week 1 of 2025
Jan. 4th, 2025 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareina The second day of the Nordsken demo (on Sunday, so not part of Week 1, as a Swedish week starts on Monday) also went well, and many more people guessed the weight of the chainmail Keldor was wearing. The game turned out to be a very good way to engage visitors. Our friend Cinder came down from Luleå and enjoyed the day at Nordsken in her Star Wars costume, and then headed back to the house with us. However, since Daniel was staying with us already, that meant more people than my van has seat belts, so I got a ride home with Magnus and Tyra, who also live in Lövånger, and Keldor and the others stopped at a large grocery store on the way home, giving me enough time to feed the cats and change the litter in the litter box before they arrived.
I had fun at both days of the demo, and so had enough energy after getting home to put away everything we had brought to Nordsken, do a little general cleaning and tidying up, and finish the above-linked web page of results from the contest and send text messages to the winners.
On Monday I moved the treadle sewing machine from in front of the office window to in front of the shelves to make room for a double bed in that room, and Keldor and Daniel went to Skelleftåhamn to pick up the never before used air mattress (that we had seen at his dad's house when looking for gifts for the holiday gift exchange game) and I started baking while Cinder took a nap.
My first baking of the day was some of my yummy gluten free cookies, the recipe for which I invented in 2009, and which I keep making every time I have a friend who can't eat gluten or wheat, because they are so good. Because Hjalmar was on the way I made them with coconut oil instead of butter, and buckwheat flour instead of rice flour, since he is allergic to milk protein, and is not only gluten intolerant, there are many other grains, including rice and oats, that he can't eat. When those were done I started a dough for doing cinnamon rolls to have something yummy to feed people who can eat wheat to keep them from eating up the gluten free cookies. That dough was pretty much ready to go when Geri arrived. He also has issues with a variety of foods, including dairy, so I asked him what kind of cookies he wanted, and he suggested sweet ones made with olive oil. So we did a quick google search, and adapted this one for Olive oil crinkle cookies. While Geri can eat wheat and cornstarch, Hjalmar can't, and I had plenty of buckwheat flour left, so we just did the cookies with it, and just skipped the cornstarch entirely. The olive oil we had in the house was the last of a bottle of lemon olive oil (which just happened to contain the half cup of oil needed), so we didn't bother with the optional orange zest. The result was quite nice--with both lemon and caramel flavours and a good chewy cookie texture.
As soon as those were done I started a pot of soup with beans and vegetables, but nothing any of the day's guests couldn't eat. Keldor arrived home, hungry, around the same time the soup was done, so he, I, Daniel, Cinder, and Geri enjoyed soup directly. Then Daniel worked on his beautiful, but crazy chainmail art project. He is doing Keldor's coat of arms in a banner that takes 1000s of rings. He had the top 20 cm or so completely done before Nordsken, plus another 15 to 20 single rows ready to attach, all of which he'd managed to attach during the weekend. He uses a program for converting art to a paper pattern, similar to those used for counted cross stitch, and it works very well. Keldor was very surprised and humbled to see the theme Daniel had chosen for the project, and I got busy with more party preparations. I got the air matress set up in the office for Hjalmar and Sofie, and took the cot out of the attic and set it up in the downstairs guest room for Geri (where Daniel already had the bottom bunk, and Cinder the top bunk of the beds there).
A couple of hours later Hjalmar and Sofie arrived, also hungry, so we warmed the soup for them, and fed them cookies, and conversations lasted well into the night, but I went to bed at midnight, as I was tired.
Tuesday (New Year's Eve) I got up at 07:00 and did a half an hour pilates workout. Everyone else, save Daniel, was sleeping. With the house already full, the whole day felt like party, and I spent much of the day in the kitchen. I don't recall now if I baked the cinnamon bread on Monday or on Tuesday, but I do know that started the dough on Monday. I mixed some of the honey foam (that we had saved from the skimmings Keldor did when caramelizing honey for mead) with butter and lots of cinnamon for the filling. Then, to save time, instead of doing individual cinnamon rolls, I just rolled the dough, slit the rolls lengthwise, and braided it into a large coil loaf and left it to rise as I made soup. Of course, as the bread baked I brushed it several times with melted butter, and even started breaking off outer bits to nibble before the loaf had fully baked in the middle (a serious advantage to this sort of braided loaf--it is easy to break off bits.
Friday's lunch soup included moose meat (which everyone save Geri can eat--he had brought some Spring Rolls for himself), and in the evening as the pot was getting low, I added more beans and vegetables and made some "klimpor", my beloved egg noodles made by mixing flour and egg, and then cutting chunks into boiling water. This time I made them with buckwheat, so Hjalmar could eat them.
The other guests started arriving not long after lunch, and we had a total of 14 people in the house, though not all at the same time. We were already seven staying here. Joel was the first to arrive, followed by Pernilla and Tobias, then Matts. Then Drake, who only stayed till around 20:30, leaving shortly before Tyra and Magnus arrived. In addition to the food I had prepared others brought chips, popcorn, and a variety of other things, none of which I ate, as it all went onto the table after my body decided it had had enough for the day. (However, Magnus and Tyra had left some of their homemade thin bread, and I happily ate that the next day, yum!) Most people spent the party sitting around the table, within easy reach of the food, and with their drinks on the table. I spent most of my time in the living room on the couch with sewing projects, talking to the smaller group there (an ever-changing group, as people drifted back and forth between the two rooms). It really is easier to follow a conversation with fewer people, as in a big group it becomes harder to hear, but it did mean that I didn't get to talk with Drake, who stayed in the kitchen from arrival till departure.
My first sewing project of the evening was filling the holes in the armpit seams of Keldor's old gambeson with some oval gores, so that it would be a more comfortable fit for Cinder. I also mended the seam on the one shoulder. It is funny how I didn't bother fixing it back when I was borrowing it when my gambeson was still in progress, but as soon as it is going to be used by someone else I am inspired to do so. In the early evening Geri and Hjalmar changed to more formal holiday attire, complete with vests and ties (a rainbow tie for Geri, and a purple bowtie for Hjalmar), and I bemoaned the fact that I don't really have any dressy clothes for modern settings. But it inspired me to go looking in the closet, and I found the fancy red cape that I had bought at a second hand store in Seattle when I was there in 2018.
I have not really used it since mom's farewell party (which was the dress-up occasion for which we bought it), and had never gotten around to replacing the missing buttons, or replacing the synthetic lining. But I thought it might be something that Sofie would like, and she did, so I gave it to her. I also saw the white cashmere sweater dress that Keldor's sister had given me last spring. At that point, my plan had been to cut it up to combine with my navy blue cashmere sweater that I never wear because it is too short and is a pull-over, but I had never gotten around to that project. I showed it to Sofie, who liked the ruffled neck, and it fit her perfectly, so she considered taking that, too. But then she tried it on a second time, and decided the ribbed bottom hem, which makes it cling to thighs, wasn't really comfortable, even if it looks nice. So instead I impulsively decided to start my project with it directly. As soon as I finished the gambeson for Cinder I cut off that 10 cm wide ribbed bit from the white dress bottom, cut the blue sweater in half at the waist, and opened up the front, and started sewing what is now a white waist to the blue sweater, and heming the now open front edges. Meanwhile, Sofie worked on modifications to the cape--the armholes sit a little too far down for her arms, meaning that she would also have to bear the weight of the cape anytime she wanted to do anything with her hands. The others didn't really work on projects, but just hung out enjoying conversation and food.
Just after midnight Joel took his double-ended lightsaber out and spun it around. Much nicer than noisy fireworks. Then Hjalmar and Geri (plus or minus some others?) bundled up and went out looking for Northern Lights. They found some, but I was content to stay inside and keep sewing, as that cashmere feels so nice in the hands, and the contrast of the dark blue and the white is so pretty. Sometime thereafter Matts, Pernilla, Tobias drove back to Skellefteå and Magnus and Tyra walked home. I finally did my yoga just before 02:00. Then I set up the good foam single mattress on the living room floor for Joel, and went to bed just after 02:00. Some of the guests also went sensibly to sleep, but Keldor sat up talking with Sofie and Geri till well after 04:00.
Wednesday I got up at 09:30 and started my day with a half an hour pilates workout. Joel was the only one stirring at that point (which is good, as it meant that his matress had been picked up to lean against the wall, to free the middle of the room for the workout). People gradually woke up and came out to be social, one at a time, but it wasn't till around noon that I found out that Daniel had gotten up early and started his drive back to southern Sweden before I got up. I was very sorry not to have the chance to say goodbye, and disappointed that we didn't bake him more naan bread for the trip as planned. I had gotten the impression that he would be leaving later in the day and we would have time for baking. Oops. Joel returned to Skellefteå an hour or so after waking. Geri slept in and headed back to Umeå that afternoon. Cinder caught the 16:00 bus (which actually arrived about a half an hour later--good thing buses have GPS tracking so you can see where it is and if they are on time) back to Luleå, and that just left us Hjalmar and Sofie for houseguests, so we spent the day enjoying their company and working on sewing projects. (In addition to the above mentioned projects, Hjalmar is working on a Caroleans (Swedish: karoliner) style coat, as he has recently joined a reenactment group that does that period.)
Thursday was a work day for me, but Keldor was still on holiday, so I got up early, did my morning workout, and took my work computer to the couch and worked there till people got up (everyone else slept in) then I took a lunch break and was social for a while, returning to my computer for another hour or so before flexing out and spending the rest of the day being social. In the evening we played Drakborgen (the English version is called Dungeonquest, but the Swedish version is the original), which is a game that Hjalmar grew up playing. I had only played it once before (the last time he visited). It is a game that I got from a friend years ago when he moved to Ireland, but somehow never found the time to pay.
This time I hit a teleportation trap on my third turn, and found myself in another room, with no idea how I got there. Poor Keldor had a character with high stats in some areas, but a fairly low strength, and spent the entire first half of the game stuck in a dead-end room in which a portcullis door had fallen shut behind him, and he needed to roll under his strength on a 20-sided dice two times in a row to open it, which took many turns to accomplish. However, he got to play the monsters whenever anyone else encountered one, so he had fun while trapped. Indeed, he had so much fun, and played the monsters so well, that when Sofie encountered a monster on her first turn her character died directly, so she got a new one and started over the next turn. Eventually he tried the amulet he'd found on his first turn, to see if it would boost his strength so he could get out of the room, but it turned out to be cursed, and it took some time before he managed to get it off, so he had only two KP left after that (at zero KP your character dies)
I had the best luck with the rooms we went through, finding, in addition to some minor treasures, an elvish ring, and some magic boots, which boosted my two lowest stats to much better numbers. The others kept finding monsters and spider webs. Hjalmar was the first to find his way into the Dragon's treasure room, and it was fast asleep, so he got some treasure. Then Sofie joined him, and it continued to sleep, so she got some treasure. Then I arrived, and it still slept, so I got some treasure too. At this point Keldor finally managed to break out of his room, and being near the entrance to the castle, promptly went outside, as if the dragon woke and killed us all he would be the winner, as he had a small amount of treasure he'd found in the room in which he was trapped.
After several turns of looting the dragon's treasure Hjalmar went out of the room back towards where he had come in. Sofie did the same, back towards where she had come in, and I followed her. Keldor now returned to the castle, and started exploring the areas he hadn't seen yet, to see if he could find more treasure, since the rest of us were no longer in immediate danger of becoming dragon food. Then Hjalmar returned to the dragon's room and took more treasure (it kept sleeping). Then Sofie, having hit a dead end in her explorations into the other part of the castle, returned to the treasure room, and succeeded in stealing a bit more treasure. Then I also hit a (different) dead end, and returned to the treasure room, just as Hjalmar left, heading down the corridor through which I had arrived. And the Dragon Woke up! It attacked Sofie and I, but we both managed to dodge, and I even hit it for 1 KP damage (of its 24), and she wisely went out of the room the same way Hjalmar went. I, on the other hand, took the door leading to the entrance Hjalmar had come in. I knew that I had teleported in part way, and there was no guarantee that those corridors and rooms lead to an exit, and I knew that there was only a matter of time before the sun came up, and everyone still in the castle would die.
Now that all of us were on the way out with our loot, Keldor, knowing that his character has a special ability of rock-throwing, hurried to the dragon's room to loot the treasure under the very nose of the watching dragon. Much to his delight, his battle with the dragon went very well, and he managed to hit it with his stones often enough that it died without taking out his last two KP, so he spent some turns looting the room while Hjalmar went to the bridge over a chasm I had crossed on the way in. Once at the bridge, he was able to use his character's special ability to hop down into the tunnel and choose which of the visible exits from the catacombs to emerge from.
For my part, it took a few extra turns to lift the three portcullis doors that had closed behind Hjalmar on his way in (and which was why he choose to look for another way out, as his strength wasn't much better than Keldor's, and he saw how many turns it took Keldor to open one). My strength, however was up to the task, and I managed to safely leave the castle well before sunrise, with a modest treasure, two wonderful artefacts, and a story about the time I fought, and hit, a dragon and escaped with my life. Hjalmar and Sofie (who had also opted to take the catacomb shortcut) also got out of the castle. Keldor, having looted the dragon's treasure after killing the beast, started out the same way Hjalmar and Sofie had gone, but he didn't have the special ability Hjalmar used, nor the artefact that Sofie used, for an easy exit from the catacombs, and he was still trying to find his way out when the sun rose and his character died. This meant that Hjalmar's character, which had amassed the most loot, was the winner of the day, but I think we were all pretty happy with the outcome. Keldor may not have lived to tell the tale, but he did slay the dragon, and both Sofie and I survived with a comfortable amount of treasure. Hjalmar tells us that in all of his many, many years of playing this game, he had never seen anyone successfully kill the dragon. Escape it, yes. Kill it, no.
Then we played Trivial Pursuit, original Swedish edition from the 1980's. Since Hjalmar's buckwheat bread dough had risen enough by then he spent the first part of the game shaping bread rolls, to bake. Therefore, we divided into teams to make it easier to play while working. We did it randomly, by drawing pieces of pie from a bag, and so it was that Keldor and Sofie against Hjalmar and I. This being a game that needs a six-sided dice, we got out the new bullet-shaped metal dice that Keldor had bought at Nordsken and used one of them. They roll surprisingly well, and I was lucky in my rolls, and Hjalmar was good at answering questions that I couldn't (there are a LOT of Swedish specific questions in that box), so that we had four pies by the time he got the rolls in the oven, and Keldor and Sofie hadn't gotten any yet. They got their first soon after, but they hadn't many when we got our final two and headed toward the center. We played with the variant that once one reaches the center one stays there, till one can answer at least four of the six questions on the next card. We sat there a long time. Long enough that they managed to get all of their pies and start towards the center before we finally found a card where we could answer four questions (we got three right often, and the worst we did was only one right). Then, of course, we checked to see if they could have answered four of the questions on their next card (they couldn't, but they had three right).
Friday just before lunch Keldor and I took away the recycling and went to Maria's (one of my friends from Folkhögskolan) to pick up a dresser she was giving away. Then I helped Keldor and Sofie pack and load their car and said our farewells. After they departed I emptied into it all of the things from the old green secretary dresser that David and I had gotten cheap second hand many years ago, and had talked about fixing up. But it was needed to hold stuff, so it never got fixed. Then Keldor and I managed to get it into the basement. I do NOT recommend trying to carry a solid wood object that large down those stairs and around the corner. We managed it, but it is never going that way again. When it is ready to come up, it can go out the garage door and around.
Then I sat down with the Corel Draw file for the house and started moving around virtual furniture to see if I could figure out a better configuration for our stuff. When we bought the house we decided that the front bedroom should be the office, and the living room would be kept open in the middle for yoga, acroyoga, and workouts. However, that front bedroom is just a little too small, and we couldn't find a configuration to have both his computer desk and mine in there at the same time, so he took his to the living room, which made him happy, as that means that he can play music from Youtube in the living room. But I have felt lonely and cut off working in there. Besides, I have never really liked the couches that came with the house, and their current configuration isn't helpful. While I did that Keldor took power tools to the old green secretary dresser and found that the wood is quite nice without all those layers of paint. He also fixed the one leg that was cracked and not very stable.
Having come up with a new configuration that would work, and gotten Keldor's "yes, that is fine with me" at 22:00, I started taking everything off my computer desk, which is mounted on one side to the wall with a hinge, and is on wheels on the other, so that it rotates out of the way to get to my recliner, and then pulls back over my lap to use the computer, and emptying the bookshelves in the corner of the living room near his desk. My energy lasted enough to spackle the holes in the walls in the office (or whatever it will be called now that there are no computers in there), get the computer station completely set up in the new corner, do a half an hour of yoga, and sand the spackled area and paint over it.
Now that I have slept, eaten, and typed this I can put the bookshelf up and fill it. I also need to rearrange the scrolls on the wall in this corner--they had been kind of jammed together to fit between the bookshelf and the window, and now there is more room.
I had fun at both days of the demo, and so had enough energy after getting home to put away everything we had brought to Nordsken, do a little general cleaning and tidying up, and finish the above-linked web page of results from the contest and send text messages to the winners.
On Monday I moved the treadle sewing machine from in front of the office window to in front of the shelves to make room for a double bed in that room, and Keldor and Daniel went to Skelleftåhamn to pick up the never before used air mattress (that we had seen at his dad's house when looking for gifts for the holiday gift exchange game) and I started baking while Cinder took a nap.
My first baking of the day was some of my yummy gluten free cookies, the recipe for which I invented in 2009, and which I keep making every time I have a friend who can't eat gluten or wheat, because they are so good. Because Hjalmar was on the way I made them with coconut oil instead of butter, and buckwheat flour instead of rice flour, since he is allergic to milk protein, and is not only gluten intolerant, there are many other grains, including rice and oats, that he can't eat. When those were done I started a dough for doing cinnamon rolls to have something yummy to feed people who can eat wheat to keep them from eating up the gluten free cookies. That dough was pretty much ready to go when Geri arrived. He also has issues with a variety of foods, including dairy, so I asked him what kind of cookies he wanted, and he suggested sweet ones made with olive oil. So we did a quick google search, and adapted this one for Olive oil crinkle cookies. While Geri can eat wheat and cornstarch, Hjalmar can't, and I had plenty of buckwheat flour left, so we just did the cookies with it, and just skipped the cornstarch entirely. The olive oil we had in the house was the last of a bottle of lemon olive oil (which just happened to contain the half cup of oil needed), so we didn't bother with the optional orange zest. The result was quite nice--with both lemon and caramel flavours and a good chewy cookie texture.
As soon as those were done I started a pot of soup with beans and vegetables, but nothing any of the day's guests couldn't eat. Keldor arrived home, hungry, around the same time the soup was done, so he, I, Daniel, Cinder, and Geri enjoyed soup directly. Then Daniel worked on his beautiful, but crazy chainmail art project. He is doing Keldor's coat of arms in a banner that takes 1000s of rings. He had the top 20 cm or so completely done before Nordsken, plus another 15 to 20 single rows ready to attach, all of which he'd managed to attach during the weekend. He uses a program for converting art to a paper pattern, similar to those used for counted cross stitch, and it works very well. Keldor was very surprised and humbled to see the theme Daniel had chosen for the project, and I got busy with more party preparations. I got the air matress set up in the office for Hjalmar and Sofie, and took the cot out of the attic and set it up in the downstairs guest room for Geri (where Daniel already had the bottom bunk, and Cinder the top bunk of the beds there).
A couple of hours later Hjalmar and Sofie arrived, also hungry, so we warmed the soup for them, and fed them cookies, and conversations lasted well into the night, but I went to bed at midnight, as I was tired.
Tuesday (New Year's Eve) I got up at 07:00 and did a half an hour pilates workout. Everyone else, save Daniel, was sleeping. With the house already full, the whole day felt like party, and I spent much of the day in the kitchen. I don't recall now if I baked the cinnamon bread on Monday or on Tuesday, but I do know that started the dough on Monday. I mixed some of the honey foam (that we had saved from the skimmings Keldor did when caramelizing honey for mead) with butter and lots of cinnamon for the filling. Then, to save time, instead of doing individual cinnamon rolls, I just rolled the dough, slit the rolls lengthwise, and braided it into a large coil loaf and left it to rise as I made soup. Of course, as the bread baked I brushed it several times with melted butter, and even started breaking off outer bits to nibble before the loaf had fully baked in the middle (a serious advantage to this sort of braided loaf--it is easy to break off bits.
Friday's lunch soup included moose meat (which everyone save Geri can eat--he had brought some Spring Rolls for himself), and in the evening as the pot was getting low, I added more beans and vegetables and made some "klimpor", my beloved egg noodles made by mixing flour and egg, and then cutting chunks into boiling water. This time I made them with buckwheat, so Hjalmar could eat them.
The other guests started arriving not long after lunch, and we had a total of 14 people in the house, though not all at the same time. We were already seven staying here. Joel was the first to arrive, followed by Pernilla and Tobias, then Matts. Then Drake, who only stayed till around 20:30, leaving shortly before Tyra and Magnus arrived. In addition to the food I had prepared others brought chips, popcorn, and a variety of other things, none of which I ate, as it all went onto the table after my body decided it had had enough for the day. (However, Magnus and Tyra had left some of their homemade thin bread, and I happily ate that the next day, yum!) Most people spent the party sitting around the table, within easy reach of the food, and with their drinks on the table. I spent most of my time in the living room on the couch with sewing projects, talking to the smaller group there (an ever-changing group, as people drifted back and forth between the two rooms). It really is easier to follow a conversation with fewer people, as in a big group it becomes harder to hear, but it did mean that I didn't get to talk with Drake, who stayed in the kitchen from arrival till departure.
My first sewing project of the evening was filling the holes in the armpit seams of Keldor's old gambeson with some oval gores, so that it would be a more comfortable fit for Cinder. I also mended the seam on the one shoulder. It is funny how I didn't bother fixing it back when I was borrowing it when my gambeson was still in progress, but as soon as it is going to be used by someone else I am inspired to do so. In the early evening Geri and Hjalmar changed to more formal holiday attire, complete with vests and ties (a rainbow tie for Geri, and a purple bowtie for Hjalmar), and I bemoaned the fact that I don't really have any dressy clothes for modern settings. But it inspired me to go looking in the closet, and I found the fancy red cape that I had bought at a second hand store in Seattle when I was there in 2018.
I have not really used it since mom's farewell party (which was the dress-up occasion for which we bought it), and had never gotten around to replacing the missing buttons, or replacing the synthetic lining. But I thought it might be something that Sofie would like, and she did, so I gave it to her. I also saw the white cashmere sweater dress that Keldor's sister had given me last spring. At that point, my plan had been to cut it up to combine with my navy blue cashmere sweater that I never wear because it is too short and is a pull-over, but I had never gotten around to that project. I showed it to Sofie, who liked the ruffled neck, and it fit her perfectly, so she considered taking that, too. But then she tried it on a second time, and decided the ribbed bottom hem, which makes it cling to thighs, wasn't really comfortable, even if it looks nice. So instead I impulsively decided to start my project with it directly. As soon as I finished the gambeson for Cinder I cut off that 10 cm wide ribbed bit from the white dress bottom, cut the blue sweater in half at the waist, and opened up the front, and started sewing what is now a white waist to the blue sweater, and heming the now open front edges. Meanwhile, Sofie worked on modifications to the cape--the armholes sit a little too far down for her arms, meaning that she would also have to bear the weight of the cape anytime she wanted to do anything with her hands. The others didn't really work on projects, but just hung out enjoying conversation and food.
Just after midnight Joel took his double-ended lightsaber out and spun it around. Much nicer than noisy fireworks. Then Hjalmar and Geri (plus or minus some others?) bundled up and went out looking for Northern Lights. They found some, but I was content to stay inside and keep sewing, as that cashmere feels so nice in the hands, and the contrast of the dark blue and the white is so pretty. Sometime thereafter Matts, Pernilla, Tobias drove back to Skellefteå and Magnus and Tyra walked home. I finally did my yoga just before 02:00. Then I set up the good foam single mattress on the living room floor for Joel, and went to bed just after 02:00. Some of the guests also went sensibly to sleep, but Keldor sat up talking with Sofie and Geri till well after 04:00.
Wednesday I got up at 09:30 and started my day with a half an hour pilates workout. Joel was the only one stirring at that point (which is good, as it meant that his matress had been picked up to lean against the wall, to free the middle of the room for the workout). People gradually woke up and came out to be social, one at a time, but it wasn't till around noon that I found out that Daniel had gotten up early and started his drive back to southern Sweden before I got up. I was very sorry not to have the chance to say goodbye, and disappointed that we didn't bake him more naan bread for the trip as planned. I had gotten the impression that he would be leaving later in the day and we would have time for baking. Oops. Joel returned to Skellefteå an hour or so after waking. Geri slept in and headed back to Umeå that afternoon. Cinder caught the 16:00 bus (which actually arrived about a half an hour later--good thing buses have GPS tracking so you can see where it is and if they are on time) back to Luleå, and that just left us Hjalmar and Sofie for houseguests, so we spent the day enjoying their company and working on sewing projects. (In addition to the above mentioned projects, Hjalmar is working on a Caroleans (Swedish: karoliner) style coat, as he has recently joined a reenactment group that does that period.)
Thursday was a work day for me, but Keldor was still on holiday, so I got up early, did my morning workout, and took my work computer to the couch and worked there till people got up (everyone else slept in) then I took a lunch break and was social for a while, returning to my computer for another hour or so before flexing out and spending the rest of the day being social. In the evening we played Drakborgen (the English version is called Dungeonquest, but the Swedish version is the original), which is a game that Hjalmar grew up playing. I had only played it once before (the last time he visited). It is a game that I got from a friend years ago when he moved to Ireland, but somehow never found the time to pay.
This time I hit a teleportation trap on my third turn, and found myself in another room, with no idea how I got there. Poor Keldor had a character with high stats in some areas, but a fairly low strength, and spent the entire first half of the game stuck in a dead-end room in which a portcullis door had fallen shut behind him, and he needed to roll under his strength on a 20-sided dice two times in a row to open it, which took many turns to accomplish. However, he got to play the monsters whenever anyone else encountered one, so he had fun while trapped. Indeed, he had so much fun, and played the monsters so well, that when Sofie encountered a monster on her first turn her character died directly, so she got a new one and started over the next turn. Eventually he tried the amulet he'd found on his first turn, to see if it would boost his strength so he could get out of the room, but it turned out to be cursed, and it took some time before he managed to get it off, so he had only two KP left after that (at zero KP your character dies)
I had the best luck with the rooms we went through, finding, in addition to some minor treasures, an elvish ring, and some magic boots, which boosted my two lowest stats to much better numbers. The others kept finding monsters and spider webs. Hjalmar was the first to find his way into the Dragon's treasure room, and it was fast asleep, so he got some treasure. Then Sofie joined him, and it continued to sleep, so she got some treasure. Then I arrived, and it still slept, so I got some treasure too. At this point Keldor finally managed to break out of his room, and being near the entrance to the castle, promptly went outside, as if the dragon woke and killed us all he would be the winner, as he had a small amount of treasure he'd found in the room in which he was trapped.
After several turns of looting the dragon's treasure Hjalmar went out of the room back towards where he had come in. Sofie did the same, back towards where she had come in, and I followed her. Keldor now returned to the castle, and started exploring the areas he hadn't seen yet, to see if he could find more treasure, since the rest of us were no longer in immediate danger of becoming dragon food. Then Hjalmar returned to the dragon's room and took more treasure (it kept sleeping). Then Sofie, having hit a dead end in her explorations into the other part of the castle, returned to the treasure room, and succeeded in stealing a bit more treasure. Then I also hit a (different) dead end, and returned to the treasure room, just as Hjalmar left, heading down the corridor through which I had arrived. And the Dragon Woke up! It attacked Sofie and I, but we both managed to dodge, and I even hit it for 1 KP damage (of its 24), and she wisely went out of the room the same way Hjalmar went. I, on the other hand, took the door leading to the entrance Hjalmar had come in. I knew that I had teleported in part way, and there was no guarantee that those corridors and rooms lead to an exit, and I knew that there was only a matter of time before the sun came up, and everyone still in the castle would die.
Now that all of us were on the way out with our loot, Keldor, knowing that his character has a special ability of rock-throwing, hurried to the dragon's room to loot the treasure under the very nose of the watching dragon. Much to his delight, his battle with the dragon went very well, and he managed to hit it with his stones often enough that it died without taking out his last two KP, so he spent some turns looting the room while Hjalmar went to the bridge over a chasm I had crossed on the way in. Once at the bridge, he was able to use his character's special ability to hop down into the tunnel and choose which of the visible exits from the catacombs to emerge from.
For my part, it took a few extra turns to lift the three portcullis doors that had closed behind Hjalmar on his way in (and which was why he choose to look for another way out, as his strength wasn't much better than Keldor's, and he saw how many turns it took Keldor to open one). My strength, however was up to the task, and I managed to safely leave the castle well before sunrise, with a modest treasure, two wonderful artefacts, and a story about the time I fought, and hit, a dragon and escaped with my life. Hjalmar and Sofie (who had also opted to take the catacomb shortcut) also got out of the castle. Keldor, having looted the dragon's treasure after killing the beast, started out the same way Hjalmar and Sofie had gone, but he didn't have the special ability Hjalmar used, nor the artefact that Sofie used, for an easy exit from the catacombs, and he was still trying to find his way out when the sun rose and his character died. This meant that Hjalmar's character, which had amassed the most loot, was the winner of the day, but I think we were all pretty happy with the outcome. Keldor may not have lived to tell the tale, but he did slay the dragon, and both Sofie and I survived with a comfortable amount of treasure. Hjalmar tells us that in all of his many, many years of playing this game, he had never seen anyone successfully kill the dragon. Escape it, yes. Kill it, no.
Then we played Trivial Pursuit, original Swedish edition from the 1980's. Since Hjalmar's buckwheat bread dough had risen enough by then he spent the first part of the game shaping bread rolls, to bake. Therefore, we divided into teams to make it easier to play while working. We did it randomly, by drawing pieces of pie from a bag, and so it was that Keldor and Sofie against Hjalmar and I. This being a game that needs a six-sided dice, we got out the new bullet-shaped metal dice that Keldor had bought at Nordsken and used one of them. They roll surprisingly well, and I was lucky in my rolls, and Hjalmar was good at answering questions that I couldn't (there are a LOT of Swedish specific questions in that box), so that we had four pies by the time he got the rolls in the oven, and Keldor and Sofie hadn't gotten any yet. They got their first soon after, but they hadn't many when we got our final two and headed toward the center. We played with the variant that once one reaches the center one stays there, till one can answer at least four of the six questions on the next card. We sat there a long time. Long enough that they managed to get all of their pies and start towards the center before we finally found a card where we could answer four questions (we got three right often, and the worst we did was only one right). Then, of course, we checked to see if they could have answered four of the questions on their next card (they couldn't, but they had three right).
Friday just before lunch Keldor and I took away the recycling and went to Maria's (one of my friends from Folkhögskolan) to pick up a dresser she was giving away. Then I helped Keldor and Sofie pack and load their car and said our farewells. After they departed I emptied into it all of the things from the old green secretary dresser that David and I had gotten cheap second hand many years ago, and had talked about fixing up. But it was needed to hold stuff, so it never got fixed. Then Keldor and I managed to get it into the basement. I do NOT recommend trying to carry a solid wood object that large down those stairs and around the corner. We managed it, but it is never going that way again. When it is ready to come up, it can go out the garage door and around.
Then I sat down with the Corel Draw file for the house and started moving around virtual furniture to see if I could figure out a better configuration for our stuff. When we bought the house we decided that the front bedroom should be the office, and the living room would be kept open in the middle for yoga, acroyoga, and workouts. However, that front bedroom is just a little too small, and we couldn't find a configuration to have both his computer desk and mine in there at the same time, so he took his to the living room, which made him happy, as that means that he can play music from Youtube in the living room. But I have felt lonely and cut off working in there. Besides, I have never really liked the couches that came with the house, and their current configuration isn't helpful. While I did that Keldor took power tools to the old green secretary dresser and found that the wood is quite nice without all those layers of paint. He also fixed the one leg that was cracked and not very stable.
Having come up with a new configuration that would work, and gotten Keldor's "yes, that is fine with me" at 22:00, I started taking everything off my computer desk, which is mounted on one side to the wall with a hinge, and is on wheels on the other, so that it rotates out of the way to get to my recliner, and then pulls back over my lap to use the computer, and emptying the bookshelves in the corner of the living room near his desk. My energy lasted enough to spackle the holes in the walls in the office (or whatever it will be called now that there are no computers in there), get the computer station completely set up in the new corner, do a half an hour of yoga, and sand the spackled area and paint over it.
Now that I have slept, eaten, and typed this I can put the bookshelf up and fill it. I also need to rearrange the scrolls on the wall in this corner--they had been kind of jammed together to fit between the bookshelf and the window, and now there is more room.