ellinor and she wasn’t ready to head back to the apartment for crafts as people were still playing with fire toys, so I opted to head home at 21:15, take a hot shower, and head to bed around 22:00.
This morning I have cooked up a yummy green sauce with spaghetti squash and broccoli, and cooked some rice with the left over steaming water and the almond milk that didn’t go into the green sauce (I had made two cups of almond milk last night, but today’s green sauce needed only one cup of it) along with some sunflower seeds, nettles, an an egg. Now I really need to see if I can make some progress on those grant proposals that are looming before Villiam and/or Julia comes over after the archery practice (which I am skipping in hopes of being useful at home).
**His recipe for the Afghani Sherpera
1 litre of whipping cream
100 g coarsely chopped pistachio nuts (or more or less, to taste)
2 T freshly ground cardamom seeds
400 g whole milk powder (not skim milk powder)
2 dl of sugar
First chop the nuts and grind the cardamom seeds in a mortar and pestle, and fill a bowl with a bigger diameter than your cooking pot with enough cold water that when you set the pot into the bowl the water neither runs out of the bowl, nor into the pot.
Heat the cream and sugar on high head, stirring constantly till it is a syrup (he says that a “brownish oily character appears”), this typically takes 5 to 10 minutes.
Set the cooking pot into the cold-water bath and stir in the nuts and cardamom, followed by the milk powder to make a thick dough. Spread the dough onto a pan, cut it into cubes and cool in the fridge till set.
I haven’t had a chance to try this yet—I have been meaning to since he fed us some at his thesis “spiking” fed us some at his thesis “spiking”, but I hadn’t had time to go shopping for the whole milk powder and the cream yet, and, since we didn’t eat it all at ficka and I have some left, I don’t need to make it any time soon. This is clearly a special occasion treat, not an every-day snack.
My train wasn’t due to depart till 23:35, so I used the extra time to take out my nålbinding project, figure out what my past self must have been thinking when she started the project, and then worked happily on it till the train arrived. This is an unusual project, I decided I wanted to try doing a shawl that pulls on over the head, so my past self had started by using some lovely dark blue “baby wool” to make a circle in two rows of Dalarna stitch just big enough to go over my head and sit comfortably on my shoulders. Then I started the next row in York stitch, and the project got set aside to make that hat for Villiam (which he wears daily, and not just with his jester costume). So while waiting for the train I finished the lap of York stitch and went back to Dalarna stitch, this time attaching two Dalarna stitches to every one York stitch, which allowed for a very quick increase in diameter, but also introduces a ripple effect.
When I boarded the train everyone else in my cabin was already laying down for the night, so I got my stuff situated and the sheets on my bunk (and my own pillows out of the suitcase to supplement the one the train provides) as quietly as possible. I was disappointed to note that while I had requested an upper bunk when I did the booking, they gave me the middle bunk instead. However, I sleep fairly well on a train when I get to lay down and cover myself with the nice clean sheets they provide, so I can’t really complain.
Not only did the others in my car board the train before I did, they also got off the train at earlier stops, so by the time I woke up at 07:00 there was only one other passenger left in my cabin (six bunks to a cabin at this price class), which meant I was free to toss the used bedding onto the top bunk, fold my bunk back against the wall and sit down and continue nålbindning. I managed to complete that row of two-Dalarna to one York stitches on the train, and started the nice, no-thinking-required next lap of one Dalarna stitch attached to one Dalarna stitch. This is good, as this means it is now a good project to take with me to choir, seminars, and meetings as I can fidget and still pay full attention to what I am listening to. I am now on the third circuit of Dalarna stitches since the circuit of York stitches, and expect I will do a few more, till that bit gets wide enough that outer edge of the fabric soon won’t be able to sit flat if I don’t increase, and then I can do another row of York stitch, followed by another row of the 2-1 attachments. In theory doing it this way should give only a slight ruffle at each place the number of stitches around doubles. Given how open York stitch is, I suspect that if I were to iron the project that the ruffle would disappear, but I haven’t tested this theory yet.
Monday Ellinor picked me up from the train station (using David’s car). I had considered going first to Uni to drop off rocks at my office and let Ellinor go straight back to studying, but David needed his car at the apartment when he got home from work so that he could go to Nyckleharpa night, but I was planning on taking Villiam to the first session of the beginning Swedish Folk Dance class, so the logistics would have been difficult to have both David’s car and mine at the house. So instead Ellinor dropped me off at home, took the car back to its parking place at Caroline’s apartment, and then returned to her normal Monday activities.
I spent the hours between getting home and heading out for dance to unpack and put everything away, cook some food, do the vacuuming, change the water filter, clean the bathroom, and all the other things that need doing after one has been gone for a week. The dance session was fun and interesting. There were 18 students, the teacher and his wife, and four of us from Danskul (the advanced folk dance group I dance with) to serve as experienced dancers to help and dance with the students. I have never before attended such a “down to the basics” session of Swedish folk dance. I moved to Sweden in January of 2011, and they always teach the complete intro course in the autumn, and the “continuing beginning” course in January, so I started with the “continuing” course at the same time as I also joined Danskul, and found them both easy enough to just jump into. The year David and I taught the intro course (2012) there were only three students signed up, so we were able to race quickly through the very basics and jump straight to the actual dances. Monday’s course, on the other hand, had enough new people in it, some of whom have clearly not danced at all, so we needed to start with just walking in a circle to the music for long enough for everyone to get used to actually stepping in time to the music. Then he had us add a hint of a bounce to the step, and let the knees bend a bit, and so on, gradually working us towards actually doing the basic walking steps with a partner. Most folk caught on reasonably quickly, but there was one poor guy in a pink shirt who really couldn’t get the basic steps. He told me when I was “dancing with him” that “I am always the slowest”. I hope he had fun anyway.
Tuesday was a long day. I got up at 06:15, made it to the office by 08:00 (took the trike, even though I had a big bag of rocks to carry) and worked till Phire practice started at 17:00. I was smart enough to do my yoga for the day as a warm up, so I wouldn’t need to do it later, and then I did acroyoga with Helena, one of the new exchange students. Phire is officially over at 18:30, but everyone continued to hang out in the room after fika (this week was a home-made “Princess Cake” <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/princess_cake> and some Afghani Sherpera* that I found on my desk along with a thank you note from Zmar, the PhD student who defended on the Friday I went south) till time for choir. A few of the exchange students who have joined Phire stay for choir, and we have at least 20 attending choir on the weeks I have been there, which is really a nice change after a couple of years ago when it almost died from apathy. This year we are thriving so much that we are doing little mini-concerts to raise awareness of us on campus, and one was scheduled for Thursday during lunch, so I put it on my calendar, and agreed to book us a room to do a quick last-minute warm-up and rehearsal.
After choir I spent an hour and a half coping the posts I did while on the filed trip into Scrivener and catching up a bit reading email and FB, and didn’t get to bed till just after midnight, even though yoga had already been done for the day.
Wednesday I still made it to work before 08:00, in part because it was raining just enough that I wasn’t motivated to take the trike, so instead I loaded up the car with the recycling that needed to go out and drove in. I worked till the lunch time acroyoga session with Ellinor, and then worked till time to head to the Wednesday Phire parkour etc. session at 17:00 (dropping the recycling off on my way there). Two hours of mixed parkour, aerial silks and acroyoga with some of the exchange students is a great way to recover from a day sitting at a desk! Then I went home and, even though it was already after 19:00, I felt hungry enough to curl up with a book and a bowl of popcorn, nutritional yeast, spinach, tomato, and cucumber for the better part of an hour before doing another hour and a half of post-field trip paperwork sorts of tasks, followed by yoga and getting to bed just after midnight.
Thursday it was only barely raining, and I was more motivated, so I took the trike in again (and the rain was so gentle that my rain pants, which are getting kinda old, was enough to keep my jeans dry). My plan for the day had been to cut all of the rock samples I collected last week into small blocks so that we could mount them in epoxy on Friday morning. I managed to get all of them cut and into labelled bags before time for that lunch time choir performance (which Villiam was nice enough to record for us), and then, even though I could have gone home, spent the afternoon in the office working, and didn’t head home till 17:30, where I spent a nice evening reading, doing useful things around the house, and getting slightly caught up on email and FB.
I didn’t go to bed till 01:00 Thursday night/Friday morning, and thus slept in till almost 07:30, when David arrived to gather stuff to take to his parent’s place for the weekend. He will start the new job at the Uni in December, but in the meanwhile he will be using up some of his banked vacation at the old job by taking most (if not all) Fridays off. His plan for this weekend was to head out to his dad’s forest and cut down some trees on Friday, then cut them into boards on Saturday and Sunday to fix our sheds—the east facing wall of the bicycle shed in particular is in bad shape—it needs a new base beam and most of the wall boards replaced. It is the sort of weekend that I would have enjoyed accompanying him, but I couldn’t spare the time—too much to do here. They don’t actually need my help, either, they are both quite good at those sorts of tasks, and I have never cut down a tree nor used a saw mill.
Friday morning I met one of the professors in Minerals Processing who helped me mount most of my samples into epoxy (three to six samples per epoxy plug). Then we ran out of molds, so the rest will have to be done on Monday. I finished up in good time for my 12:00 skype meeting with one of my advisors in Durham, but not early enough to trike home before the meeting, so I just stayed in the office (never mind that the sound quality on that computer isn’t good, and it won’t talk to my bluetooth adaptor for my hearing aids, so I am forced to use the built in computer speakers). I had thought to head home directly afterwards, but just wanted to finish up a couple of “little things”, and the next thing I knew it was already 14:20. So I went home then, curled up on the couch with a book (and popcorn and salad) for a while, and then got a message from one of the exchange students wondering if we would have the aerial silks at practice that afternoon/evening. We exchanged messages and convinced one another that it would be worth getting up and heading in for practice, and I arrived just on time to meet the guys at the storage room to get the silks before some of them headed to Skellefteå for a fire performance and I went over to the gym for practice.
It was a good session, where I played a tiny bit on the slack line (actually managed to let go of the hand I held to get up there and walk a couple of steps before slipping/jumping off), played a bit on the silks, and worked with some of the new students to learn acroyoga. Ellinor joined us for that after she had done enough poi practice to have sore arms, after which it became easier for the others to learn, as having both a really talented and experienced base and an experienced flier to demonstrate things really helps. I had heard that there were plans to do a bbq and outdoor practice session with fire staffs and poi, but hadn’t planned on attending, as I knew I wouldn’t be hungry, and it is getting cold. However, as the practice wound to a close they announced that after the bbq people would head to Ellinor’s apartment to work on sewing projects and other crafts. This sounded fun, so while the others walked to the grocery store next door to get stuff for the bbq I went home to get my sewing (and did my yoga while there, since I figured that it could be a late night).
I arrived back at the bbq around 20:00 and hung out for a while, then some of us left the fire to go to the soccer field to play with the fire toys, but after a while I was feeling cold (I had worn my normal long wool winter coat, but it is better for walking in than standing still, and I hadn’t bothered with my winter boots, as it was only -1 C). I checked in with Ellinor and she wasn’t ready to head back to the apartment for crafts as people were still playing with fire toys, so I opted to head home at 21:15, take a hot shower, and head to bed around 22:00.
This morning I have cooked up a yummy green sauce with spaghetti squash and broccoli, and cooked some rice with the left over steaming water and the almond milk that didn’t go into the green sauce (I had made two cups of almond milk last night, but today’s green sauce needed only one cup of it) along with some sunflower seeds, nettles, an an egg. Now I really need to see if I can make some progress on those grant proposals that are looming before Villiam and/or Julia comes over after the archery practice (which I am skipping in hopes of being useful at home).
**His recipe for the Afghani Sherpera
1 litre of whipping cream
100 g coarsely chopped pistachio nuts (or more or less, to taste)
2 T freshly ground cardamom seeds
400 g whole milk powder (not skim milk powder)
2 dl of sugar
First chop the nuts and grind the cardamom seeds in a mortar and pestle, and fill a bowl with a bigger diameter than your cooking pot with enough cold water that when you set the pot into the bowl the water neither runs out of the bowl, nor into the pot.
Heat the cream and sugar on high head, stirring constantly till it is a syrup (he says that a “brownish oily character appears”), this typically takes 5 to 10 minutes.
Set the cooking pot into the cold-water bath and stir in the nuts and cardamom, followed by the milk powder to make a thick dough. Spread the dough onto a pan, cut it into cubes and cool in the fridge till set.
I haven’t had a chance to try this yet—I have been meaning to since he fed us some at his thesis “spiking” fed us some at his thesis “spiking”, but I hadn’t had time to go shopping for the whole milk powder and the cream yet, and, since we didn’t eat it all at ficka and I have some left, I don’t need to make it any time soon. This is clearly a special occasion treat, not an every-day snack.