kareina

Saturday we slept in--I got nearly 10 hours of sleep, which was delightful after too little sleep last weekend and no chance to catch up all week. After breakfast we took a walk in the forest and explored a new path I hadn't taken yet. As I suspected it might, it came out of the forest in the next clump of houses up the main road--the folk at the end of that side street have a nice homestead with several outbuildings and a number of horses (which is, doubtless, part of the reason that path is so wide and well plowed, so that they have a nice place to go riding). The other properties on that street have smaller plots, so I am pleased that when a house came up for sale it was the one we got, which actually has a bit of land.

After lunch we ran some errands and then just enjoyed time visiting with one another and chatting with a friend on G+. I started some bread dough late enough in the day that after it rose I opted to just shape bread rolls, brush them with butter and put them into the fridge to bake for breakfast.

Today dawned very bright and sunny, making the snow on the ground and in the trees sparkle and glow. It was much too pretty to stay indoors for long. While the bread rolls baked I mixed up some pie crust dough, and then was hit with inspiration--rather than using the makeshift aluminum foil pie crust shield I had made for my huge pie plate I decided it was time to make a proper one.

I have been carting around with me one huge cookie sheet that I haven't been able to use. While it fit in every oven I ever had in the US, it was too big to fit in an oven I had in Australia, way too big for the toaster oven I had in Italy, and still too big for the ovens I have had here in Sweden. Why keep storing something I can't use, when I can cut it up and make something useful out of it? If it ever happens that I can afford a full sized oven again I will also be able to afford to replace the cookie sheet then.

Therefore I set the huge ceramic pie plate I inherited from my step onto the cookie sheet, traced it, then drew one larger circle, which I indented with lots of little triangles, and one smaller circle, which I left smooth. From there it was a simple matter to cut along the lines, bend the many little tabs (in between those triangles I cut out) down over the edge of the pie plate, and suddenly I had a nice, sturdy, easy to use shield to put over my pie crusts when I bake them to keep the crust from overcooking while the filling isn't yet done.

This completes my set of shields. Mom brought me a pair of store-bought aluminium one-piece shields from the states when she visited last September--they fit my small pie plates. One of my friends from high school sent me one set of segmented aluminum shields that fit my medium pie plates and my tart pans, and now I have this one that fits the huge pie plate. ( photo of it, on the pie, in the oven )

I had intended to test the shield straight away, but by that time lord_kjar was done with his breakfast and ready to head outside, so I decided I could play first, and finish baking later. We started with snow shoveling, which I rather enjoy with today's modern shovels, since it is basically going for a walk, and I love walking.

Then, since part of the shoveling we did was clearing the path back out to my sledding hill (the wind had completely filled it in with last weekend's snow, and we hadn't made time to clear it out) and depositing yet more snow on the top of the hill, it was necessary to pull out our "sled" (still only a normal camping foam mat wrapped in large plastic trash bags with a rope fastened to one end--we haven't had any luck finding a proper sledding sled large enough for an adult butt in any store in Luleå) and play for another 40 minutes. ( two sledding photos under cut )

I am still not going as far as I managed last week sledding in the moonlight on well packed old snow, but we managed to pack down the new snow enough to get some decent runs in. After sledding I had a quick bowl of left over soup and then finally baked that pie. I am pleased to report that the new pie shield worked very well, and was so easy to use.

After enjoying some of the pie I looked out the window and noticed that the early evening light was particularly beautiful--I love that time of day when the sun is just down and the sky ranges from nearly white on the horizon through gradually darker shades of blue to nearly black overhead. So I decided to go out for a quick walk to enjoy it. I got half way down our nicely packed driveway, and realized that I own a spark, so I went back to the shed, got it out, and went for a kick instead of a walk.

I took the road down to the lake, and was delighted at how quickly one can kick one's way down the road while standing on a runner (switching legs often, of course, so that the work is evenly distributed). When I reached the lake the view was so pretty, with stars and planets starting to show nicely overhead, but much of the sky still more blue than black, that I decided to follow the snow machine tracks out onto the lake.

The snow there is not nearly so well packed as it is on the road, so I couldn't actually ride the runners and kick myself along, but I did not that walking along leaning on the spark handles meant that the runners took just enough weight that I didn't sink into the snow on the track at all (unlike when I walked home that way on Friday and it felt like walking on beach sand). Shortly before I drew level with our house I saw that a snow machine track turned off and headed towards the woods below the houses, so I followed it, and it came out in our next-door neighbour's driveway, which gave me a nice little 20-minute loop back to home.

That left us just enough time to visit briefly with a friend on G+ and snuggle a bit before it was time to head to folk dance class. Dance is always fun, but it seemed especially enjoyable this week, since we had missed it last week due to issues relating to not sleeping Saturday night while working on my spark.

We practiced a few old dances and worked on some new ones. One of the new ones was particularly difficult and most of us had problems making the timing work. Then, on the drive home I realized how to make it work--the music is kind of waltz like, so if one counts 1-2-3, 2-2-3, etc. instead 1, 2, 3, etc. it works better. Then I realized that the "long step" we need to take must actually take two counts of three (long in timing, not just slightly longer distance to step). ( If I am correct in this then the counts/steps for both parts is probably: )

As with all major life changes, my suddenly becoming single has meant a variety of tasks that need doing, and it has exponentially increased the amount of correspondence I've received as everyone checks in to see how I'm doing, or offer helpful suggestions when I've asked for them (here and on Facebook). I'm delighted to hear from everyone, but haven't really made an effort to reply to them all yet. I suspect that as things slow back down I'll manage it. In the mean time I'm back to doing Uni work (yay!) and back to eating properly (thank goodness I keep that food log--for several days I was busy enough that it would get to 6pm and I'd look at the log and notice that I'd had *way* less food than my average intake, so I'd make myself stop and eat something more, to bring the total for that day up to only a little below average), getting plenty of sleep, and just generally enjoying a positive outlook. As I told a friend who asked how I was doing "I'm feeling pretty happy. I'm healthy, fit, slender, cute, intelligent, with fantastic prospects and many friends who love me." Life is good. Sure, there are some things that may not have gone as had once been planned, but there are many different ways to enjoy life, and I'm content to keep enjoying it.

I do plan to sit down and write down details of what happened for those of you who have been asking, but that will take a while. I'm trying (with varying success) to limit my internet use to 15 minute increments so as to leave more time for uni work, which needs doing and is important, but with all the new messages to read, that doesn't leave much time for writing, so perhaps sometime in the next week or so I'll make the time anyway. Watch for it in my "too much information filter". If you aren't on it and want to be, let me know.

In other news, it has long been my practice to add a new good habit to my life when doing major life-changes. Sometimes the change is a move, sometimes it is a change in primary relationship status (though, usually, those two tend to go together), but whatever it is, I find that it is much easier to start a new habit when there are other changes going on as well. This time I've decided to start really giving some time and attention to learning to play my hammer dulcimer, by actually playing with it every day, instead of every week. This has been helped by clovis_t having chosen to spend the weekend with friends, so I set the duclimer up on his desk (since he wasn't using it). As a result I've played with it many times this weekend--just pause every now and again to sit down and practice a bit, since it was out (it normally lives under the bed, that being the only place with room for it, and it isn't convenient to get it out from there with all of the furniture in the room).

I've still only got the three tunes I've worked out the notes for, but I know have them memorized well enough that I *usually* hit the correct string. This evening I decided to further challenge myself my trying to play one of them along with the computer (Noteworthy Composer is a useful program--give it sheet music, and it will play the tune). My first attempt left me feeling like I'd been running a race--even my adrenal gland triggered! I soon figured out that I can do the first half of bransle l'official with the computer just fine, but was having difficulties with the second half (which has always been the harder bit for me), so I copied just that part of the music into a new document and set it to repeat lots and lots of times, very, very slowly, and kept trying to play along till I could mostly manage. I'll give it another try later. Alas, the computer isn't easily in reach of the dulcimer, and it requires a bit of fiddling to set things up so that I can play while it sings to me. Hmmm. I wonder if I can re-arrange things to make it more convenient? Probably not--this room is full pretty much to capacity already.

( I finally got photos of the hammer dulcimer on line--it has only been months since these were taken )