kareina

I have always falling in love easily and often--the easiest path to my heart is simply to be a good friend, share quality time with me, share common interests with me, and do fun stuff with me. In recent years a number of the people I have grown to love are both much younger than I, and not interested in any sort of romantic relationships, though we continue to be close friends, and I had begun to think that it was unlikely that anyone was going to fall for me again, though I knew it was inevitable that I would continue to fall for others. ( it is a kinda long story ), here are some photos of the rose he made me:






I really wasn't expecting a gift when he came up this weekend, though I had made one for him--a little soapstone Stone Age fishing line sinker. I had previously seen a bunch of plain ones online, and thought of making him one already the summer of 2018, when he made the soapstone carving tool for me, but never got further than putting the idea onto my list of project ideas (along with that link). Then the week before last it was his turn to do the mini-lecture at the local A&S zoom meeting, and he spoke on Medieval Fishing, which reminded me of the idea, and I looked again at the idea, and also did a bit more research, and found figure 13 of this paper, which is much prettier than the ones from the first link.

Therefore I decided to give it a try, and this is what I wound up with:



Yah, I am better at stone carving than I am taking photos of the project, but he was very happy with it, and I am happy with how it compares with the orginal.

When I left off on posting mom had just died and my sisters and I (and Beth's dog, Max) went to go walk around Greenlake together. It was a good walk, with lots of good conversation, and just what we needed just then. That was Tuesday, the 4th of December (which I only know because I just looked it up, not because I am able to remember dates; I am not).

The next day (Wednesday) we sisters and our Aunt Barbara (mom's oldest, and now only surviving, sibling) went out to get pedicures. I have never had a pedicure in my life, and never wanted one, either. But when my sister explained that one sits in a massage chair while someone plays with your feet I decided that I was in. (I live for foot rubs! (among other things).) When we arrived we were instructed to choose a colour, and, of course, I picked a darkish blue. I considered going even darker, but Amber warned me that in her experience colours often come out darker than they look in the bottle, and I didn't want nails that look like they have been hit with a hammer, so I settles for only darkish. Of course, it turns out that this particular bottle dries a bit lighter, and when dry the blue has almost faintly greenish overtones, so it isn't nearly as pretty as it was in the bottle.

They didn't tell me till after we were done that if I had said something after seeing the colour on toe number one I could have asked them to take it off and do another colour, but that didn't occur to me, and I didn't want to complain when we are supposed to be bonding. I asked if snow flakes were an option, and they said yes. Amber suggested they might have decals. I don't know if they did or not, because the lady just took a bottle of white nail polish and drew snowflakes on my two big toes free hand. Unfortunately, she comes from a warm country (the Philippians I would guess) and now lives in Seattle, and somehow never got the memo that snowflakes have six-fold symmetry, so she drew them with eight arms, which meant that they are so crowded together it was hard for her to squeeze in the side branches and fluffy bits, but they look ok, and it is easy to tell that they are meant to be snowflakes. She did add a coating of glitter over the top of the flakes. While we were there Amber told me that she has some travel pads of nail polish remover that she would send home with me so I could clean the polish later, there being no point in buying a bottle of nail polish I will never need again. However, we forgot about that before she flew back to San Francisco. However, I kind of like the idea of just letting the paint grow out, and seeing how long it takes before the evidence is gone. It is only a little embarrassing to be seen with painted toe nails (and then I am more embarrassed if it is seen by strangers, who will be more likely to assume that painted nails are normal for me).

Later that day my friend Josie came to visit, along with her partner Lightfoot. He was hungry, so she and I accompanied him to a restaurant, where he had some sushi, and she and I just drank some miso soup as we didn't fel for tea with caffeine. Afterwards we went back to Beth's house, where I taught them a bit of acroyoga in the living room (and my aunt Barbara was very impressed to see me balancing on their upraised feet, etc. That was the evening my brother in law, Beto, had made a flann for dinner (which I hadn't eaten, as it was too late in the evening. However, there was a bit left the next day, and I had it for second breakfast, and liked it so much he promised me one for my birthday.

Thursday was a run errands and hang out with sisters and my younger niece, Lucia (11 years old, who had been given permission to miss a couple of days of school because she was so sad to have lost her beloved grandmother; her big sister, Anahi, at 14 preferred to distract herself with being busy, and went to school) day, including a walk in the dog park (where Lucia and I climbed the big tree on the shore of the lake), since it was the last full day we would all be together. Friday, we all went out to lunch together, and then Kirsty and Amber went back to the house to get their luggage and headed off to the airport, Kirsty to return to Melbourne, and Amber to San Francisco. I, on the other hand, met up with my dear friend and adopted cousin Jen and her husband Shelby for tea and delightful conversation at a tea shop, and a bit later my SCA sister Carrie arrived and took me out to her place in Hobart (we had no idea there was a Hobart in the Seattle area!) for dinner and to see the house and meet her dogs (which are tall, slender creatures with bit pointy ears that look more like deer than dogs). Then she brought be back to Beth's place in the U district. We did try stopping by Mat and Kay's place on the way home to say hi, but they weren't in.

On Saturday two more of my beloved friends came to visit. Shannon, whom I met when I lived in Eugene, and Paul, with whom I lived when I was in Ashland drove up to see me and take me out for an early birthday lunch/dinner. They arrived around 13:00 and we hung out and chatted for a bit, and then took a half a hour walk to a Thai restaurant (we had asked Beth for recommendations, but the Thai place she used to enjoy doesn't exist anymore, so she checked reviews on line, and that one was well recommended), which had very yummy food, with the veg perfectly steamed so that the broccoli wasn't overcooked. Then we walked back to the house, hung out for a bit, I showed them the movie The Arranged Marriage that my sister Amber made years ago (a documentary about our parents and how their daughters fixed them up with an arranged marriage) then Shannon got her massage table out of the car and gave me a massage. By then we were tired, so we went to sleep. Since Paul currently has both arms in a cast after having had a driver suddenly pull out in front of him when he was driving a motor scooter, he choose to sleep on the couch, where he wouldn't be hitting anyone with the casts during the night, so Shannon and I took the giant air mattress.

Sunday I woke up earlier than the others and did my yoga and had first breakfast, then when they got up I made some baking powder biscuits to share with them for my second breakfast. Then my SCA sister Clover and her husband Chris arrived, and we four went out to the same Indian restaurant that I had been to with Martin the day before mom died. The food was yummy, and the company delightful. After food we dropped Paul and Shannon back at the house so that they could return to Portland, and Clover and Chris went out to Woodinville for Tania and Mike's house concert with Felecia and William.

We arrived a good hour before the concert (even after stopping at a local distillery for C&C to buy some whisky), before the sun had set, so we got to see a glimpse of the the really pretty grounds before we went into the house (but it was raining, so we didn't do any exlporing). When we walked in the door the owner of the house, Alisaundre, was explaining to Tania that she recognised my name. Back in 2015, when I first ran Norrskensfesten I had asked on the SCA bardic list if anyone wanted to come to northern Sweden to teach a bardic class. Most people who replied said some variant of "oh, I wish!", but Alisaundre said "I could skype in". So she and her daughter did, and it was a fun class. She gave us a tour of the house, which is truly beautiful. They have a few rooms down stairs that they rent out as an Air BnB, and there is a little kitchenette there that the guests can use. They also have the gaming suite down there. The entry level floor is where the various living rooms and kitchen are, and there are bedrooms upstairs. I remember seeing her post photos of it to FB a year or so back when they were first purchasing it and planning on all of the things they would be able to do with it, including house concerts. During the tour she mentioned that the goal of having this amazing house and property was to make it a resource for all of their communities: Poly, Pagan, and SCA. After giving us the tour she introduced us to her husband, Leith, who hadn't joined in for that skype bardic class. However, he is also a bard, and, in fact, was the An Tir bardic champion the year Crian and I lived in Vancouver. I remember being introduced to him at Kingdom level event that year, though I don't remember what, if anything, we might have talked about during that brief meeting. I do remember his intense blue eyes and the fact that he was wearing the Bardic Champion's cloak.

Mike and Tania had told me that I would like Felecia and William, and they were correct. I chatted a little with them before the concert, and more during intermission and afterwards, and they are both delightful people I hope that our paths cross again. The concert itself was amazing, as I knew it would be. The four of them team up every winter to do a series of concerts, and it is so clear that they love what they do, and they harmonise so well together. I took the best seat in the house, the corner of the couch closest to the musicians, and sat down with my sewing project. Leith came and sat next to me, and a third person (Chris?) sat beyond him. During the first part of the concert, in between songs, I commented to Lieth that I have been in love with Tania since I was in high school, but when Felicia and William opened their mouths to sing I just lost my heart two more times.

The first bit of intermission Leith and I continued to sit on the couch and chat with one another, but then I got up to go ask to play Tania's dulcimer (we have the same kind) and visit with the musicians, and meet some of the other guests (it was a small crowd, and everyone seemed like interesting people I would enjoy knowing). When we sat back down Leith sat even closer to me than he had before, and asked to see what I was sewing. I showed him the viking coat in progress (just seam embroider left to sew, and I need to decide what to do in the way of clasps, but it was a good coat to wear during the trip). Then, after showing him the Ösenstitch (#b in that photo), though I do it backwards compared to that drawing) I am using on the seams I put down the sewing and he and I enjoyed the rest of the concert while holding hands and cuddling a little, which made an amazing concert even better.

After the concert there was time to visit more with the musicians, hosts, and guests for a while before they served dinner to those of us who were still there. They have one of those sous vide things, so there was a ham cooking the whole time the concert was happening, but it wasn't possible to smell it at all till they opened it. Even though many of my friends seem to be very happy with theirs, I hadn't really seen the point, since most of what I cook is something I can do quickly and keep busy with the whole time it is cooking so that being hungry while I wait for food doesn't bother me. However, for something like a house concert, where people want to focus on the music and not the smell of cooking food, it is perfect.

I, of course, wasn't hungry that late in the evening, but I happily sat and drank my water and visited with the others as they ate. Eventually Tania, Mike, Felicia and William had to go--they had a ferry to catch to get home. After they left Chris, Clover, Leith and I went out to the hot tub for a bit of bardic. I was kind of surprised no one else joined us (Alisaundre had a cold, so she couldn't join us), but just the four of us was nice too. Clover and Leith traded lots of songs, and I shared a few in Swedish. Leith has memorised quite a number of period French and other language songs. I would love to get him to Drachenwald to meet Kaarina! Then Chris and Clover had to head home to get some sleep before work the next day (they had an hour's drive), but I opted to stay. When we went back into the house everyone else had gone, or, in the case of the four or five others who live there, gone to their rooms, so we sat in one of the small living rooms and Leith played guitar and sang me some more songs, before showing me to the Peacock guest room and then retiring upstairs to his own room a little before 01:00. All of that music and good company after midnight made for a beautiful start to my birthday Monday.

I was in too good of a mood to sleep straight away, so I called David and we talked for a short while. Then I slept for almost three hours, and woke back up full of energy and joy, so I chatted with friends in other time zones on messenger for a bit, and went back to sleep and slept for another three hours, getting up at 08:00. I enjoyed breakfast with Leith and one of the housemates (whose name I didn't catch), and then I got a ride in with him to the microsoft campus where he works, arriving at about 10:00. My sister met me there and we ran some errands together, and then went back to the house where she made Beto's flann recipe for my birthday dinner:

Beto’s Flann

Ingredients:
3 eggs beaten
1 bar of cream cheese (8 oz, or 250 g)
1 can (12 fl oz or 354 ml) evaporated milk
1/2 can (full can is 14 oz or 397 g) or less of sweetened condensed milk
A bit of liquid vanilla.

Directions:
* Caramelise 1/2 cup sugar in a pan over medium heat
* Quickly pour melted sugar into the bottom of a loaf pan
* Cream cheese with 1 cup of warm water in the blender.
* Add the rest of ingredients and blend it all together.
* Set the pan in a larger pan containing water (not deep enough to get any water in the flann pan, of course.
* Bake (both pans together) at 350 F for one hour
* Let it cool for an hour before putting in the fridge
* Give it four or five hours in the fridge
* Invert onto a platter right before serving
* Garnish with fresh berries (we used raspberries!)

While that cooked and chilled we hung out together, I started some spaghetti sauce for dinner (containing tomato and kale with ground walnut, almond, sunflower seeds and she introduced me to her preferred cloud resource for project management and to-do lists (which I have since adopted for myself and downloaded the phone app).

Then she took the train to meet Anahi in the city center, where she attends school and accompany her from there to an audition, and I borrowed the car to pick up Lucia from school and get her to her Broadway Bound rehearsal (Beto was at work, so Beth was glad to have me there to help make the logistics work). Then I went home and enjoyed some spaghetti for my dinner early, and when everyone was home from work, auditions, and rehearsals they sat down to dinner and I jumped straight to desert. Good thing too--Lucia loves raspberries as much as I do, so it was good to get my share first, before she got to the Flann. Before they would let me eat Beth decorated it with candles (12 of them for my 5th 12th birthday), they sung to me, and I blew them out. I didn't even think of making a wish, and the first one that comes to mind as I type isn't possible, as we have this bad habit of living time in a linear manner.

After dinner, since I was flying out really early the next morning, I gave the girls Christmas presents. This is the first time I have ever given them something, since I live far away, am not a shopper, am too lazy to post stuff, and don't actually celebrate Christmas or give gifts to anyone. But it felt right to do so at this time. Beth told me that the girls love ear rings, and there had been much teasing back and forth between us for me being a geologist who loves pretty minerals, and them thinking rocks are boring and preferring organic stuff. Therefore we went looking for some nice ear rings with stones or minerals in them, so that I could give them something that would remind them of me and the banter. I knew that Anahi's favourite colour is yellow, since she had mentioned that when she found out that I don't really like yellow as a colour (but on that point there was no teasing, we both just accepted that the other has different taste--there is never any accounting for taste). So when I saw the bright yellow amber ear rings I couldn't resist buying them for her. We tried searching the store for ear rings that said "Lucia", but didn't spot any. The store clerk, undaunted, looked through the overflow stash, and found another pair of amber ear rings in a dark orangish red but in the same shape as the pair for Anahi. Lucia's favourite colour changes now and then, but she has loved that colour in the past, so I picked up both pairs.

Before giving them the gift I told them that I had considered giving them some crystals, because I am so fond of them, but since they don't like minerals I got them something organic instead. Anahi asked "what, did you get us food?", but when she opened the box she squealed in delight about loving the colour, and they both loved the joke. Lucia though her ear rings were nice enough, but she wasn't as enthusiastic as Anahi was, which was no surprise, but there hadn't been time to go looking in more stores in hopes of finding something better.

But now it is after midnight (oops!), and I need to do my yoga and get some sleep so that I can be at work at 08:00 tomorrow, so I will have to describe the trip home and the loot I brought back on another occasion (if I remember).

Since I'm living on my own, have no local social life to speak of, and am not a Christian I didn't really expect to do anything for Christmas, other than packing in preparation for moving out next week. However, at the last minute I got a FB note from the SCA family from Calontir who lives here in Milan, inviting me to drop by at some point on either Christmas Eve or Christmas day--they said they were hosting some of the Marines who work at the Embassy, and would enjoy additional visitors. Since I am very fond of the family, and hadn't been over there at all since my mother was here in October I decided to accept the invitation.

Besides, as I've been cleaning and organizing my things I'd found a few things I wanted to give their children, and this seemed like a good time to do that. As I was sorting out the collection of event tokens and other miscellaneous odds and ends into piles of mine and thins that belong to clovis_t I found a very pretty blue dream-catcher that someone made me many years ago, but I have never displayed, because I don't tend to put up any art that isn't also directly useful (and since my dreams are fine as is, I didn't see a need to catch them), and when I saw it I thought of their daughter, E, who is a very delightful, self-assured, intelligent young thing who often reminds me of me at that age (late elementary school). So I decided that it is time to pass it on to someone who will appreciate it. Having decided to give that away I looked again at the rest of the trinkets, and noticed a really nice event token I got at an event in Kotzebue, Alaska. The token is a small knife-like object with a bone handle, metal not-sharp blade, and sinew attached in a loop so that one can easily carry it hanging off of a belt or something. It was made by an Alaskan native, using traditional techniques, and was really a much nicer, more labour intensive site-token than I've seen most places. Like the dream-catcher it has been sitting in a box, neglected for many years. Therefore it is time to pass it on, and I gave it to E's younger brother.

I also passed on a UFO. Before I left the West I had made matching brown linen tunics with blue and black trim for myself and my housemates. When I arrived in Tassie I had a number of weeks before my things which were being posted over to me arrived, and found myself without a sewing or embroidery project. I decided that I would embellish the neckline of the tunic, which was only edged with contrasting colour fabric, and started stitching. I foolishly started at the mid-point in the back and worked my way around. I got to just past the mid-point in the front when my stuff arrived, and I had other projects to work on, so I set that one aside. That was in mid-2003 and I've never picked it back up and finished the embroidery, which means that I've also not worn the tunic. (There is a reason I normally embroider on a separate piece of fabric and then attach it to the tunic, rather than embroidering on the tunic itself!) Knowing that E enjoys doing embroidery, I asked if she'd be interested in having the tunic and finishing the embroidery so that she could wear it (yes, it is large on her now, but with a belt that won't matter) and was met with an enthusiastic "yes!", so the project is now hers. I wish her better luck completing it than I had!

They tell me that they will come over after we finish loading up the van and pick up things like lamps (which, having Italian plugs aren't useful elsewhere unless we want to use adaptors for them) and any boxes that don't fit in the van. I commented that I hadn't decided if I should keep the popcorn popper or not and E jumped up and down exclaiming "you have a popcorn popper? I love popcorn!" (I told you she reminds me of me.) Therefore I think I will probably be leaving that behind for them--that much enthusiasm needs to be encouraged. I can always get a new popcorn popper, with local plug, once I figure out where I will be living.

It was very nice spending some time over there this afternoon. Not only did I get to give the kids gifts, I got to witness the whole family opening them. Much to my surprise, they didn't do the gifts thing until 14:00. My family always did that first thing in the morning (and we kids would make coffee for mom before we dared wake her). It was fun to sit and work on stitching while they unwrapped presents (I was the only guest just then--the marines who had been there for brunch had left already). I finished the project I had brought with me around 15:00, and decided to head home myself.

I wound up walking home because I really need the exercise--it turns out that it is only 1 hr 22 minutes to do the walk from their place following the same path that the metro takes for most of it. This surprised me, because if I take the bus (which stops right outside of my door and goes to quite near their door) it takes an hour (or more during peak traffic). I often take the metro, which means walking 25 minutes to the correct line, and then riding to the closest stop by then and walking another five minutes, and that takes an hour total. It also takes about an hour to get there by walking to the closest metro (10 minutes), then transferring to the correct line and finishing the journey to their place. Makes me wonder if I wrote down the start and stop time for the walk correctly, if it is not much more time than taking public transit...

This time next week I will be in Sweden! If only my packing were done already. Perhaps I should shut down the computer and go do my yoga and get some sleep so that I can accomplish lots with tomorrow.