kareina

The snow we had had in mid October was long gone, the fault of the +8 C temps we were cursed with the latter part of the month. But then early November greeted us with nice temperatures dropping as cold as -10, giving the ground a chance to get a decent freeze. However, with the lack of snow, the world was looking pretty dark and dismal--grass doesn't hold its green after freezing. Therefore I was delighted to see snowfall this weekend--the world is, once again, looking bright and beautiful with its thin white coat. There still isn't much snow, but it makes such a difference. My phone tells me that this weekend's warm temperatures (high of +2) will go away and we should have decent sub-zero temperatures for the rest of the week. With luck the snow will survive till the cold returns.

I think last winter's pathetic showing may have scared me for life--before last winter it never would have occurred to me to worry about snow being able to last--of course snow stays on the ground all winter and it never rains. But now I worry and look at the forecast--will it stay nice and cold, or will we have another winter of not nice rains destroying the good snow cover?

In other news, we had a great band practice on Thursday--we are ready to perform at the SCA event on the weekend. And last night's choir party was fun. Despite having gotten a slow start to the semester, with a shortage of boys for a while, we still managed to have a total of 10 of us here for the party, and it was five of each gender. I baked two loafs of cardamon bread for it--one with plenty of milk and butter in it, and the other, much smaller loaf with no dairy at all since one of the girls is allergic to milk. I also baked some more pears. I had done a small batch of pears for band night, and it was so good they asked me to do it again for the party. I used fairly large pears, one scant tablespoon of brown sugar for every two pears, and lots of butter--first a thick coating of butter to grease the glass baking pan, and then I used a cheese slicer to make thin slices of butter to cover the top of the pears. I also sifted in a hint of gluten free oat flour (one of the band members can't eat gluten) into the pan to help thicken the sauce, and sprinkled on a bit of water to keep it from drying up before the liquid started cooking out of the pears. I baked them at 150 C, and, once they warmed up and started forming sauce I stirred them occasionally to keep the top layer from drying out or browning. Everyone else brought enough food to the party that there are some pears left over, which is a good thing, because I am getting hungry for them just typing this up.

lord_kjar has been hard at work making some nice chests that are exactly small enough to fit into the trunk of the car so that packing for events will be easier. The first one is done and the second is coming along nicely. I wish I could be helping with the project, but while he does that I have been working on the edits to my paper for publication, gathering info for a class on the History of the SCA. I also want to put together something in the way of a hand-out for a hand sewing class. In my imagination I make small hand-sewn samplers of all of the stitch types

hrj has accumulated on her web page on Archaeological Sewing. However, the class is next weekend, so that is probably not going to happen, even if it would be totally cool.

Today (Thursday) is a holiday in Sweden, so we have had a productive day:

*one load of laundry washed
*one wall in the downstairs room painted (2 coats)
*one new strawberry patch location has been prepped including decorative stone fronting and a wooden frame
*one third of the strawberries from one of the two old patches has been transplanted to the new location
*one dead tree cut down
*part of a gravel pile moved so that it is now possible to drive the mini tractor/trailer past it
*one custom fit screen built for the downstairs bedroom window so we can open the window without letting in bugs (really important now that there is fresh paint on one of the walls.

Yesterday was the end of the semester party for our choir, held in conjunction with our normal band practice for those of us in the choir who like to make more music than just singing. We had seven of us here (which, sadly is most of the choir these days). I made nettle soup from the nettles growing in our yard (I could do this daily all summer and never run out of nettles) and they liked it so much that most of them had seconds. I also did a lovely gluten-free apple and red currant crumble, and I have a second batch of (possibly) non-gluten free oat and walnut crumble topping sitting in the fridge to use on another occasion; I remembered at the last second that I should have grabbed the other (certified gluten free) box oats, so rather than poisoning my friend I made more topping (without walnuts, since the last of them went into the first batch), and used it instead. I also made some yummy bread rolls, and one of the other members brought some yummy apricot bread he had made. It was a fun evening, and the last time we get to see a couple of the guys, since they are exchange students and will be heading home to their own countries soon (and one had already left and so missed the party).

Tuesday was our normal choir practice, and Monday was nyckleharpa (and dulcimer!) night, so it has been a music filled week.

Sunday we had Swedish Folk Dancing--we are now doing the final few rehearsals before the summer performances, so it is much fun.

Saturday day we helped

lord_kjar's dad cut and split wood for the year. No where near as much as we did last year, since it was such a mild winter no one used up all of what we cut last year, and he and I don't need any, since we still don't have a wood stove, so the only time we used any of the wood was for one camping event.

Saturday night I spent on line at my 30th highschool reunion.

OK, I confess, I typed it like that because that phrase will not conjure up the correct mental image in anyone who didn't go to school with me. Steller was not your typical high school. It was an alternative school aimed at self-motivated students and it was an amazingly fun place to be for the six years I was the correct age to attend. This year marks the 40th Anniversary of Steller's founding, so they hosted a party at the school and Stellerites from all over went home for it, and a bunch of us connected to the event from our computers at our homes (including locations in Sweden, Germany, Main, Colorado, California, and Washington, that I know of).

I really enjoyed the evening. Because of the time zone difference (10 hours) between here and Alaska, I was on line for the event from 23:30 to 04:00, and loved every minute of it (well, except for the short time where the connection broke and it took a couple of minutes to get it back). I got to see some old friends and lovers, I got to meet some interesting new people, of all ages. One woman who was in the internet chat had been part of the first class to attend Steller the first year it opened (and so was just enough older than I that we wouldn't have met back them--she would have graduated before I started at Steller), another (the one in Germany) graduated last year. It was interesting comparing notes with them and learning that the wonderful school I attended was pretty much the same from the beginning, and is still pretty much the same as of last year.

One of the things that has eaten a fair chunk of my time lately was preparing the Memorial Wall, with posters in tribute to those Stellerites who have already died. This was a difficult task that wouldn't have been possible at all without the facebook groups for Steller alumini, but seems to have been much appreciated. One of my old boyfriends, who was actually at Steller for the party, came in to the computer lab to say hello, and let me know that he appreciated the wall, but when he came to the poster for Steven, one of our mutual friends, he burst into tears. This did not surprise me, I cried a bit when I gathered up photos of Steven from the yearbook. His was one of the deaths that would have been so easy to prevent, if he had only made some different lifestyle choices. But it was his life to spend wisely or to squander and I can only hope that he enjoyed as much as he got.

Friday was my student's and my last day in Finland working on the Microprobe, followed by a band practice at my house (which I got home on time for, because we finished with the probe nice and early that day)

Thursday was a quiet evening at my host's house in Oulu while she was at choir, and some fun visiting with her before and after her choir session, and that brings me current on the major happenings in my life since my last update. Hope things are as fun for the rest of you.

The choir that

lord_kjar and I sing, Studentenkör Aurora (Student Choir Aurora), has been talking about getting some of us together to do instrumental stuff for a while, and tonight it finally happened. Five of us gathered in our living room to play, and it was fun.

Keep in mind that I did not learn to play any instrument growing up. I decided in the early 1980's that I wanted a Hammer Dulcimer when Tania Opland returned in Alaska to play at the Renaissance Fair there, and I fell in love with the sound of the instrument, the fact that if one does not know what one is doing and strikes the strings randomly it will make pleasing sounds, and the fact that the strings are in order, so that if only looks at the dots on some sheet music and sees the pattern they make one need only repeat the exact same spatial pattern on the instrument to achieve the tune. This is in direct contrast to instruments like the violin, which my sister tried to learn as a child--on that instrument one can make some very unpleasant noises if one doesn't know what one is doing, and it is necessary to remember weird placement of one's fingers on a string to achieve notes, and while those placements make sense in terms of the laws of physics, they do not easily correlate with the dots on the page.

Sadly I couldn't afford to buy one until just a few years ago, and while I was putting forth effort to learn to play it when it first arrived, more recently life has been more busy than usual; the last time I played it at all was December, and the last time I tuned it was eight months ago.

Therefore, since the plan was to do instrumental stuff this evening I made time to turn the dulcimer (most strings had relaxed enough to show on the tuner as the next letter down from what it should be) and then check to see if I can remember how to play any of the few tunes I had learned. It turns out I can still play the second song I learned to sing in Swedish.

Therefore, when we gathered this evening and the guy organizing things asked "Is there any song one of you want to do?", I promptly mentioned that one. It turns out that not only do I recall which strings I need to hit, in what order, and in what rhythm, I can also do so accurately enough to play with other humans, and it is fun! I hadn't really gotten to play music with others before. Well, I did once play with

mushroom_maiden back in Tasmania--she knew enough about chords that she was able to say "here, hit these two strings at the same time, then these two, then these two. Repeat that, in this rhythm, over and over. Then she played a melody on the guitar, and the two instruments sounded great together. But since then there has only been one or two short attempts to play with

lord_kjar, until tonight. However, tonight was so much fun I would like to do it again.

We had fun playing with arrangements for Ridom, and finally settled on this pattern, which I am recording here so that I don't forget, so that the next time we meet and they say "what did we do?", ( I can look it up if I need to )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

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June 2025

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