kareina

The Shire of Frostheim is lucky enough to share a home island with the Scouts. Grundet is a small island in the Luleå river by the village of Sunderbyn, which was briefly famous in the 1990's at the filming location of Swedish TV's series Bondånger (which I had never heard of before yesterday).

The island had been used as a center for timber collection back when logs were transported by floating them down the river, and the various buildings left over from those days are still present, including the smithy, which is used by both Frostheim and the Scouts (especially when we teach workshops for them).

The building in which the smithy is located is a long one, clearly built in segments over time--the smithy end is concrete block construction, but the far end of the building was timber-built. That end had been partially damaged at some point by fire, and, much more recently, the roof caved in from heavy snowfall. The city, which now owns the island, and hires it out to our two organisations, looked at the damage after the roof collapse, and decided that the cheapest thing they could do would be to send out some bulldozers and level the whole building, including the smithy and the other segments between the damaged one and the smithy.

However, both Frostheim and the Scouts like having the smithy, so we got permission instead to dismantle the damaged end ourselves, and this weekend we had a working weekend, with a bunch of us from Frostheim and a smaller group from the scouts hard at work.

Saturday was hot and sunny, and we started with the dismantling. Since we like heights Kheldor and I went up onto the roof and worked to free up the bits of roof still attached to the walls, tossing stuff into the middle of the house, while the rest of the crew worked outside to remove the boards covering the timbers, expose the windows (which have been boarded up for years), and take them away. Eventually they opened enough of the wall on the side where the roof had most completely fallen in, at which point they could start pulling out boards and stuff while we continued to dismantle the remaining bit of roof on the far side (and switched to throwing bits down on the outside, since there was no one working there any longer.

Meanwhile some others cut down some of the trees behind our archery range, and then used a tractor to extend and level the archery range, which will be very nice for being able to find the arrows that fail to hit the targets.

We were at it from just after 10:00 till almost 18:00, with a pause for fresh baked pizza for lunch (one of our members has a new, portable, wood-fired pizza oven, that cooks a small pizza in around 90 seconds, Yum! Followed by a quick swim in the river (wearing our clothes, which stayed wet long enough that it was much more comfortable to be up on the roof in the heat).

This morning when it was time to return to the site it was pouring down rain, However, we also had work to do inside the smithy, so that was today's focus. While some folk fixed the ventilation and electric the rest of us washed the walls and then gave them their first coat of "whitewash" (calcium/lime water-based paint which, in this case, is actually a little pink (probably coloured with a bit of iron oxide, I would guess).

You can see photos from the weekend on Frostheim's FB page, and, even better, there is a delightful time lapse film of the work they did on the back side of the house, from first starting through to getting the (rather large) windows out and taken away. Since that was the side we couldn't see from where we were working on the roof, I was delighted to see the film.

It will be a bit more work later this summer to finish dismantling the damaged part of the house, but we think there will be enough good timber in the pile to make a sauna for the site, which will make our camping events and fighter trainings much nicer.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/577634.html

My car’s ABS warning light had been shining for a while, so I finally made time to take it in and have it looked at last week Monday. They found some problems, kept it over night, fixed them, and I paid them not quite 6000 SEK for doing so. Yesterday (Wednesday) another warning lamp came on, this time saying “check break pads”. Since I will be heading to Norway for a week, leaving on Saturday, I promptly took the car back to the shop this morning and asked them to have a look, as one wants working breaks for a road trip, especially one which will involve mountains. An hour or so later they emailed me to say that they found more problems (I can’t be bothered translating from Swedish), and it would be ~5000 SEK to get it fixed, but I could have it back tomorrow. Here’s hoping that this really does it for a while.

Since I didn’t know when I left the house this morning how long they would need to keep the car I was smart enough to bring along my sewing basket. I then spent all day in the office (other than the lunch time acroyoga session with Johan) till it was time for the Frostheim crafts night, then I walked over. We have only been doing them once a month this term, and tonight was an espeically nice turn out—we had 11 of us, many of whom were working on sewing projects, others had nålbinding, another was doing illumination, another polished some wire for making spirals for a Finnish Iron Age costume. It was a delightful evening.

Now I am tired and should go do my yoga and get to sleep. I will be working in the office tomorrow morning and then meeting Johan for acroyoga, and then will work more in the office till the car place says I can come get it.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/509997.html

It should have been a productive day. I woke up this morning enthusiastic and ready to start my day with a workout and then settle in to the computer and work on my research. I did, in fact, start my workout (right after starting a load of laundry). Then, about 20 minutes in I got a phone call from David, who was driving to work, and we chatted for half a hour, during which I accomplished some dusting (we recently changed the humidifiers from the setting where they warm the water as they work to the one where they work with cold water, and it has helped cut the amount of white dust they are producing by quite a bit, but there is still some). After we hung up (around 08:00) I did a few more "useful tasks" around the house, and finally settled into uni work around 10:30. An hour later I was sleepy, so I lay down for a nap and slept for two hours, after which several more hours slipped by not doing much other than updating financial records and looking at email. Feeling guilty about not working I had pretty much decided to not attend the Frostheim social & crafts night tonight so that I could work, but then I got a call from Oscar, wondering if I had room in my car to head out there, so, of course, I said yes, and went out and spent a very enjoyable evening visiting with friends I haven't seen since before Christmas and working on my embroidery in progress. Then I came home and spent an hour checking email and reading FB before I decided I had best confess my laziness here in hopes that I accomplish more uni work tomorrow...

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/501762.html

Today was Frostheim's annual Jul event, a nice, low-key potluck dinner at the same Gillestuga where we do folk dance each week. I had baked an apple pie yesterday for it, and since it is easier to do a big batch of pie crust at once, I also filed a large pie plate ready to fill with broccoli, eggs, and cheese today, and then set three more dough filled pie plates into the freezer for later use. I was up way too late last night, so I had a lazy morning.

The only thing productive I did in the morning was to set up the new humidifier, now that the cartridge for it had soaked for 24 hours. When I turned it on it told me that the humidity level in the house was 24. Now, 11 hours later, it says 34. I am hoping that the crack that runs across the front of the dulcimer will close back up again. It is usually hard to see in the summer, and quite gaping in the winter. Right now it is still more than 1 mm wide, but then the humidifier which is already running is in the living room. They shipped the other one separately, and it didn't' arrive till a day later, so its cartridge is soaking now, and we can turn it on in the office (where the dulcimer is living these days) tomorrow.

Around 13:30 I decided that perhaps I should head out and shovel a little snow (not that we had much new, but if one keeps on top of it, it is easier), so I put on my coat and boots and opened the door, to David, who was just arriving. So instead of shoveling snow I just took down the compost, picked up the mail, and chatted briefly with the neighbour* who was out lighting candles at the base of his drive, presumably to mark the house for a party later. Then I went back in and helped David make the broccoli pie and gathered up the few things I wanted to take with me for the event before changing into my jester costume.

David and I pulled into the site at exactly 16:00, when the site was supposed to open, to discover that the Archers were already there, and that some other group had been in the hall setting up for their party there tomorrow. So we took down their decorations and cleared away the stuff they had on the tables, and we called the woman in charge of bookings and she said that she would contact the other group and let them know that we had cleaned their stuff out of the way for our party.

With so many of us to do the work it took only a few minutes to change from a balloons everywhere (I think they are celebrating a baptism tomorrow, or perhaps a wedding--the site is a very short walk from the old stone church) to medieval banners, and those of us who were there already were sitting down to eat by 16:47. More people arrived later, and there was pretty much always someone eating. The other Phire members didn't start to arrive till around 18:00, and, of course, they needed to eat before the show. I did my yoga as a warm-up starting just after 19:00, and by the time I was done they had the outside set up and ready for the fire show, so first Ellinor and I did our Acroyoga performance inside, and then everyone went out for the fire show. After the performances and more visiting (and more food for those who wanted it) we did some dancing. People started trickling out kind of early. Once enough had departed the rest of us went into cleaning mode, and were done and ready to leave site by 22:43, at which point I sent the other group an SMS to let them know we were done. They replied hoping that it wasn't too much of a problem for us that they had set up before we got there, and I assured them that it was fine, but we felt bad for them that they had to do their work over again, and at 23:45 they replied that it wasn't a problem, it went faster the second time, and they were already done.

Tomorrow we will head out to visit David's parents, and then there is one more week of work before the Christmas holiday. My friend Linda will arrive on the 26th, and Stephanie and her family on the 29th. I am looking forward to seeing them all. Come January life will get really busy as I start the new PhD program for real.

* The neighbour tells me that it is quite different working at Uppsala instead of LTU--they have much more bureaucracy (no real surprise, the Uni in Uppsala was founded in 1477, so it has had plenty of time to build up a serious bureaucracy, while LTU wasn't founded till 1971, and didn't become a full University till 1997, so it has some work to do to catch up with the paperwork levels). I still find it funny that he spent 15 years living in Uppsala and commuting to LTU, and then finally bought a house up here, and a couple of years later got hired away to work in Uppsala and commute from here. When David and I first bought our house he was still living in Uppsala, and when I told him that I liked having a place that feels kind of like living in the country, yet is only 4 km from the office, he said "that's too close!" and told me how long he had been commuting from Uppsala. A couple of years later the big house on our street came up for sale, and he bought it, making him a couple hundred meters closer to campus than I.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/492183.html

This week slipped by as quickly as weeks tend to do, with the added complication of not having had the energy to put everything away last Sunday after Norrskensfesten, which meant that every day I would see the remaining pile, realize that I didn't have time/energy to do all of it, so instead I would put away one or three items and call it good in addition to everything else that was on for the day. My main focus for the work week was work--my ICP-MS wasn't behaving, and I wasn't getting passing performance reports and it took half the week and a few calls with the guy who did some routine maintenance of it the week before before I managed to get it working properly (we switched to the brand-new, never before used cones before it would behave--it will be interesting to see if he can see anything wrong with them when he is here again later this month).

Monday evening was Nyckleharpa night. None of the girls who normally ride with us were up for going this week, since they wanted to rest after Norrskensfesten, but David and I made it and had, as always a delightful time. It has been nearly seven years since I moved to Sweden, but I am still as much in love with Swedish folk music as when I first arrived and got acquainted with it. Tuesday Ellinor was still tired, so I went to gymnastics on my own and had fun, but I was also tired, so I left a half an hour early and did some grocery shopping. I managed to finish a UFO that evening--a pair of socks I started in February 2015 using the Dalarna stitch of nalbinding and some lovely 35% silk 65% merino wool blue and black yarn.

Wednesday evening I had time to do some cooking (made a lovely risotto: cooked up some small pumpkins I had bought a couple of weeks back with some left over grated carrots from Norrskensfesten in water and then used the immersion blender on them, then cooked the rice in that plus butter and a bit of extra water and added a bit of dried nettles, some left over hard boiled eggs from the event, some almond meal, and some almond slivers, and then, when it was otherwise done, drained a can of artichoke hearts, sliced them and added them to the pot. Yum! I also did a green salad using spinach, baby silverbeet leaves, purple and orange carrot, shelled fresh peas, cucumber, tomato, avocado, and alfalfa sprouts), which has been feeding me the rest of the week (the first half of the week I mostly ate left over soup and bread from the event).

Thursday was Frostheim social night, so I just stayed on campus till time for the meeting. There were five of us there this week, two of whom hadn't been at Norrskensfesten. I worked on a pair of wrist warmers to match the socks I finished on Monday--back when I first started those socks I had started one, decided that it wasn't big enough to fit my leg, and set it aside and started over. Now I have decided that it is a fine size for the cuff on some arm warmers.

Friday I managed to get most of my personal stuff from Norrskensfest put away during the day, and in the evening I went to Pire practice for the first time in ages. As luck would have it, I didn't get to do much acroyoga there, since tonight happened to be the time that the new students were to show off the choreographies they have been working on all term, followed by blindfolding the new people, leading them through and around obstacles, to a place where they can try their hand at playing with fire instead of just the practice toys they have been using. Then we all went to Ellinor's apartment and hung out for the rest of the evening. It was a nice, relaxed night. The others ate store-bought pizza, but, of course, I wasn't hungry that late. However, I did suddenly get inspired to bake, so I asked Ellinor if it would be ok, and she let me use her ingredients to make a batch of cookies. They were impressed that I didn't use a recipe or measure anything, just tossed stuff into a bowl till it looked right and baked them. They tried to argue that I could only do this because I have so much baking experience. I admitted that yes, I have been baking for at least 40 years now, but I was making up cookie recipes when I was 10--this is a skill I have always had and was good at the first time I tried.

Today I had considered attending one of two conflicting folk music things that were available, but instead just stayed home. I managed to finish putting away all of my event stuff, did some laundry, and finally started on the Frostheim task I had been putting off--dealing with the ceramics. Frostheim has a large box of hand-made ceramics that lives at my place. After Hägnan this summer it had been packed into the box still wet and when I opened the box a day or three later, it smelled of mold. So I washed everything in bleach water, tossed the bubble wrap that had been cushioning them from one another, let it all sit out to air for some days, and finally repacked it with fresh bubble wrap. I considered using cloth bags instead, but our sensechal said to just buy more bubble wrap. When I opened the box at Norrskensfesten there was a slight mold smell, which became a bit stronger when I took things out of their plastic. Therefore I decided that stronger measures are in order.

This time I put as many pieces as would fit at a time in a pot, filled it with water, and put it on the stove. After giving them a bit of time to boil I then rescued them, rinsed the pot, and re-filled it with more. It took all day to get the full set boiled, and they will sit out on a clean towel for a day or three. I need to go shopping and pick up some cheap fabric and make some bags for each piece, and then put them back into the chest till next time we need them. I will make certain that the bags are washable. With luck this won't be an issue again.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/488682.html

Phire, our local student jester group, got their fabric recently, so a bunch of the students came to the Frostheim meeting tonight to work on their costumes, plus a bunch of us showed up to hem our newly painted silk banners: Here are the banners are before hemming:

banners

This meant that we had a total of 14 people there tonight, which made me quite happy. I helped one of the girls make a pattern for her jester coat, using the linen for the under layer, and then helped another cut the legs for her hose. By that time people started heading home, so I never did get to working on any of my own projects, but it was fun, so I was happy with that.

Crossposts: http://kareina.livejournal.com/466585.html

We had seven of us for Frostheim's craft night tonight. Not quite all at the same time though--V. arrived early and left early. S. came a bit later, but also didn't stay long, and J., a totally new guy, arrived during the last 45 minutes we were there. However, I am glad I did, since O. had asked me to bring in my armour and swords and stuff to show him, and he sounds keen to try fighter practice on Sunday. Also, since the armour was there O. spent the evening trying stuff on and thinking about what he will want to do differently when he builds his own, so it was worth the effort of bringing all the stuff.

L. had finished the nålbinding project she started last week (her first, ever), and was ready to be shown how to start a project again. She is one of the students in the group who is also in my department, and trying to decide what she wants to do for her Master's project, so I shared some ideas of projects she could do with the laser. My apprentice, E. is the other, and she is also considering laser-based projects for her Master's, if she doesn't go with a geophysics project. It will be interesting to see what they wind up choosing.

My other apprentice, A. finished a project tonight--a lovely blue wool triangle cloak for which she has tablet woven a maroon and grey edging. I quite like how it came out. I have made progress on my glasses case--the strap is nearly completely attached now, only 12 cm of seam left to do on it, but now it is finally wearable. I made the strap for this one a good bit longer than the last, so it rides down by my hip, instead of my waist, which means that I don't have to remember to take it off when I put on my coat, which will make life much easier. It will also be nice to always have all four pairs of glasses in reach, so I can just grab the pair I need for any given task, and not try to use the wrong ones because I couldn't be bothered walking all the way to my backpack.

Last night's snow actually stuck in a few, isolated, spots, which meant that tiny pockets of the world were fresh and white this morning (if only about 1 mm thick), but, of course, it didn't last, and by the middle of the day it was +5 C. Even so, there is still a fair bit of snow out on the field, even if it is mostly gone in the forest and up by the house. I need to remember to take a photo of the yard tomorrow to compare with the ones I took last year and the year before on that date.

Last night I managed seven hours of sleep, which was more than I might have gotten, but I had forgotten when I lay down that I had switched the dawn light from 05:30 to 06:20 the night before when I had stayed up rather later. So when I finally woke up at 06:15 and looked at the clock I decided that it would be wise to do only part of the morning phone app workout, so I could make it to work on time to meet my friend at the gym at 08:30 as planned.

Then, as I started my morning situps before getting out of bed, I turned wireless on my phone to read LJ, and saw a FB message from her, sent after midnight, saying that she wasn't sleeping due to a headache, and so didn't think she would make it to the gym. My first thought was "ok, I don't have to go". Then I thought again and decided that, no, of course I was going.

Then I got up, got dressed for the phone app workout (bra out the outside of yesterday's shirt, so that should I sweat, it isn't on the bra, and I can still wear it the rest of the day), went to the living room, opened the app, and discovered that it thinks today is a rest day. For all four categories of exercises. This was a bit of a surprise, since for weeks now it has been a rest day for three of the four at once, and the fourth gets a different rest day. However, having gotten dressed to work out, I deiced to do a little anyway, and spent 10 minutes moving. Then I got dressed for work, posted to the Phire FB group that even though the one friend couldn't make it, I would still be going to the gym if anyone wanted to join me, had breakfast, and spent 15 minutes shoveling snow till

lord_kjar was ready for work, and then I rode in with him.

As an aside--the downside of yesterday's long day at work and then having fun with friends on campus is that meant that no one was home yesterday to do the shoveling when we got the first decent snowfall of the winter. Not that it was much snow this time, either, but at least it was deep enough that one wouldn't want to wear low shoes in it. To make matters worse, after weeks of lovely temperatures (read: -10 to -30 C, or "cold enough not to melt and get slippery), today it warmed up to 0 C, so after sitting in the warmth the snow was getting a bit heavier than it was when it fell. Needless to say, I didn't get much of the driveway done in the 15 minutes I had before work.

Arriving at work I took my computer to the lab, turned on the plasma on the ICP-MS, and then went to the gym, where I was met by another Phire person I had only seen one time before. We had a nice workout and enjoyed chatting while we did. I did only a short 30 minute session, as I wanted to be certain I was ready when my lab technician arrived at 10:30 or 11:00.

I was, and spent a couple of hours with him, as he looked at the laser and checked a few things, explaining as he went. I now understand why it was that when I asked for the laser to deliver a fluence of 7 J/cm2 it was only giving about 3.5 J/cm2, but if I asked for 50% output I could get 7 J/cm2. It turns out that when the laser was installed the technician opened up the sample chamber, turned off the safety feature that keeps the laser from firing when the door is open, set in a sensor, fired the laser on it, and took notes as to how many J/cm2 it delivers at each % of output. Then the computer looks at my request, compares it with that table, and sets the output level at that given by the table to yield the result I want.

Expect that sometime between installation and when I first noticed the problem something has gone wrong, so that it simply isn't giving as much energy as it did when that table was created, so now when I ask for 7 J/cm2 it uses the 40% output that it thinks ought to be good enough, but really, we need 60% these days.

Eventually the technician had enough information that he was ready to actually open up the machine and get to work, but first he needed lunch. He didn't really want me present for the opening thing up and changing stuff with the optics, saying that I wouldn't be able to help, and he didn't really want someone else in the room when the laser was unshielded. So, it being plenty late enough to do so, I went home for the day, enjoying a nice walk through a forest of snow-covered trees.

That gave me time for a short nap (~20 min), some food (baked a yummy cornbread) and a good book, running a load of laundry, and a bit more snow shoveling, before it was time to head to uni for the Frostheim social/crafts night.

I brought my dulcimer, which seriously needed tuning after the temperature changes this week, and made some progress on my tunic in progress. This week there were four of us for most of the evening, but a friend who can't eat gluten dropped by on his way to his martial arts session to try the cornbread, since I had told him I was bringing it).

We had my senior apprentice working on her wool dress, the friend from Phire who didn't make it to this morning's workout, working on her wool dress, me working on my wool tunic, and a really cute new guy, working on some chain mail project he started working on three years ago (he is so in the right place!) It was a lovely time, and I was quite surprised when the apprentice's husband returned to pick her up, as I didn't think it was that late.

As we were packing up to go I looked at my phone, and saw that my service technician had sent me a text message at 19:30 saying he was finally done for the day, having found the root cause and started the repair, and suggesting that I meet him tomorrow at 10:00. I am glad I didn't stick around till he was done!

From there I went over to the local grocery store to pick up my package, since I had received a text message earlier in the day saying it was in. But we also needed a few things from the store, so I filled a basket first. Then, when I had found everything I wanted, I looked at the line to deal with the one human on duty, and went over to the self-scanning station, and checked myself out. Then I hopped in the car and went home, and it wasn't till I pulled into the driveway that I realized that I hadn't picked up the package. Oops! I have now added it to the calendar for tomorrow, so hopefully I will remember.

However, the self-annoyance at forgetting the package was completely overshadowed by the joy at discovering that

lord_kjar, who had stayed home from Frostheim to finish up a few things for work, had finished up the shoveling while I was gone.

Now I should do yoga, before

lord_kjar puts down that nyckleharpa he just started playing...

I am home from a delightful evening at Frostheim. There were six of us this week. Both of my apprentices, the husband of my senior apprentice, two of the other students, and myself. While there I managed to help one of the boys cut a rectangle of lovely blue wool into a fantasy pirate cloak with collar, taught one of my apprentices to do nålbinding with the beautiful stone needle

lord_kjar made for her (she is also a geologist), made a wool rim for the Lucia crown that she will be wearing for our choir Lucia performance next week, and had a delightful time visiting with people.

After the meeting I did some grocery shopping and after I got home participated in an unexpected defrosting of one of the downstairs freezers when we discovered that its door no longer shut properly due to one of the drawers not having been put back properly last time it was opened, which caused huge amounts of ice to build up between the drawers and the door. oops. Luckily the contents all fit into the other freezers (well, except for the 3 plastic bottles of ice, which we don't actually need till the next time we want to take food along in an ice chest.

Work this week has been good, but long. This was the week that one of the guys from the company that sold us the ICP-MS was here to do training and troubleshooting of the issues we had been having with the system. We discovered several things that, together, seem to explain why we were getting such low signal. There were some small leaks in the tubing connecting the Laser to the ICP-MS. Fixing those, however, didn't bring the signal back up to where it should be. Then we noticed that the laser isn't actually firing at full strength anymore. It used to be that when we asked for 7 J/cm^2 we actually got that much energy reported. However, these days that setting gives only just over 4 J/cm^2. So we tried putting the request in terms of % laser energy, and discovered that to get 7 J/cm^2 out of it we need to ask it for about 60% power. Doing this, AND all of the minor changes to default settings that he made while he was here, and now the laser and ICP-MS are playing nicely together again--the signal strength is as good as it was some months ago before we first started having issues.

We even switched back and forth between solutions mode and laser ablation mode, and each time we got the signal back to where it should be straight away. I am hopeful that it will still have good signal on Monday when the service/training guy isn't here anymore. Wish me luck.

Frostheim Fixarhelg

And back to the shop

Not a productive day

Frostheim Jul

post-Norrskensfesten

great turnout at crafts night tonight

a decent turnout

continuing to enjoy life

a nice end to a productive week at work

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