kareina

Saturday morning I got up and shovelled snow, then started sewing the replacement edging onto my phone baldric. Then David and Caroline came over, and while they ate the pizza they brought with them I baked some naan filled with spinach and almonds, then I returned to sewing while they did projects of their own (he in the shop, and she on her computer). Then in the evening I put the sewing down and my friend Max came over. We four chatted for a while, then D&C went to her place and Max and I traded massage.
He helped me shovel snow this morning and went home this afternoon (he lives about an hour south of here), after which I resumed sewing. David came back over and returned to his projects, and eventually he pointed out the time and wondered if I were going to dance
He felt for staying at the house, but lent me his car
dance was fun--10 of us tonight, including a couple of new people who are active in the Luleå Bug and Swing dance group (and thus are already quite good at dancing, so it is just a matter of learning how folk dance differs).
Then home and continued sewing till my audio book ran out (it is really nice that 1) I have gotten good enough in Swedish that I understand audio books now without needing to also see the text at the same time and 2)that my new bluetooth hearing aid adapter plus new hearing aids have such good sound that I can enjoy listening to audio books, for the first time in my life), and I realized that it was late enough that I wasn't going to get the project done tonight. So I got onto the computer to buy the next book in the series (Näckrosdammen is the one I bought today; this is a series I read when I did the Swedish for immigrants course years ago--we read the first one in class, and I checked the others out of the library, and I decided it was time to read them again, but given how busy I am, I opted to listen instead so that I can accomplish more with my reading time.)
and decided to post quickly before I hurry off to bed. Tomorrow I try to figure out what is wrong with the ICP-MS now--the plasma wouldn't start for our PhD student this weekend, and gave her a "bad vacuum error", which doesn't sound good.

Back in 1795 one of the Luleå gentry started writing a notebook for himself, in which he recorded (at least) musical notes for dances, plus descriptions of the steps. Years flew by, and in 1996 the notebook was rescued from a container outside of a house in Luleå which was being demolished. A few more years flew by, and over the last two years some Swedish dance scholars have been working with the notebook to interpret the dances. Now that they have a number of them ready to dance they are teaching a class in Herrskapsdanser (dances of the gentry) here in Luleå, one Wednesday a month till spring. Tonight was our first session.

They had given a sneak preview of a couple of the dances at the folk music dance course I attended this weekend, which meant that I already knew today's dances, which made it easier to help the others in my set. By some lucky twist of fate we were exactly 24 people tonight, which was perfect, since one of our dances was for four couples in a square set, the other for three couples longways.

The first dance we did is called ( Gustaf Vasa )

I will have to type up the second dance later, as I am out of time tonight, not only do I work in the morning, but after work I will take the train to Umeå so that I can meet with some folk at the Archaeology department on Friday to discuss the possibility of some collaboration in my upcoming research, since they are my "local" archaeology department here in Sweden.

[edited years later to give a link to the book that has since been published (in Swedish) with some of the dances from this dance manual.]

Didn't get as much done as I had planed, due to an unexpected 2.5 hour nap after lunch (and thus didn't manage to get out the door on time to go to folk music), but I made some progress on my great colour-coding of sheet music to make it easier to learn to play the songs on the dulcimer project.

I had much fun at folk dance class tonight. A couple of my friends who normal play folk music and don't dance have decided to start dancing with us, and I am delighted that they did. Then I came home and checked registrations for Norrskensfesten, and we had two new sign up since yesterday--one is a friend from the Helsinki area of Finland, who is pretty much always playing music at events, so he will be a delightful addition to the event.

Does anyone know where to find "saved drafts" on Dreamwidth? When I pushed the "post" button a bit ago the page asked me "would you like to restore from a saved draft?" and gave me the title of yesterday's post (plenty of newcomers), and I was confused, as I remember actually posting that. I went to another tab, checked, and the post doesn't show, so I returned to the first tab, intending to click "yes" to the question, but it had vanished, and I can't find any buttons anywhere to find the draft...

Thursday of Double Wars was another busy day with not much sleep. I managed to get to bed after Ærikr's vigil at about 03:00, and managed to get up on time for the 10:00 Singing in Modes class by Kaarina. It was just she and I, so she gave me theory at my own pace, and we sang Itsy Bitsy Spider in all of the modes (Dorian, Hypodorian, Phrygian, Hypophrygian, Lydian, Hypolydian, Mixolydian, Hypomixolydian). She had sheet music for a variety of period songs that we could have sung in various modes, too, but since she went at the pace of the slowest kid in class, we didn't get there, but I learned ever so much. She promises me that she will record Itsy Bitsy Spider in the various modes and add it to her web page.

We went a little over time, as there wasn't another class in that room, but chose to end when Lady Elisande came in and asked if we would like to participate in the Experimental Cooking Class; apparently none of the students who had signed up in advance had made it, and she didn't want the supplies she bought to go to waste. I had only just finished saying to Kaarina that I had considered attending that class, as I have had fun doing similar things with school kids at SCA demos, but was feeling a bit too tired to bother. However, when asked by the teacher to please come play, suddenly I was full of energy and enthusiasm again, so we both did.


The handout she had prepared gave us a recipe from Das buoch von guoter spise, for Heathen cakes (Heidenische ku:ochen). The English translation she provided says:

"They are called heathen cakes. One should take a dough and has to make it thin and then take a cooked* meat and speck** cut and apples and pepper and eggs into and bake it and give it out but don't over salt."

*the word she translated as "cooked" usually means in water, such as boiled, poached, or simmered
**speck is a type of bacon

As you can see, this is a bit vague. What sort of dough? What kind of meat? What should it look like? What kind of texture are we going for?

She had purchased a variety of options, and we were free to just go for it, and we did, with very, very different results. Since my minion needs gluten free foods, and she had purchased a gluten-free flour option, I decided to play with that one as my dough. Since I really dislike bacon, and only eat wild game and reindeer if I am eating meat at all, I opted to use the pack of Renskav (thinly sliced reindeer meat), and substitute butter for the speck. Everyone else used one or more of the three types of bacon she had purchased, along with some other meat. Since I am a scientist, I kept careful notes of what I did for my version, which came out as a pie:

I cooked the entire 240 g packet of Renskav + 12 g butter in enough water to cover, and about a tablespoon of a Norwegian spice blend that Thora had provided, which contains: crowberries, alpine leek, thyme, black currants, lemon balm, lemon grass, marjoram, and hyssop. As soon as the meat was just brown I took the pot off the stove and left it to sit while I worked on the dough.

For the dough I took 250 grams of buckwheat flour, cut into it 25 g butter, mixed in 1 egg, then added a bit more water than I meant to, so I added the rest of the buckwheat flour (another 250 g) to make the dough workable. Then she mentioned that she also had acorn flour, so I divided my dough in half, and mixed a handful (what she had left--I have small hands) of the acorn flour into one of the batches of dough, plus a tiny bit more water to make it workable.

Then I pressed each batch of dough into its own pie plate, noting that the dough with acorn was a bit better behaved and holds together better. Once both pie plates were covered with dough I drained the meat (reserving the cooking liquid to take back to camp to cook grains in later) and divided it into the pie plates. Then I chopped three apples (keeping the peeling, but discarding the cores) and divided that between the plates, and cut 25 g of butter and added that to both pies as well. This added up to only a rather thin, patchy layer of solid filling across the bottom of the pies (really it might have been smarter to use this much filling for only one pie, but since I had dough for two...). We had more apple available, but not more reindeer, and this looked like a good fruit-meat balance to my eye, so I stopped there and went on to the eggs and pepper that the recipe called for.

Then I beat 4 eggs with 1/4 cup of pink apple juice & 1 teaspoon of pepper and divided that between the pies. They were still looking a bit empty to me, so I beat two more eggs with 1/4 cup of the golden apple juice (she had bought three different apple juice varieties for us to try if we wanted) and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper plus 2 pinches of salt (figuring if we are instructed not to over salt it, that implies that we should add some salt).

This time it looked reasonable, so I stirred the filling a bit to get it mixed and evenly distributed, and baked it. I was really happy with how they came out--they were really tasty. The acorn-buckwheat crust was easier to get out of the pie plates than the plain buckwheat crust. I suspect that given how little butter I put into the crust I probably should have buttered the pie plates.

My version was totally unlike the ones the others made, but so was every version we did. Some were made with a yeast dough, others were more pie like. One she did a more liquid-y batter and put the fillings in that. Some had the eggs beaten in, others, baked in a muffin cup, had a single egg broken onto the top of each of them.

We filled one plate with a sample of everything we had made and delivered that to the Queen, we each tasted as much as we wanted from each, and the rest was sent back to various camps. I, of course, took my pie, and my minion was delighted with his dinner that evening, as was my champion, who doesn't need gluten free, but loves reindeer.

After eating the results of our efforts I wandered by the market day. I had thought that I didn't need any more fabric, but the nice lady at Medeltidsmode proved me wrong with this lovely broken diamond twill unbleached linen, and six meters followed me home. Oops.

I also bought a bit more yarn, mostly to use up the cash I had left. I forgot to mention that earlier in the week, while at Gaita's music class I wanted to buy the songbook that we were using in the course. However, since they are from the UK they don't have Swish (this most wonderful payment method ever is only available in Sweden), and, of course, I had no cash (who needs it when one can just Swish?). So I asked around, and one of our camp members had cash, so she handed me 200 SEK, and I swished her the money, and then I gave the cash to Gaita, who gave me the song book and 50 SEK change. The nice lady selling yarn was offering them for 20 SEK each, or 3 for 50. So I took three, and am once again happily cash-free.

That evening's court begun, of course, with Ærikr's knighting ceremony, which was beautifully done, though I thought it a bit odd that ceremony mentioned only the belt and chain as the symbols of the order, yet after he was dubbed and buffeted and they were putting regalia on him there was, in fact, a set of spurs too, so I don't know why they weren't mentioned earlier. I had to laugh at myself when Sir Peregrine came forward with the belt, explaining that rather than pass on his old belt, which was stained yellow with age, he was instead providing a shiny new white belt with cast tokens for all of the fighting awards that Ærikr has attached to the end. You see, I had seen just that belt, and his old one, sitting on his desk at his place the previous Thursday when I was there, and I commented "a new belt?", and he explained how difficult he had had it trying to find white belt leather of an appropriate weight in Sweden--most places have only the thick heavy leather of his old belt, which he offered up for me to look at, not the thin nice leather of this new belt, which he folded up in his hands so that the decorations didn't show, and didn't hand me. I was easily distracted by his comments, and didn't think anything of it at the time, nor had I thought about that conversation or the belt at all when I made my guesses the day before that perhaps it was time for Ærikr to be knighted. The other odd thing I found with the ceremony was that when it came time to wrap the belt around his waist they didn't call forth his lady, but instead the queen did that service all by her self, and I wondered if that was normal for Drachenwald.

After his ceremony the court went on for a fair bit longer, with a number of deserving awards from the Crown, and from the new Prince and Princess. One of the most amusing awards was a Panache (Kingdom level arts) for a former Baroness of Aarnimetsä, which had been written if in a very long-winded form of medieval bureaucratic language (in this Kindgom the wording of the scrolls is totally left up to the scribe doing the work, and thus no two are ever alike). The text for that scroll was so long that quite a way in the herald paused, said "Page 2", and continued reading for just as long--he spoke of the creation of the order, of the crown giving the award, of the skills required to receive it, etc., etc., etc. When he finally, and at long last, came to the end of the text a second herald stepped forward, and read it all out again, in Finnish this time. I am told that they translated *everything*, even the "Page 2". When he was finally done they presented the scroll itself, which was actually a *scroll* they had to unfurl it to display. At this point someone in the audiance said that he had trouble following the scroll, and could we have it again, in Swedish this time. The Crown politely declined.

Towards the end of court the Crown summoned forward the Kingdom Chronicler, and apologized to her, for it was the 25th of the month, and normally by the 25th they would have already given her words to be included in the next issue of the newsletter, but this time they hadn't yet accomplished this task. As she started to assure them that it was ok the Herald called forth the order of the Pelican, and the very surprised chronicler was sent off to vigil.

Immediately after court the masquerade dance ball started, so, of course, I went straight to the hall for dancing. As the musicians were getting ready I noticed a tall masked slender man in late period garb walk up and chat with them about which dances he would be teaching, and then he went to sit down to await the start of the ball. So, of course, I went up to him and asked for the first dance (I was also wearing a mask). He agreed, and stood up. He had two pilgrams badge sorts of metal pinned to his clothing, so I asked them if they were awards or simply pilgrams badges. He replied that they were personal tokens from a Prince and Princess, and then added "In the West", to which I replied "I thought I recognized you behind that mask", and he had to ask my name, but as soon as I said "Kareina" he blushed with delayed recognition. To be fair, I knew that he was on site and had been teaching a shoe-making class, and I don't think he knew that I would be there, so I had the advantage.

I, of course, danced every dance, till the ball broke up at midnight. At that point I went looking for Jovi's vigil, and found the party over by the sauna (I don't think I mentioned that I enjoyed the sauna and hot tub on one of the first evening--it really helped recover my sore hips from the trip down). However, the line was really long, and I never did manage to find the vigil book, and I was tired, so I opted to just return to my camp and bed, and the next morning I emailed her the words I would have shared.

Since my birthday happened to fall on a Saturday this year I booked the Gillestuga in Gammelstad for a party. The up side to this was a much larger room than we have at home, so it was possible to have both space for dancing and a bunch of tables pushed together in a square big enough for a dozen or so people to sit around and have all the food in the middle.


Knowing that December tends to be busy for everyone, with most people having multiple invitations to choose from every weekend all month, I opted to do the invite as "drop in whenever you can between 11:00 and midnight".

Party #1

The day's first party began right after I arrived and started baking the bread rolls (from dough that had sat in the fridge over night) and making a pot of soup to share. People kept arriving as I cooked. Some of them lent a hand, while others entertained us with conversation, and by the time the lunch was ready to sit to the table, just after 13:00, we had 13 people present.

Party #2

Then some of the guests had to leave for a choir and a few new people arrived, I unwrapped my presents*, and then some of the musician started playing, so the second party included a mix of dancing, quiet conversation with good music in the background, and more food.

Party #3

Then a few more people left and others arrived, including my acroyoga partner arrived, so after she had a chance to eat a bit she and I started playing. We are getting much better at this trick, and I can report that it is every bit as much fun as it looks. We convinced my dance teacher's grandson to try a bit of the acroyoga, and, to no one's surprise, he was able to do everything he tried on the first go. The kid is a competitive gymnast, and it was his habit of walking on his hands during our weekly dance sessions that first inspired me to start working out and doing the acroyoga etc.


Party #4

After the acroyoga, and the departure of some people and the arrival of others, we spent some time singing, while I worked my way around the circle braiding people's hair. I also ate my dinner somewhere in here, and baked more bread for people, since we had eaten the last of the bread rolls.


Party #5

Later in the evening my friends from Phire arrived and we went outside, across the street to the large parking lot, and they did a little fire show, which was quite nice. Not every birthday party gets its own private fire show. After the fire show most of the jesters ate cake and relaxed, while one of them joined me in a nice long yoga session before everyone pitched in to help clean up and head home.

By the end of the evening a total of 28 guests (not counting me, of course) had spent anywhere between an hour and 12 hours at the party, and I count the day a wonderful success.

*I had said in advance that I didn't really need any presents (though, of course, I would accept contributions to next year's personal trainer so I can continue in my fitness journey. However, a few people opted to ignore this. Several of the people who arrived early in the day came bearing gift-wrapped boxes, but since I was busy shaping breadrolls, with flour covered hands, I had them put them on a table till I got the rolls baked, the soup cooked, and had eaten a bit of lunch.

Even without the cards it was easy to remember which package had come from whom as I unwrapped them:

lord_kjar's brother and sister in law brought me a small useful wooden box in the same size as a stackable set we already have, and in the lid of the box they hid a pair of fabric scissors, as one can never have too many pairs in the house.

lord_kjar and C. presented me with a new air-pop popcorn popper, so that we have a way to pop corn that our nut allergic friends can eat (I often use peanut oil in my old popcorn popper, and the above mentioned sister-in-law is allergic to nuts).

Our Nyckleharpa teacher and his wife gave me a trollkors and some candles.

Then I noticed a small, shiny silver coloured cardboard box I didn't recognize and opened it to see what it contained. There was no card, but there was also no doubt at all about who had made the contents:



These wonderful silk hair ribbons were tablet-woven by my talented senior apprentice, who managed to weave them together so that there is no seam where the three ends meet in the middle. I have been wanting something like this for quite a while, and these are everything I had been hoping for (but I had no idea that she was going to make them for me). When braided into my hair it gives me lovely blue braids that reach to my hips. It is so nice to have hair back to a decent length again, even if it is only silk.

Later in the day my other apprentice arrived, and she also presented me some weaving--her first attempt at the traditional Swedish rigid heddle band weaving, which came out really well, and I am very pleased with it.

In addition to all of these wonderful gifts, I got the gift of some amazing music, the above mentioned fire show, and some contribution's to next year's personal trainer. All in all it was a fabulous day. I strongly recommend turning ten for the fifth time, or, if you prefer to count that way, 50.

I happened to glance at FB today at the right time to see a post from northernotter about the talk she will be doing on her hand-woven reproduction of the Skjoldehamn find next weekend. Clicking on the link reveals that the other speaker will be Lise Bender Jørgensen, who has published so many books on archaeological textiles. Of course I have to go!

So I have booked train tickets to Narvik for way too early next Friday morning, and then I will take a bus to Tromsø, spend the weekend there, see the exhibit, attend the talks, and then bus back to Narvik Sunday evening to catch the train home on Monday morning. Since I will be missing work that Monday I can work the following Friday to make up for it, so I don't even need to take a day off. Norway! Mountains! Textiles! I am looking forward to the trip.

This weekend's home improvement project has been prep work to consolidate our beds, in preparation for C moving in. When I first met lord_kjar he was sleeping on a queen sized bed on a simple IKEA frame. It is a fine bed, and we slept on it for several years before deciding to buy the king sized memory foam mattress upon which we now sleep. When we bought the larger mattress we decided to move the old bed to the guest room, and we just put the mattress on the floor, where it has been working just fine. However, when C moves in she will be bringing her bed with her. It is a queen sized IKEA bed with a large amount of storage area under the mattress, which easily lifts up on some sort of spring-loaded pivoting system.

Since this will be more large beds than we have rooms to keep them in, we decided to double up our old and new beds into a single unit. Therefore we built an extension for our old bed frame that is the same height as the old mattress. Now we can put the king sized mattress on top of the old mattress + extension, and it will work just fine. Should we have lots of house guests at once, we can move the large mattress to the living room floor, and that will still leave the queen sized bed in the guest room.

And last, but certainly not least: Snow! Yesterday we finally got something resembling a decent snow fall! Combined with some pretty good winds, so this morning when we woke up we had some lovely snow-dunes stretching across our yard. It took me about 40 minutes to use the shovel to clear the path to the shed where the snow-blower lives, and then another hour for him to use the snowblower to clear the driveways, while I used the shovel to clear out the rest of the walkways, and tidy up some of the narrow little ridges of snow he left behind.

Of course I used the snow I shoveled to build up a little hill in front of the house, and after we were done I got out my sled and played on the hill a bit. So wonderful to finally have decent snow!

Now it is time to head to folk dance for the evening, so even if there were more to say, I have run out of time to say it...

( This got long (no surprise there), so: Friday summary )

( Saturday summary )

( Sunday summary )
Which meant I had time to go home, take a short nap, unpack most things, and still make it to Swedish folk dance that night.

Much to my surprise, after spending a weekend at a major feast, I weighed a full kilo less this morning than I had on Friday morning. Today's weight was 55.3 kg (about 121.9 lbs), which is the smallest number I have seen since purchasing the scale. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, while I ate something every round, I told the servers to only give me tiny bits of each item, since I didn't feel that hungry (except for the rice pudding with raisins and lingon berries--I had a normal size serving of that, yum!), and my total intake for each day was noticeably less by volume than I normally eat. I think I may have made up for it today though--it will be interesting to see what the scale says tomorrow.

I have mentioned before that we are making svartvinbärsylt(black currant jam) by boiling berries with an apple, but no sugar, and how much I love it as a condiment on foods (much like Americans use ketchup). Recently lord_kjar's parents moved house, and when they did they gave us one of their freezers, and with it a few bags of lingonberries. Swedes tend to put lingonberry jam on pretty much all food types, but I don't care for it, because store bought jam has so much sugar in it. However, lingonberries are much tarter than black currants, so we decided to try mixing the two berries 50-50. Today's jam consisted of 1 yoghurt bucket of black currants, 1 yogurt bucket of lingonberries, and one small green apple (and no sugar, of course), which I covered with water and boiled till it had condensed down small enough that it fits into two 3/4 L glass jars, with a bit of room to spare in each.

While it was cooking I took last night's rotmos(mashed potatoes + other root vegetables, like turnip, parsnip, rutabaga, and carrot) and turned it into perogies and baked some bread rolls. I just tried some of the perogies with the lingon-svartvinbärsylt on it, and yum! The jam is just tart enough to bite back when eaten on its own, but blends very well with savory foods.

The reason I managed to do all of this is that this morning I will need to work in the afternoon. The department is having a party during which various labs have been asked to do a short presentation of what they do, and I was specifically asked to do a talk on the new laser ablation ICP-MS lab. Since the party starts at 15:30, I am not going to go in till just a bit before then.

This weekend's Spelmansstamän was, as always, ever so much fun. Our dance performance went well, his nyckleharpa group performance sounded great, there were many other wonderful performers, and, as always, the evening dancing was fabulous. Groups of musicians take turns playing for the dancers all evening both Friday and Saturday nights. This was my fifth Spelmansstamän, and I am pleased to report that these days I don't even need to think about what kind of music they are playing, my body just does the correct type of Swedish folk dance to the music.

Then C arrived for a visit yesterday, and it is so wonderful to have her here again. It is looking like either she will come north (usually) or we will head south to see her at least once a month for the rest of the year.

The Known World Dance event was long enough that we established a "routine" schedule--up early, attend a class or two, skip a couple of classes around lunch time to eat good food, chat with people, and then go out for ice cream and/or yummy stuff from the bakery, attend more classes, practice singing for the choir performance on the last night of the event, grab a quick bite to eat, change into fancy clothes for the evening ball, and dance till around midnight, give or take an hour, depending on the night, head back up the hill to the hostel, and repeat for four days, with slight variations. One day I was sensible enough to do yoga before changing into my pretty new dress for the ball (which I wore every night, in hopes that it would increase the odds of getting a decent photo of it posted to FB, but I haven't seen one yet...), the other nights I had to do it after we got back to the room and I had changed (I just wasn't going to lay down on a stone floor in a silk dress when I could do it on a folded blanket in my room wearing tights and a t-shirt).

Such a fun event, I totally recommend them to everyone--especially when they are held in a 13th Century town hall, which has been used for balls ever since it was first built. Both lord_kjar and I came home very inspired to do more Medieval music!

After the event we had time to visit two castles on our way to the airport. One in Miltenburg, the town the event was in (nice red sandstone tower, but the "fine art museum" contains nothing of interest), and one not so far away, built on top of some lovely basalt columns, in Otzburg. The latter has a much nicer museum, with displays from various times in the castle history, and lots of Hobbit stuff, too. apparently the German Tolkein society hosts regular Hobbit days at that site to entertain the tourists.

Now that we are back we need to focus on building a cover for the trailer so that we can take stuff to Double Wars (which is looming really soon now), and at work they are finally installing our laser ablation system. The tech who is doing the work is one of those people who really doesn't talk much--he will answer a direct question, but he volunteers no information, so it is a bit frustrating being there, unable to help or participate. But it is going to be my responsibility to care for it, so I will head back and keep watching tomorrow, even if I would rather be doing than watching.

The SCA shire of Reengarda (Skellefteå area in northern Sweden) held its annual spring event this weekend. We went, of course, and once again found it to be a delightful event. The site they use is a small old school building. Downstairs there is a kitchen and small dining area/public place, some showers and a sauna. Up stairs there are a couple of rooms with bunk beds in them, and on another floor half way up from the upstairs floor is a small gym.

This year, as usual, site opened on Friday evening, and they had a simple dinner available from 19:00. We got there about thirty minutes thereafter, and unloaded the car and claimed our bunks before heading to the hall to be sociable with people (and let lord_kjar eat something. I, of course, wasn't hungry that late in the evening). I did my yoga and was considering heading to sleep, when some of us started singing, so I stayed up for a while. But then the singing broke up as some wanted to go to bed and others wanted to head outside to the hot tub, so I opted to get some sleep, crawling into bed before 23:00.

However, after only a bit more than an hour's nap I woke up again, so I wandered downstairs to find a few people sitting around a table alternating between singing songs and conversation, so, of course, I joined them. This broke up a bit after 02:00, so I went back to sleep.

Saturday morning was a leisurely breakfast and conversation, after which several of us went for a walk, enjoying the lovely weather--it was around -13 C--the first decent weather since I got back from Australia, weeks ago. So nice not to have above zero temps and melting. Sadly, the lull was brief, and by the time the weekend was over we were back up to the temps flitting back and forth across 0.

After the walk, since I was dressed warmly in wool tunic, coat, and trousers + fur hood and muff, I opted to stay outside and join the workshop in how to throw basic sword blows. There was quite a large group of interested new people, plus a couple who, like me, have done this before, but haven't been in armour in ages. It was fun to do again--seeing the Nordmark Coronet the other weekend reminded me that I actually enjoy SCA combat, and swinging a stick again reminds me that it is fun. It will be interesting to see if those of us who talked about getting some regular unarmoured SCA fighting practice going in Luleå actually pull it off. If I am doing unarmoured training regularly I will be more interested in also putting on armour...

The class ended when it was time for the tournament to begin, and when they asked for someone to keep the records for the tourney I said yes. They said I needed to find pen and paper, and I started to walk to the hall, and then realized that I didn't need any such thing--I have a phone! The tournament was one of the North of Nordmark 500 series of tournaments. These are done in a bear pit style, with the fighters standing in a line waiting their turn. The first two in line begin the tourney, and as soon as one of them is defeated he or she leaves the field, reports to the person keeping track who it was who killed them, and gets in line at the end. Meanwhile the next person in line has moved onto the field to face the one who survived the last bout. Injuries are kept until death, but go away as soon as the fighter gets back in line. The tournament runs till one of the fighter gets 25 victories.

It was fun being the record keeper. We had seven fighters in the list, and one was clearly having a better day than the others. I saw him only four times, and each time he had fought quite a few fights before being killed and having to get back in line. Twice he managed to hold the field through all six other fighters before one managed to take him out. Needless to say, he was the one to reach 25 first. After him were three fighters who all were doing about the same--one had 9 wins, one 10, and the other 11. The remaining three fighters had 0, 1 and 2 wins. All I had time to record was the name of the victor (simple roman numeral tally marks next to the names), but in hindsight it would have been interesting to keep a record of who was matched for each fight, to see if there were patterns to the wins and losses each fighter tallied. One of them said the simplest way to do that would be to video tape the match and then work it out after wards.

After the tourney there was a yummy lunch, followed by a calligraphy workshop. I watched the first bit, a slide show showing some of the various hands devised over the SCA time period, when and where they came from and what features marked them as unique. But when it came time for the hands-on part of the class I was sleepy, and went to take a nap. I woke up just on time for afternoon fika, so I enjoyed a snack and spent time catching up with my minion, whom I don't see near often enough. My minion had previously mentioned to me that he should learn to sew, and when the embroidery class was called after fika he confessed that he was interested, but didn't think he would be able to do it successfully. I pointed out that wielding a needle wasn't any harder than wielding a sword, and helped him to choose some yarn for his first attempt.

Since he had learned to write his name (Wilhelm) during the calligraphy class, and he said that he had no idea what to embroidery, I decided that his first attempt would be to embroider a W, and we choose a period shape for that letter that had nice full strokes, so that there would be something to colour. I had him draw the outline in chalk, then showed him the outline stitch, which he worked in red on the brown fabric provided. Then he took some light blue yarn and I showed him how to do the laid-and-couched work fill. He had time to do the entire outline and completely fill in and finish the first segment of the W before it was time to clear stuff off of the tables so they could set up for the banquet.

The actual class teacher worked with a handful of students at the other end of the table, while I gave my minion one on one attention, replying with encouraging noises every time he asked something like "and this next stitch should go here?". I think he was rather surprised to see how well the project was coming out. Hopefully he will finish it on his own in the near future. The woman who taught the class lives in the same town as he does, if he should have any questions.

I changed from my Viking boy clothes (which were perfect for keeping warm while watching the tourney, and, after a few layers were shed, had been comfortable for the classes) into my brown bliaut for the feast. My new blue silk bliaut didn't see any progress at the event, as I put it on the display table for the A&S contest, since it is far enough along to look like something--it needed only a bit more finishing of one seam (done on the drive home), the lacing, adding the trim to the bottom hem, and adding the garnet beads before it will be done!

The banquet was fun--I played a bit of dulcimer in the corner for some of it, and was rather surprised when people applauded--I had thought of it as background noise. Some of us did some singing, I visited with a bunch of people, including a group of people who were at their first SCA event--I had fun telling them stories of how the SCA got started, and I did my yoga. The food looked fablous, and the spinach and pine nuts looked so good I put some in my ceramic mug and into the fridge so that I could have it for breakfast. This turned out to have been brilliant on my part, since it was really yummy. During a break in the feast a bunch of us went to the gym, where we taught the new people some medieval dances to live music.

After the banquet I joined some folk in the hot tub for a while, but then went to bed around 23:00, since I was, once again, really tired.

Sunday morning I took a walk before breakfast, then enjoyed waffles (with cream and jam) for breakfast (in addition to the above mentioned spinach) and some left over ice cream from the feast. Ok, I had thirds on the ice cream.

Then we packed up and left site early enough to visit lord_kjar's brother on the way home and still got home early enough to take a nap before putting everything away before going to folk dancing.

I enjoy this sort of low-key event, where there is only one thing at a time scheduled, so that one doesn't miss anything, unless one chooses to take a nap.