kareina

 On Thursday we took down the two windows in the west wall of the living room and covered the opening with thick plastic so the cats can't get out.  The workflow we have fallen into for painting the windows is that we take them down together (he stands outside on a ladder and holds the window, I stand inside and use the crowbar to provide lift to get them off the hinge, then I put down the crowbar while he holds the window, I take the window from him and bring it into the house. Then he comes around and carries it downstairs, where I remove the various hooks and interior blinds and attachments for the blinds. Then we take it out the garage door, where Keldor and uses a rondel to remove most of the paint. That part usually takes around half an hour to 45 minutes, depending on how difficult the removal step was this time. 

Then our assistant, H. takes the nicer power sanding tools and finishes up the sanding--smoothing out any gouges the roundel may have made, and getting the inner bits of wood (these are double pane windows that are original to the house, which was built in 1956) next to the glass itself with the little triangle sanding tool. He normally spends 1.75 to 2 hours on this step. Then I paint them in several coats over the next two days (more coats for those places where the old paint didn't come off in that much sanding, as the windows were white, but we are painting them black, as it looks better to my eye on the yellow brick house). A day later I put the blinds and hooks etc back on the window, and we can put it up. 

In order to make the process more efficient, every other set of windows (there are two narrow windows per set, save for the big living room window, which has two narrow surrounding one bigger one) instead of putting up new plastic we just take the new painted windows and put them up in the next location so we can take down the next pair and get them painted (the inner parts of the windows seem to have never been repainted, and thus have peeled and cracked to bare wood on most of the windows, so it is seriously time for this project).

So Thursday Keldor got the preliminary rondel sanding both of the new windows done in the morning, then resumed his work on knife handles leather projects, and in the evening he even did the preliminary roundel sanding on the window sill/frame, since that window opening is covered with plastic, so the dust (mostly) doesn't come into the house. That evening H. came over and sanded one of the two windows, which I started painting, and he did the next on Friday evening.

Friday morning after work I thought I would do the finishing sanding on the windowsill etc, but the ladder was in long mode. So I carefully moved it to laying on the ground (without hitting anything, including Keldor's old car, which will be given to H when the job is done), and pulled the release lever to let it fold in half, as I would rather have it standing as a more stable triangle as I stand on it to use power sanding tools.  I the started folding it in half. It must not have liked it, because it bit me! I am not certain how it happened, but suddenly my left forearm was clamped in the top of the fold of the ladder. I cannot recommend this experience. I managed to open the ladder back up, and looked at my arm, which had a pronounced dent in it from the pressure, and the thinnest, top layer of skin had been scraped up. It wasn't bleeding, and while it hurt, it didn't hurt much, so I left the ladder laying on the ground, went in the house, wrapped a clean paper towel (the industrial sort that are super strong) around it, got an ice clamp from the freezer applied it to the dented area, and took an alvadon. Then I went to wake Keldor and let him know that I had hurt myself.

He was appropriately sympathetic, looked at it (it still looked dented and gross, but it wasn't bleeding), and we confirmed that while the affected muscle didn't really appreciate being asked to do so, I could move all of my fingers and still have good grip, so it was probably only soft tissue damage.  So we carefully used a q-tip to spread bruise ointment on the damaged area, I took a second alvadon, I lay down in bed nestled the arm into a pillow with the damaged area up, added a washcloth over the paper towel, and then put the ice clamp over it, and another over that. Then, after feeling sorry for myself for a little while, I managed to fall asleep, and slept for three hours.

By the time I woke up the dent in my arm had vanished, and the area was slightly swollen instead, but not looking very bruised, so the treatment must have helped. But the area hurt a little if I did anything with my hand that used that muscle, and I was afraid to let anything touch it. So I wrapped a bit of foam around my wrist below the problem area, and another around my forearm above the problem area, and then took an old bit of padded forearm armour that Keldor had in the loaner pile and wrapped it over the foam, so that nothing was in contact with the damaged area, but if anything should bump my arm, nothing would come in contact with the damaged area.

Since I wasn't feeling my best (the arm didn't actually hurt if I didn't try to use it, but it felt wrong, and I really didn't want to use it at all) I spent the day listening to the recorded lectures for my Forntid i Norden summer course, and managed to get pretty caught up on that, and Keldor went to town and ran lots of errands. Soon after he was home H said that he was done with the window, and could he come over tomorrow to work again, and, by the way, we are out of the triangle sandpaper for that machine. If only he'd mentioned that while Keldor was still in town, or before he left! But he didn't, and neither Keldor nor I thought to check on those supplies, as we aren't the ones using that tool. Keldor was much too tired after running errands to take down another window, and while my arm was feeling better after resting all day, I didn't really want to be helping lift a window with it. Therefore, we let H. know that we probably wouldn't manage to get another window ready for him to work on for tomorrow, but hopefully by Sunday.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling much better, and started the day finishing the painting on the window that was still in progress, and put the blinds etc. back on the one that had gotten its last coat of paint Friday morning before I hurt myself. I then ate breakfast, while Keldor drank his morning tea, and mentioned that I was feeling good enough that I was considering cutting back the plants growing in front of the office window so that it would be possible to put the ladder there, so we can take those windows down next. Keldor really didn't want to go back to town again so soon, but he is only on vacation till the end of the month, and the process goes much faster if he can help, so better to do the 100 km round trip directly, so that the window can be sanded, so they can be painted, and we can get this project done before the snow flies. I (thought I) volunteered to go with him and keep him company if he was going. (it turns out that he heard "Om du vill kan jag åker i med dig", and not "Om du åker idag skulle jag gärna följa med och håller dig sällskap", which is what I tried, to communicate, but didn't actually say--I blame not having Swedish as my native language). but he pointed out that it would be more time efficient if I stayed home and cut back those plants, so I just kept him company via telephone as he drove.

My arm didn't once complain as I worked cutting back those plants, which I have never liked, and we don't even want growing up against the house--I had managed to dig out by the roots all of the ones in front of the living room winter last autumn, but ran out of time for that project before the snow fell, and we hadn't had time this spring to uproot the ones by the office. Hopefully, we will have time/energy this autumn to dig them out, so they don't grow back again next year, and before he got home I also managed to reassemble the two windows, so they are ready to put up in the office and we can start the sanding and painting of the office windows. 

Saturday evening I took a the little triangle sander (since it once again has paper) to the living room window sill/frame in progress, and used a chisel to get the paint off of areas where even that can't reach. It was getting kinda late (the sun was down, but, of course it still doesn't actually get dark yet, we are still too far from autumn equinox to achieve full dark after sunset), and I asked Keldor (through the plastic, which is opaque enough that I couldn't see him) if it was going to rain anytime soon, and did I need to do the painting too, or could I get that in the morning? He looked at the weather app and I thought I heard him reply that it wouldn't rain again till Thursday, and, happy with the answer I promptly forgot about weather, finished up what I was doing and came in and worked on a sewing project instead before doing yoga a bit after midnight and going to sleep around 01:00.

When I woke just before 08:00 I saw that it had rained in the night. Oops. I must have heard wrong. So I put on clothes and went out to look. The window sill was still dry, even though a very light, misty rain was falling (house eaves work!), but the phone app said that it would rain off and on all day, so, since the rain wasn't the sort to make one wet, I started painting. It started raining a bit more. I switched to painting from the bottom up, instead my normal top-down approach. It started raining enough to really call it rain. I managed to get the entire sill and bottom of the frame done to a height of about 30 cm before the thunder started and the rain really started coming down enough that I started to get wet.

So I went in and had breakfast, then went back downstairs and did another coat of paint on the window in progress. Then I looked outside, and the rain was back to the barely noticeable fine mist that it had been when I started painting, so I went out and used the paint brush to brush away the water drops from the windowsill and make that layer of paint look uniform again, then I painted the rest of the frame before coming in and typing up this report. As I was typing Keldor woke up, and we talked. He tells me that I had, in fact, misheard him yesterday, but not much. He had said that it would not rain again till tisdag, not torsdag, so it wouldn't have made a difference if I had checked the app myself, I still wouldn't have expected this morning's rain. Hopefully it will be fine.

We still have the two office windows to take down and paint, and then the big living room window, which is two small and one so big that I wonder if we will just paint it in place, rather than trying to lift it down. We need to finish the windowsill/frame in progress, and we will need to do the windowsill/frame from the music room window (those windows are done), and the windowsill/frame for the office and big living room window. But if we can at least get the windows themselves done before winter, that will be good.

We had a productive weekend, with good progress on the repaint the house windows project (though I suspect the number of summer days with appropriate weather remaining this year will make this a two-year project), we got the cat door installed in the bedroom window, and the outdoor cat enclosure is much further along (it still needs a door, and the tunnel from the cat door, but those have to wait till we buy more of the special nails in a plastic shell for fastening things to a brick wall, and that store wasn't open yesterday when we realized we were out), so instead we got the bookshelf back wall done, so now our paperback shelf divides the bedroom into a walk-in closet area and a sleeping area, instead of being wall mounted. I even managed to do a couple of long yoga workouts, and am starting to achieve some balances that I used to think impossible.

I am super glad I started this morning with yoga though--I suspect that was the only reason I managed to make that savings roll against my dexterity. When I opened the cabinet to get a bowl for breakfast a small bowl suddenly jumped out of the cabinet, and would have doubtless hit the sink and shattered, if I hadn't somehow caught it before it landed and put it back where it belongs.

After months of no progress on the house (because SCA event road trips), we have finally started re-painting the windows and window frames (which really need it; I don't think they had been done on the inside, nor between the panes of glass since the house was built, in 1956).

Keldor ( Jörgen ) and I did 4.5 hours of sanding and painting yesterday, plus I did another hour today of detail painting, and the bathroom window (the smallest one in the house) is now done.

This brings our total renovation log to just over 500 hours, in just over 100 working days (since December 2021). So much more needs (or, in come cases wants) doing... (the rest of the windows, installing a new bathroom in the basement, putting a roof over the porch, adding a back door and deck, and renovating the kitchen...)

Last weekend we went down to Sundsvall for the V.Ä.V. SCA event (the letters stand for the swedish phrase for "violence is beautiful"), and it is a fighting event. There were many people there that I adore, and I was really looking forward to seeing folk. However, when we got there Friday night I was feeling tired and not so interested in human interaction as I would normally be. I wondered if I was feeling a little off from having been vaccinated Thursday, even though I had had no other symptoms, but wasn't certain. When we were arrived (a little after 22:00) they were in the middle of the "Ask the Knights" session, so Keldor and I sat down at a table and he listened and participated in the conversation, and I worked on my sewing and half listened. These days, when at full energy I should have been able to follow the Swedish conversation with no problem, but my ear was bothering me a little, and I had trouble focusing on the conversation, so I heard/understood only a litte, and was happy sewing. After a little while I realised that I had most of a very long bench to myself, and that the bench had a padded top and was broad enough. The room is very small, and full of people, so I decided to do my yoga right there on the bench, and it felt great. After a very nice yoga session I then lay down on the bench, put my head on Keldor's knee, and took a nap while the Ask the Knights conversation continued. I woke when the formal conversation ended and Keldor and I went down to the sauna for a bit before heading to bed just after 01:00.

Saturday the plan for the event was fencing and archery in the morning, and heavy fighting after lunch. When Keldor was ready to get up at 08:30 I was feeling like I could sleep more, but we'd driven 344 km to get there, and there were friends I hadn't seen in ages, so I got up and joined them for breakfast. However, by 11:00 I was so sleepy I went back to the van to sleep (we had planned to sleep in the hall, on our own indoor SCA event bed of thermarest camping mats and sheepskins, but the poor autocrat discovered when they arrived on site that instead of the hall having the 19 bunk beds they'd been promised, all the upper bunks were missing, so they put out a frantic call for help, and all of the locals who had cots brought them, so that everyone who had asked for a bed got something much like a bed, but cots on the floor take more space than bunk beds, so by the time we arrived on site there wasn't a place where one could put a double wide bed/nest on the floor. Since we have the 90 cm wide bed that lives in the back of the van it made sense to just sleep there. Which, since we parked right by the door both nights (moving the car away during the day time hours), meant that I had a shorter walk to the ground floor toilets than I normally do on that site, since the sleeping rooms are on the third floor).

I slept nearly an hour, woke briefly when Keldor came to armour up, decided that, no, I wasn't going to armour up after all, and slept another 30 minutes. Then I got up, had some lunch, looked out the window, and saw the fighters gathering for the footwork class with Sir Krake. That sounded fun, and like something I could do without armour, so I joined them, enjoyed it, and had a few things click for me that hadn't in other foot work classes (wherein they used different words to try to communicate the same thing. "lean forward till your start to fall and your food will automatically go forward" describes the same thing as "shift forward, leading with your hip until your foot automatically follows", but the latter makes sense for me, and just works, while the former felt terrible).

As the footwork class wound up the hint of rain we'd been having turned into something one can actually describe as rain, so I went into the hall, where there were lots of people sitting around the tables talking and working on projects in small groups. I managed to find a place to sit and sew, but wasn't really in any of the circles and felt myself very outside of it all, happily sewing, but not feeling any connection with anyone. And my ear was bothering me. My ears often itch (it is a downside of hearing aids), and while I know better, sometimes I scratch, and when that happens sometimes my nails do a little damage to the skin. My right ear had clearly been scratched open at some point, and it wasn't feeling nice to have the hearing aid in there (but neither did I want to go without in a place where someone might talk to me, never mind that I wasn't interacting much with folk).

I went out to the car a bit before the fighters finished up, and just lay on the bed a bit looking at my phone, feeling vaguely like I was wasting an opportunity to spend time with friends, but not having the energy to do anything about it. Then Keldor joined me, and comforted me a bit for feeling out of the event, and I comforted him a bit for having taken a blow that probably cracked one of his lower ribs. As we were talking Count Æriker came over to point out that I was the second highest ranked person site, after him, so when it came time for toasts during the banquet it would be him for Drachenwald, me for the King and Queen, then the three Viscounts could take Nordmark, the Prince & Princess, and Gyllengran (the local shire).

This reminded me that, yes, even though I wasn't going to be hungry that late in the evening, I should still attend the banquet, so I did, and had a pleasant time half listening to the conversations around me, working on Nålbingning, doing the toasts in the proper time, but I never really felt connected, and my ear was bothering me. Not bad, like a full-on ear infection (those really hurt), but definite discomfort bordering on light pain.

After folk had eaten some of them moved outside (the tiny hall gets really, really loud with so many people talking at once, which made standing out in the crisp autumn air by the fire really appealing to about half the folk). I suspect that had I been my normal gregarious self I would have joined them, but it was easier to just sit in my corner till the crowd cleared enough to do my yoga, and I went out to the car and went to sleep before 23:00. (Keldor stayed up happily talking to folk till 02:00, and normally I would have, too.)

Because I went to bed so early I half expected to wake early, and contemplated just driving home very early in the morning, and letting him sleep while I drove. But no, I slept in as late as he did, neither of us waking till 09:00. Since we'd slept in the car it was only grab the box of feast gear from the hall and check to see if we'd forgotten anything and get on the road.

Having gotten a total of 10 hours of sleep per day I was awake enough to enjoy the trip home. We stopped at an antique & second hand store, where I bought a nice wall mount cabinet for holding spools of thread and stuff, which came with spools of thread and stuff, and he bought a wide leather weight lifting belt that he thinks we can modify to be a better belt to hang my leg armour from. We also stopped at Skulleberget and went for a short walk up the hill--not all the way to the cave, but probably about half way there felt like plenty for both of us.

Monday morning first thing I called the local health center, and got an appointment for 13:00. When I got there and the nurse looked into the ear that was bothering me they became very worried, and said that it looks like I have a hole in my eardrum. I explained that I had one when I was little, but had surgery to fix it when I was 10 years old, and had it come back? The nurse decided that he wasn't qualified for this visit, and fetched a doctor. The doctor looked, said that she couldn't see a hole in the eardrum, but that it was covered with scar tissue (yes, I know--that surgery when I was ten, and lots of infections and tubes in my ears when I was little). She said that even if there is a hole, and she doesn't think there is one, the antibiotic ear drops she prescribed will still help the minor infection in the ear canal. I thanked her, and happily went to fetch my ear drops.

The drops contain an anti-itch component, so I felt better pretty much right away after using them (though it took a day before the swelling went down so that I could put the left hearing aid in without discomfort). This week has been busy, with at least a couple hours of research each day, putting stuff away from the event, prepping for this weekends event, Monday night fighter training and armour repair. Tuesday cleaning, waxing/polishing the van (which took all evening--it is slippery now! I had never touched a car that has been waxed before--it is going to be so easy to brush the snow off of it now). Wednesday Keldor came home from work so tired that he just slept on the couch while I worked on replacing the zipper on the soft ice chest we use for road trips.

Yesterday morning I noticed that the house across the street, that had been slightly damaged in a fire before we moved here, and which the owner has been fixing up with intent to sell, finally has a For Sale sign on it. So while we did our normal 30 minute phone call as he drives to work, I got on line and checked it out. They are asking nearly three times what I paid for this house! It will be interesting to see what it sells for. While I had hemnet open I looked at the other properties in this town, and then at things in the countryside. Oh, look, a cute farm house with a forest only 8 minutes from here, with a viewing that evening. Way out of my price range, even if we were done fixing this place up and could sell for top dollar, but, why not go look?

So I did (he didn't get home from work on time to join me). House is cute, nice location. The forest is actually three distinct properties--a good sized parcell the house is on, and two, much larger, forest plots further away. The realtor mentioned that the owner wants to keep living in the house one more year before transfering the property, and I wonder if it is worth asking if perhaps they might be willing to sell me the house and few hectares adjacent to it for whatever we can sell my house for, and let someone else buy the actual forest?

Keldor got home around the same time I did, and we managed, after some difficulty*, to load the large, pretty, china cabinet that came with the house into the van. This would have been much easier if the top decorative edge hadn't been both glued and screwed into place, since it was only that bit that made it impossible to slide the upper cabinet through the door and onto the bed. Instead we needed to unscrew the bed from the floor and take it out, so that we could tilt the upper cabinet at enough of an angle to slide it diagonally through the door, and then lift it up and over the lumps of the wheel wells, at which point we propped it up at a slight angle on our beanbag chairs so that it would sit far enough in the van to make room for the base as well. Luckily, the base is narrow enough that we could also fit in the chests and bedding bags for this weekend's SCA event. With all the soft stuff packed around the cabinet it shouldn't be moving at all on the drive.

This weekend is Höstdansen, one of my favourite SCA events, since it is all dance, most of the time. Also some of my dearest friends will be there, including Hjälmar, who moved to southern Sweden at the beginning of the pandemic, and then to the Uppsala area this spring. He will be renting a trailer and taking the cabinet south with him, and I wish him much joy in it. It is pretty (by far the prettiest of the three china cabinets that came with this house), but it is also the largest and least useful as an improvised pantry (which is what we are doing with the other two), so I am looking forward to the extra space with it gone.

*loading the cabinet in the van would have been easier if not for the road construction on our road--they are digging the road down more than a meter deep, then putting a thick layer of stone base before they put the road itself over all--so far they have gotten as far as the thick stone base just as far as our house itself, but not as far as the driveway. The stone base is still a good 20 or 20 cm lower than our lawn, so it isn't possible to drive right to the door, so we had to carry the cabinet bits across the lawn, and then carefully down over the edge to the road level, and then try to put it in. It would also have helped if Keldor hadn't broken that lower rib at the event, and then further damaged it at work yesterday. The only good bit in that injury is that this morning he was moving so stiffly he took the day off, and, since the car is already loaded, he can take it easy. Well, for him. He is busy in the cellar now, carving on a decorated horn copy of a Viking artifact. The plan was for him to do that while I did a bit of work on my paper in progress, so I had better close this here and get to work.

The old fridge that came with the house has an issue with the doors not closing properly. Today the freezer door opened itself, again, and I decided that enough is enough, and we went to town to buy a new fridge, with doors that shut themselves. I didn't do any preliminary research, but went to the store thinking that it might cost around 10,000 Sek.

When we arrived I saw that some cost as little as 5 to 6,000. We'd measured my car to see how big a fridge can be to still fit, and saw one white for 6000 that looked quite ok. We also saw another, much larger one with two separate freezer drawers on bottom and double doors to a large fridge on top that we liked, but it had no price marked. So I assumed we couldn't afford it.

We told her we'd take the white, and she said they didn't have them in stock so it would be a week before we could have it... and I asked, curious, about the cost of the big black one, and she said it had no price marked because it was a return and someone had left fish in it, and they didn't notice till it had melted, so the freezer still smells a little.

Therefore, they were willing to sell it below normal price (which, according to the receipt was 16,096 sek, but I didn't find that out till later), and she went off to talk to someone and determine that price. In the meantime I did the math and determined that it has 1.6 x as much storage capacity as the white. Therefore, if they asked 10,000 sek or less it was the same price per liter. She came back and said 10,000, so we said we'd take it. They are also loaning us a trailer and straps, at no extra cost.


Edited to add: hours later, the fridge is in place, cooling down, and the obligatory FB photo has been posted: https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10226415517805112&id=1558503355&set=a.1922456231953&source=48&ref=bookmarks

DYI: Yesterday we started fixing the walls in the basement. We'd scraped away the loose bits of plaster (is it called plaster when made of lime? It is kalk in Swedish), wet the wall down, gave it a quick white wash, and then mixed up a nice thick blend of lime and water. Then discovered that hitting where one aims is really hard when throwing the wet kalk at the walls.

So, today we will start by building a work tool--a cross between a catapult, slingshot, and crossbow to deliver the kalk to the wall hard enough to really stick, and, hopefully, land where we want it

I have been busy and haven’t made time to post in a while. Before I forget, here is a summary:

Last week Monday I spent two hours on a skype call with my thesis supervisor in Durham. We talked about what sorts of questions they are likely to ask in my interview next month, and how best to respond so that they are left with the feeling that I am perfect for the job. She really is amazing—all this help, and if it works she loses me as a student (but we are likely to be collaborators for the long term), unless we manage to use that cooperation agreement that Bergen and Durham have so that she can be an additional supervisor, but I have no idea if the folk at Bergen have any interest in that at all.

Tuesday I went to Storforsen with Viscountess Caitriona from Oertha. We hadn’t seen one another since my last visit to Oertha (for Kylson’s memorial party) around 15 years ago. She was in town for a wedding of one of her best friends from when she was at University in Fairbanks. There was a small group of Alaskans who had flown over for the wedding, so while she was in Luleå for a full week she was busy doing stuff with the group for almost all of it. It was only the very last day of her trip that I was able to steal her away and spend the afternoon with her. It was delightful to catch up with her, and, of course, Storforsen was as beautiful as it always is. The day was quite warm (high 20’s C), so that the side streams and swimming holes were full of people wading and swimming. We brought bathing suits, so we could have, but she gets cold easily, so decided not to, and I just didn’t feel for changing (and I also get cold easily, though I get hot even easier).

The rest of last week was quite heavily focused on reading from the archaeological literature in preparation for my interview.

Saturday, which was the hottest day of the year so far (temps in the low 30’s C) David and I were outside tearing boards off of the wall of the shed (we were smart enough to wait till the sun was on the far side of that building, so that we were in shade). ( lots of DYI info and guesses as to the history of the building behind the cut )

Monday morning I woke up inspired to make myself a modern tunic-length shirt by cutting apart and re-assembling a blue collared t-shirt shirt (which was too small for David and so he never wore it) and a black sweater (that I used to wear before it went to the mending closet with holes in the armpits some years back and has languished there ever since). So while David did more progress on the shed wall on his own, I spent the day cutting and fitting and basting. When he went back to the apartment in the evening I was far enough along with the project to start the sewing itself. Since the fabric is knit I couldn’t sew it on the treadle sewing machine, which does only straight seams (which I know from experience will just break if one sews a stretchy fabric and then tries to actually stretch the fabric enough to put it on). I could have borrowed David’s sewing machine, which has lots of different stitch types, many of which are totally suitable for knits, but I hate electric sewing machine sewing, and I figured I could get a prettier result if I sewed it by hand and did the seams with red embroidery to hold them together. So far I have done about 14 hours worth of work on the project (about 10 of which is actually sewing), and I am happy with how it is coming together. If all goes well I might even wind up with something that looks nice enough that I can wear it to an interview.

Tuesday I helped with the shed again—painting tar on the beams before he fastened the boards to it, and then, once all of the boards were attached I painted the wall red. (Sadly, the “Falun Red” paint we have is not quite the same shade of red as the previous owners painted the front wall—the one they used has slightly bluer overtones (and thus is prettier to my eye), while the one we have has slightly orange overtones. However, the colour miss-match is WAY better than the previous, unpainted and not at all weather tight wall, so I am ok with it.) We still need to cut the narrow strips of boards that will be fastened over the seams between the boards (and thus make the wall more weather tight), and then, if there is time left this summer, we can do the same for the back wall (which has huge gaps between the boards wide enough for snow to come into the shed in the winter, and it does). The third wall can wait till next summer.

Today my beloved second apprentice came up from Skellefteå for a visit. We had a yummy lunch (a pie I made by mixing some frozen home made soup of roasted pumpkin and other assorted veg, some beet greens from the garden, some left over lentil (dhal) from yesterday, some yummy Finnish squeeky-cheese (leipajuustuo), canned artichoke, eggs, over which I sprinkled pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds), followed by a yummy strawberry crumble. Then she worked on her belt weaving (ridged heddle) while I worked on my “Frankenstein” tunic (we decided that is a good name for it, since it is assembled out of pieces of other clothing).

I have the rest of this week left of vacation time, and no plans yet, other than keep working on projects and reading.
On Thursday next week I will be taking a train to Norway with folk music friends for the Kalottspel folk music festival, and then I have one more week after that before my interview. So much to read, so much to finish up before then…

The dishwasher that came with the house was old when we bought it. We suspect that it would have been installed in the 1970's or perhaps the early 80's (the house was built in 1966). Therefore it wasn't much of a surprise when it died some months back. (last winter?) I would have been willing to just take it out, and free up the space for drawers, since I normally prefer to just wash dishes by hand anyway--takes less time from start to dishes back in the cupboard. But David prefers to do something else while the dishes are washing, and thus doesn't mind how much longer the machine takes. Therefore he has been thinking about replacing it on and off, and we finally found the time to head to a store this afternoon to do it.

The price was slightly more than we paid for his nyckleharpa, which isn't so surprising. Not the most expensive option the store had, though it was up there in price, but the one that seemed the most useful looking in that the various support bits inside are all changeable, so one can wash differently shaped dishes from one load to the next.

We managed to get it and get back to the house just on time for a mandatory skype meeting he had for work, so he sat at the table and listened to the meeting while I read the instruction book. Then we had just enough time to get the old one out from under the counter and the new one into place before it was time for Choir. (I completely missed Phire practice today.)

After Choir Villiam came over, helped me carry the old dishwasher out to the car (I am thinking of taking it directly to the tip tomorrow, rather than sticking it into a shed for my further into the future self to deal with), had some of my apple-berry cobbler, and played the piano for a bit before heading home. Then I fished cleaning the kitchen back up and getting the under the sink stuff back under the sink. Then I foolishly looked at fb for a bit instead of just doing yoga and going to bed. Now it is after midnight, and I really need to put this computer down, do my yoga and try to get some sleep.

Tomorrow or Thursday we will finish getting the dishwasher working, so that it can be used after the Choir party on Friday.

The company which is running fiber optic internet to our neighbourhood told us last winter that it would be dug in sometime this summer.  Yah. Summer.  October is nearly over, temperatures are fluctuating between just below and just above freezing, and we have had some snow.  But they got the lines buried along the road to our house this week, and David and I spent this weekend working on getting the line from the road to our house.   We had initially hoped to use his brother's digger to do that ditch when he was here this summer, but since they had some mechanical issues that put them half a day behind on the landscaping projects, and the company still hadn't shown any signs of getting to our neighbourhood, we opted not to.  We did consider renting a digger for an afternoon once it was actually time to do the digging between the road and our house, but now that it is here we decided to save the money and do it ourselves.  

Last night's snowfall only accumulated about 2 cm of snow on the ground, but it was just cold enough today that the snow survived. However, the ground was still soft enough that we managed to finish digging the trench by late afternoon/early evening. Then we used a vacuum to blow a string through some spare plastic water piping that came with the house, then taped that string to the orange cable, and then dragged the cable through the pipe.  Then we started putting the pipe into the trench and burying it. However, but that point it was well well after sunset, and the piles of dirt along the trench had started to freeze, making the process much harder than it would have been a day or three ago. Even so we managed to get the line mostly buried from the road, up and across the driveway, and to the corner of the house. We will have to fix it up better later, and finish the part along side of the house to where it will attach to the wall, but the important part is done.  

However, this took all day--I had hoped to also do some packing for next weekend's event, and go to folk music at 16:00 (so I can work on the still not done hood for the prize for the archery contest next weekend), and to folk dance, and I didn't manage any of these--it was almost 22:00 before we called the project "done enough for today" and came in.

Even so, after I came in and David and Caroline went to the apartment I went downstairs and did a second coat of paint on the part of the boiler room floor under the water filters--the paint had been peeling this summer, and it was past time to get that project done.   Then I did some Norrskensfest stuff, and now I should do my yoga and get to bed, since it is soon midnight and I have to work tomorrow.

...and I hope that it will be a decent snow year. I woke up today with plenty of energy, so instead of doing an indoor workout I put on several layers of wool (it was +5 C out, and very gently raining), grabbed a shovel and went to do something about the hill. The new hill, behind the earth cellar, where I want to be able to do sledding this winter. However, when David's brother (and his digger) built that hill by dropping a fair bit of mixed rock, dirt, and whatever else used to be behind the sheds this summer it all got dropped very randomly, which meant that the slope on the field side had many sharp pointy rocks sticking out of it. It was also rather peaked.

Therefore I started at the top, and shoveled the very peak a bit to the side to make a wider, more reasonable to stand on platform, and then started working my way down the slope, digging out the rocks that stuck up, using them to build a bit of a curved bank to the side so that sleds won't go the wrong way and do the abrupt drop over the side into the alleyway that leads to the earth cellar entrance. I managed about 1.5 hours of this before my body decided that I really needed more food, and I went back inside.

While eating I played with my Swedish practice on Duolingo on my phone, which meant I had to be connected to the internet, so I was available when Crian asked me to edit something for him, so I went to the computer and did that fairly quickly, and then wished him a good day and went back to the hill, managing to work my way about two-thirds down the slope. In the process there was one largish rock I really wanted to move a bit up hill, into a spot on the side bank that would have been perfect for it, but to do that I would have had to get it over another rock, and it wasn't cooperating, so, instead, I let it roll down hill. I was working on another large rock, that had been sticking out as quite a prominent bump on the slope, trying to get it to slide backwards into the hill, and off the rock it was sitting upon, when I realized that I was hungry enough that what I probably needed to do was go get more food, and then try again.

Pretty much directly after I got inside and washed the mud off of my gloves and set them on the heater to dry David arrived. He had wanted to start work on the trench we need to dig from the road to the house so that fiber optic internet can be installed in the not too distant future (last winter the company had said that it would come in "next summer", but at this point it counts as "next autumn", and I hope that they get it here before the weather starts freezing and the ground becomes difficult to work).

However, David has been working to many hours this week (Tuesday he went to work at 06:00, and then wound up working all night, too, went home for a nap between 06:00 and noon Wednesday, then returned to work on Wednesday afternoon), so he was content to sit on the couch and relax with me as I ate. We wound up resting a good hour and a half, then decided that it would soon be getting dark (it was 15:00, and sun sets right now at 17:00), so if we were going to do anything else outdoors we had better do it.

We started with my hill--he went straight to the hill to have a look at what I had done, and I went to go get the steel rod which makes moving large rocks so much easier. By the time I had arrived he had already picked up the one largish rock I had let roll down the hill, carried it up, and set it into the side bank where I had wanted it. He is that much stronger than I. (...and he doesn't work out at all; is it cheating to use longer muscles and testosterone?) We spent 25 minutes finishing up the re-arranging of the bottom part of the slope, and now all that is left is to bring over a few wheelbarrows full of dirt to cover the nice arrangement of rocks on the bottom of the slope and I will have a decent sledding hill for this winter.

Then we went to start that trench. David didn't want to use a shovel, as he thinks it makes more sense to make it as narrow as possible, and he wondered if we could use the pick-axe more like a plow. So we tried it. We took some webbing from a set of tie-downs and fastened it to the handle of the pick, then he sunk one end of the blade into the ground, I grabbed the other end of the pick blade and attempted to hold it down into the ground while he wrapped the other end of the webbing around his waist and pulled. This approach works, but to do the initial tearing through the grass requires frequent backing up and re-sinking of the pick blade as the point tends to work its way back up to the surface fairly quickly when pulled like that (and I do not have the mass to keep it in the ground myself, though it does come back out less rapidly while I hold it). We also tried a more traditional use of the pick, where he simply holds the handle, sinks the blade into the ground and pulls. It is a faster way to do it, but requires much more energy on his part, and given how little energy he has left after this week at work, he didn't do that long. We only used the pick for the part of the yard between our driveway and the place on the wall where we want the cable to enter the house, and called it good.

I will try to make time this week to take the little hand shovel gardening tool to empty the lose dirt out of that trench, and we will wait on the part that goes across the driveway and down the hill to the road until later, when we know when they are doing the actual installation. He is wondering if, perhaps, we can try still using the pick, but instead tie it to the tractor, and let the tractor do the heavy pulling...

Tomorrow is the Frostheim annual meeting during the day (even after seven years in Sweden it still boggles my mind that we have one meeting a year, instead of monthly) so I will make some progress on embroidery for the hood for the Norrskensbågskytt Northern Light's Archer. With luck I will have the energy to go from there to Folk music before dance in the evening. If so, then I will get even more embroidery done.