kareina

...kinda appears in a photo from Coronet Tourney--before the tourney we ducked into a corner of the building, out of the wind to do adjustments to the helmet. I am wearing the helm padding, which is covered in black linen, under which I have an unbleached linen coif. In the opening of the padding you can see the lump of my ear, with the hearing aid behind it, positioned such that none of the padding will ever contact the ear or the hearing aid. In Keldor's hands you can see the underside of the helmet itself, with the gaps between the various pieces, to let sound in. I am quite happy with it and how nice it is to be able to hear whilst wearing it.

There don't appear to be any photos of me actually wearing the helmet.

What have I been up to?

Today was an SCA demo at a Scout Camp. The entire camp has a Medieval theme, so we fit right in. Some of the leaders of the Scout group have participated with Frostheim before, and they really appreciated the fact that we could come out. We had the whole afternoon available, so the plan had been to do perhaps half an hour of intro, then a good 40 minutes each of dancing, fencing, and heavy fighting. I liked that plan as I would have time to change out of dancing clothes and into armour while the fencers played. However, plans don't always go according to schedule. My first clue was the morning phone call from the guy who organized the day--he couldn't make it, he needed to take his kid to the doc (it turns out to be Scarlet Fever), but he assured me that the local Count and Countess would still be coming. My first thought was "great--that was our one native Swedish speaker", since my Swedish is still poor, and he comes from England and she is from Finland. However, despite not being a native Swedish speaker, she is fluent in Swedish.

Therefore she did the intro talk, and then I started the kids dancing. We had time to do a farandole and I started to teach them the Maltese Bransle before the rain started. Since it was a decently heavy rain we decided to take a break, and the kids scattered to various places under cover. We stood on the porch for a bit, chatting with some of the Scout leaders, and then decided that since it didn't look like it was going to stop raining anytime soon, perhaps we could move the dancing into the hall. It was a bit crowded, but by having an inner and an outer ring for the bransle we were able to make us all fit. We did several more dances before switching to showing the kids the armour and talking about what we do.

With the organizer of the demo out that left only one person who could have done fencing, so we skipped that part, and instead the knight did a talk (in English, translated by one of the Scout leaders, which I appreciated, as it helped reinforce my slowly growing vocabulary) about fighting, passed around his armour to look at, and then put it on and let me hit him a bit. We decided not to fight in the rain--not only is it not so pleasant for the audience, slippery grass increases the odds of injury, especially for knees and ankles. The room's ceiling was far too low to consider actual combat inside, so we didn't bother to put me in armour at all. After showing them the basic blows the rain stopped, so he took the kids outside and let them take turns hitting him. Everyone seemed to enjoy the day.

This week's two biggest work accomplishments have been filling in paperwork to apply for a visa to visit Russia and resubmitting a paper. The visa paperwork took a while. They wanted to know every country I have visited in the last decade (I opted to list only the most recent visit to countries I have visited more than once), every university I have attended, and all civil, professional, and/or charitable organizations I have ever been a member of. These questions did not exist on the form for my collegues, who have Swedish passports. It was because I am using an Australian passport that I had the extra questions. I am curious as to if I would have had even more questions had I used my US passport, but not curious enough as to actually try it.

Resubmitting the paper was nice and easy. Both reviewers suggested that it be accepted, with minor revisions, and I was able to do most of the revisions on my own (I am extremely grateful for the reviewer who took the time to go through the text and highlight typos--no matter what I typed the first time, rocks are not "wildly" distributed across Tasmania!). There were only four points which I felt necessary to consult with my PhD supervisor, so I emailed him straight away, and the next morning I had a reply. His reply included an offer to write a tricky paragraph if I wanted. My first impulse was to say "yes, please", but then I realized that given the time change and the fact that he would be asleep by the time I saw his message, I had plenty of time to try to write that bit myself and then ask him what he thinks--he would still be free to write it himself if my version didn't make him happy. So I did, and he approved, so I submitted the paper in less than 50 hours from first seeing the letter from the editor giving me the reviewer's comments. With luck the editor will be happy, and I am finally well and truly done with my PhD project, and it (or, rather, a short, sweet, distillation from it) will soon be published.

Last week, and the first part of this week, we had a house guest, which was much fun. She joined me for yoga daily, and we got out and practiced silly people tricks. She didn't make it this far north all that often, but I will still miss her when she moves to France to start her PhD.

Speaking of house guests, we have done some major preparation for my mother's visit next month. Mom won't be able to sleep on a mattress on the floor when she is here, so we have created a space in the office to set up the massage table (legs lowered to the lowest setting) to give her a bed. In order to do this it was necessary to take the project off of the big floor loom which had dominated the office floor and take the loom apart. In order to have someplace to store the loom bits it was necessary to block off the corner of the room that lead to our walk-in closet. However that meant we needed to move the furniture in the hallway which had been blocking off the other entrance to that closet. It took all evening, but we managed to do the moving, and now we have many of the boxes and set of drawers that had been in the hallway stacked (in a very different configuration) in the corner of the office, and the hallway is much emptier, with only the treadle sewing machine and a single chest of drawers (upon which now sits the electric keyboard) flanking the newly unburied door to the closet.

I know that other people think I am mad for it, but that that was a truly fun evening. I really do love rearranging furniture, finding a new, improved, place for everything, and cleaning underneath and behind stuff in the process.

In other news, summer has progressed to the state of fireweed being in flower--a very pretty time of the year, but, to my mind, even better because once the fireweed blooms winter can't be so very far off, and winter is even prettier.

Next week I need to make more progress with my data (see last week's entry for how that is going) in hopes of having something to say when I start to put together a talk about my research for the upcoming departmental "kick off" retreat. We should also hear if our visa is approved, and if all of the ore deposit folk in our department are heading to Russia to see some of the geology of the Kola Peninsula the following week.

This has been yet another busy week full of progress on projects in addition to the normal round of social activities.

We have nearly finished a new wooden ice chest to take with us to Double Wars (we leave on Friday)--my old wooden ice chest is in quite bad shape from years of heavy use and several intercontinental shipping experiences, so it is time to replace it.

I finished nålbinding my sun hat, felted it, and have sewn it to a frame to dry in the shape I wish it to be. Sadly, I forgot to get photos of "before"--it was huge, floppy, and the brim was very, very ruffled--it covered my entire head with folds hanging loosely to my shoulders. After felting the brim was still ruffled, and was floppier than I want it to be, so I dipped it in water containing cornstarch, ran it through the centrifuge in the laundry room, and sewed it to the frame, where it sits yet. The sewing process got the brim to flatten out and become large--it now looks very much like the straw hat I had to leave behind when I left Italy because I didn't have space to bring it on the plane, and couldn't pack it safely into boxes to be shipped. Hopefully it will still look like that when I take it off the frame.

I have managed to accomplish some armour repair that needed doing, and even cleaned off some sword marks from the front of my shield. I had to, really. One of the black sword marks just happened to be positioned over the closed eye of the sleeping cat, exactly perpendicular to and centered upon the eye, so that it looked like the cat had and X instead of an eye--just like a cartoon dead creature. Very funny looking, but so not acceptable! (again, I didn't think to take a photo--somehow I never do. Then again, do I really want photographic evidence of a dead cat on my shield?).

We got the last of the fitting done for my 12th Century underdress done--there is just a bit of seam finishing left to do on that one. I did this one with the really, really long sleeves that runch up on the forearms. The upper arm is only just exactly wide enough to put my arm in it, which puts the square underarm gusset exactly in my underarm, giving me a good fit *and* full range of motion. We got the body to be exactly the same diameter as my ribs just under my breasts, which means that the gown is fully supporting--I can jump while wearing it and my breasts don't go anywhere. Yay to not needing to wear a bra! When I take in my bliaut so that it, too, fits properly across the shoulders and ribs this outfit is going to be so comfortable. Granted, it will then be very important to neither loose or gain weight in such a way as my diameter over ribs or upper arms changes, but since I am quite happy with my current shape this should be easy enough to manage (not losing any mass shouldn't be an issue--there isn't a whole lot available to loose over my ribs, anyway).

On Thursday we went to a sewing workshop with the local Folk Music and Dance group. The project of the evening was a traditional man's shirt, so that archinonlive and the other musicians will have appropriate costume for upcoming performances. I was very delighted to see that fashions in Northern Sweden never really changed. While the shirt cuffs are late period in design, with the full sleeve gathered to a buttoned cuff, the torso and sleeves are a straight rectangles, with a square underarm gusset--the same style they have been using for many centuries! We did take photos of some of the completed shirts that were available as models, and of the cutting pattern we settled on--used every scrap of that bit of wool--it was necessary to take one of the underarm gussets from the neck hole, because the end of the fabric wasn't cut straight at the store. I might make time to post those photos another day.

Friday we had a couple of people over for a gaming night as part of a mini gaming convention that a friend of ours runs. Sadly, our weekend was so booked we got to play in only the one game, but it was quite fun. We played While the World Ends, which was written by the guy who organized this mini con. This is the game we played at Gothcon early this month that I so enjoyed. ( It was fun this time, too )

This makes twice now that I have played this game, and I really enjoy it. It is much more like reading a book (or even watching a movie) than traditional role playing adventure games, but it is a shared activity with friends. Even though I think of myself as a reader not a writer, with the formal structure of the game it is easy to come up with things my character might do towards achieving his goals, and so it is easy to set the scene. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys gaming, story telling, reading, and just spending time with friends

Saturday morning was an SCA bbq and fighter practice. After practice the local knight authorized me, so if he has done whatever paperwork goes with that I am good to fight at Double War next week. In the evening we had a party for the choir. Not many of us could make it, which made it a fun night, as we were able to ( play games )

Sunday we didn't have fighter practice, since it was on Saturday this week, so we used the time for projects, and also skipped the folk music session in favour of project time. However, we did attend folk dancing in the evening. This is the last practice before our performance, the day after we return from double war, so we had live music and everything, and we ran through the performance set three full times, working out last minute details to make it all flow smoothly and prettily. I also picked up the costume I will borrow for the show, which will need slight modification to get the vest to fit me properly.

My goal to pedal at least 10 km a day, five days a week is progressing nicely. I didn't actually manage a ride a week ago Friday because archinonlive had the day off of work and I spend the time with him instead, but the week before that I did an extra 10 km, so it has all averaged out. I did manage this Friday, but only barely--I got distracted actually working on that paper from my research, and suddenly it was 16:00 and I hadn't gone yet, and it was necessary to start some soup to feed myself and the gamers. Luckily, about the time I went to the kitchen to start cooking archinonlive came home from work, so I left him to cook the soup, and I went for a quick lap around the lake (which is not quite 10 km, but I had done a bit more than 10 the day before), getting back just as the food was ready.

In other news, I have booked my tickets back to Australia--I will be flying on 30 June, the day my visitor visa expires here (assuming that there are no volcanically caused flight cancellations then, of course). I land in Sydney on 1 July, which is a Friday. I still need to book travel for within Australia, but the tentative plan is to head straight to Canberra to head that Monday to the Swedish Embassy there to submit my visa application to move to Sweden to live permanently with archinonlive (which paperwork *must* be submitted in one's home country--one may not apply for such a visa from within Sweden). Once the paperwork is filed with the Embassy I plan to visit Melbourne to see my mother and step-sister and her family (mom will be visiting Australia for around a month, so that timing is nice). Then I will go to Tassie to await the visa approval. While there I plan to meet with my PhD advisor and finish up paper(s) for publication. I have no idea yet when I shall be able to return to Sweden--the paperwork processing on their end could take a couple of weeks, or many months. I will be renting a room from mushroom_maiden while her usual housemate is in Iceland. With luck the timing will work out for me to head back to Sweden before the housemate returns from Iceland.

On Friday we went sightseeing because we could. archinonlive was on call last weekend, so this weekend they gave him Friday off. We drove to Storforsen, the largest rapids in all of Europe. The ice on the river is only just starting to break up, so the rapids aren't all that rapid, yet, but one can still tell there is an awful lot of water flowing in that river. Then we drove past Hemmingsmark, where he grew up, on our way to his parent's house in Piteå. We spent the evening visiting with his mother (his dad is out of town visiting grandkids in southern Sweden) and stayed the night there. She had to work on Saturday, so we simply enjoyed a morning of peace and quiet. His parent's house is much quieter than ours, not only because it is out in the country, but also because it doesn't have the subtle noises from the computer server in the closet here. I rather enjoyed having the time away from my computer, too.

Saturday afternoon we returned home and that evening we finally tackled the pile of his boxes that we'd taken out of the server closet before my things arrived. It took all evening but we now have a huge pile of empty boxes, several boxes of potentially useful computer parts that he says he will never use and so we will pass them on to someone else, and only a few boxes of useful computer parts that he thinks we should actually keep. I had the easy job for this project--he handed me stuff and told me into which pile to put it, he actually had to make the decisions about what to keep, what to get rid of to a new owner, and what to toss (there was surprisingly little in that category).

Today was a busy one, even by Sunday standards. We went to fighter practice this morning, and I got into armour for the first time in over a year! This is the 163rd time I have ever been in armour in just over 19 years of "fighting". This means I average around 9 times a year. However, most of those times was back when I still lived in Summits, and I left there in 1994, so that average is very misleading.

This was one of the more delightful times in armour. Not because I did well, but because I had a consort to fuss over me. The first thing we did when we got there was to sew the padding into the knees of my new fighting trousers--that alone would have earned him praise for helping me. But then when they were ready and I went to get into my gear he followed me and assisted me with buckles and straps and just generally made himself actually useful, never mind that he has never seen this armour before today. He also helped me pack it all up afterwards, correctly anticipating where things go. After so many years of my being the consort who does such things it is an amazing joy to be the one receiving the attention and fuss!

Much to my delight, my armour actually passed inspection--19 years old, hasn't been touched in over a year, had been in someone else's possession for a big chunk of time shortly before I left Tasmania, and it was still usable! I even got a couple of compliments on the armour from a couple of the fighters (one of whom has really amazingly pretty armour himself, which made the compliment feel even nicer). My fighting will need work, of course, but it was fun to play a bit, especially as I hadn't really expected to be able to after so long of neglecting the gear.

After fighting most of us trooped over to the shop of one of our fighters and helped him move a nice looking huge kiln he just acquired onto a stand and into the appropriate position in the shop. This was the first time I'd seen his shop, and I have a bit of shop envy...

Then we had just time to head home, grab a quick shower and some food before heading to Uni to preform with the Choir at the big Swap for Change event. After we sang we then took our tokens we'd gotten by cleaning out the clothes he never wears from the closet a couple of weeks back, and went shopping with them. We found a few shirts for him, and far more things that fit me, and we gave away a bunch of tokens to another choir member. Quite a nice deal, really--for every item of clothing one donates one can walk away with an item of clothing. We even got them to throw in some hangers, which is good because we don't have enough. I wish I had had enough time when packing things in Milan to have put some hangers in my boxes instead of abandoning them all.

By the time we were done with that it was already time for the Folk Music session we normally attend on Sundays to have started, so we decided to not worry about that and just enjoy some food at a relaxed pace and show up on time for the folk dance session instead. Dance was, as always, much fun. When we got there we were asked if we might be willing to teach the beginning folk dance class next semester--the person who normally does it will be out of town, and the other people who could do it are already over committed. I really like the idea--I have a pretty good handle on the basics now, and teaching it would truly cement the skill for me, and archinonlive has a good decade experience at these dances and speaks Swedish, so he could do the bulk of the teaching. We have a week to decide if we are going to do it or not. I am, of course, voting "yes" on this one, but since he will have the greater responsibility during teaching, he also gets a larger vote.

Wednesday: Dance practice wasn't happening since our hosts were doing some pre-Thanksgiving food prep, and didn't want to bother with moving the living room furniture to make room to dance, but they encouraged people to come be sociable, anyway. So the core group of us who want to get an active SCA shire going in Milan hung out and talked, and made sketches of what we might like to submit as a device for the branch. Now we need to wait till we get a reply from the seneschal (deputy in charge of this part of Europe) and see what else we need to do to get an official branch going here (it has been a number of years (6?) since last there was an official branch in the Milan area, and it never succeeded in registering a name/device).

Thursday: Had been scheduled to be on the microprobe generating more data, but the filament broke, so it wasn't an option. My boss did comment in the morning that there would be a chance that it would be functional enough in the afternoon to at least look at my latest experiment and see what minerals are present, even if there wouldn't be time to actually do the serious quantitative analysis stuff. I recall replying something like "ok, let me know", and then got absorbed in trying to make sense of the data I've already got, and the next thing I knew it was 9pm, and my eyes were sore from too much time at the computer, so I went home and did a bit more unpacking.

Friday: My boss commented in the morning that he'd heard that I'd never gone down to the probe in the afternoon, and told me that I need to remember to check if it is functioning yet on days like that. Oops. Then an hour window opened up in the probe schedule, so I did get a chance to go look. Remember my posting that I was very excited the first time I got a capsule to weld properly shut, and that I was *certain* I'd done it correctly? It turns out that I was correct--this is the very best sample yet, the minerals that grew are actually large enough to analyze. Now we just need a day when no one else is scheduled to use the probe so I can do the analysis. Alas, this isn't going to happen before I need to leave for AGU. (the other capsule from that run, however, was one of the worst yet in terms of the size of the minerals, and so when I wondered if it sealed properly, the answer is "no".) In the evening we had a D&D character roll-up session. Our gaming group consists of clovis_t as the DM, me, and the SCA family who moved here from Calontir. Two parents and two children. The kids are very enthusiastic. It will be a very interesting party--we wound up with two Elven druids, two Elven rangers, a human sorcerer, and three purchased dogs and one wolf animal-companion (to one of the druids). My druid opted for the no-animal companion track, but instead will be able to do shape-shifting as often as I feel the need to do so.

Saturday: Woke up energetic and enthused and managed to get all of the non-sewing craft stuff unpacked and organized onto shelves (had to go purchase one more shelf to add to the wall mounted shelves to accomplish this). It is now possible to walk right up to my balcony doors, open them, and walk outside! (for the first time in the 2.5 weeks since my boxes arrived) All that remains to do in terms of unpacking is to bring the bags of scrap fabric and sewing supplies here to my office at uni and organize them onto the empty shelves here. It is taking longer than I normally do to get everything unpacked and organized, but given how much else I've had going on in my life, I can forgive myself the delay. Managed to finish those tasks on time to pack up the armour into a wheeled suitcase and head out for fighter practice. I am very pleased that while their house is on the other side of the city center from my place, the bus which stops right outside my door happens to also stop on their street. It is faster to take the train, but when carrying a heavy load like armour it is convenient to just take the bus.

This was the first time I've been in armour at all since March, and the time before that was July 07, and before that it has been only at rare, random, intervals since I moved away from An Tir in 1994 (I did practice regularly when I was in An Tir). There were just the three of us this time, me, our host, and clovis_t Our host has enough loaner gear that while clovis_t left his armour in Tasmania when he set out for his six-month backpacking adventure, we were still able to get him suited up. I have determined that while my daily push-ups have been keeping my arms in reasonable shape, it isn't quite enough for the sort of movements required to wield a sword and shield--my arms did get a bit tired. Even so I enjoyed it. Perhaps because we mostly only did 3/4 speed at first, and then "fast and light", rather than worrying about full power, so there was no fear that my inability to block would lead to bruises. After just playing for a bit, to remind our bodies that it is possible to move in armour, we actually did a bit of training--pointing out adjustments to where I hold my shied, to make it easier to actually block shots. I think that since our host is really keen to get his fighting back up to (and then surpass) the levels he had been at in Calontir before heading off on foreign service postings to places without SCA) I will actually have an opportunity to get the training I need to feel like I really can fight. I think it would be nice to get to the point where I can start to actually apply some of the theory I've been absorbing from years and years of talking fighting with the high-end fighters.

After fighter practice they fed us Thanksgiving leftovers, and we had our first actual D&D session. The game was much fun--we had time to do some actual role-playing and trying to find out information, and we had a very small combat encounter to give us a taste of how it all works. The kids were great. The younger one is *really* enthusiastic, which is great to see, and his older sister has some great ideas--she was the one who thought of asking one of the town Elves for a map of the ruined castle in which we suspect the bad guys are hiding.

Today I should try to make more progress on my data processing, so that I can get started on that poster for the conference. Wednesday morning early clovis_t and I fly off to Stockholm, where we will attend a music/dance SCA event on the weekend. We will get back Sunday, and then on the 11th I fly off to California for the conference, followed by holidays in Alaska.

Many days I do all of my work in the evenings. Therefore I'm delighted to report that I've done close to three hours of work today--changing the previously compiled graphs showing the compositions vs age of all of the monazite analyses I've done to include the most recent session. doing this and editing the text to show the new, improved numbers has given me another 217 words. I'm now off to fighter practice, to see if the rumours of a late in the day unarmoured training session are true. With luck I'll get much more work done this evening as well...

Didn't do anywhere near enough uni work today.

Did do a fair bit of thinking about what I want for myself over and above the degree though. One of the topics considered has been fighting. I have, betimes, really enjoyed SCA combat, but at other times failed to practice enough to be good at it, and, in recent years, let a little bit of discouragement prevent me from participating in that activity, and, eventually sold my armour. This was, perhaps, not the smartest decision I could have made, and I have sent an e-mail to see if she'd be willing to sell it back, since her back injury has prevented her from using it. I hope she will, but am not going to hold my breath. Part of what has kept me from fighting was not doing any training, so that when I did put on armour my opponents hit me with little to no effort. Therefore, starting now (as in as soon as I push send) I'm going to do a bit of training on my own. I've got what little I can remember from over the years, and I've just been reading some on-line suggestions. If I can't buy back my armour, I'll wait till the degree is done and build anew, but in the mean time I can work on unarmoured training. This will be in addition to uni work mind you, not instead of it. This time, I'm going to work on this goal till I get good. I shall get to the point where I am able to win an occasional tournament. Step one: do slow work/training on my own, and seek out lessons as they are available. Once the degree is done and we can move into town, seek out a martial arts class because of the overlap of all of the different forms. If anyone has specific recommendations as to styles which are better for translating to SCA combat, feel free to say so and why.

This new drive shall *also* help push me over the edge into finishing up my degree, and progressing my career there after. I have decided.