kareina

Ok, we managed soemthing resembeling a photo tonight while at dance. Will try for a better one over the weekend (...am considering making some sort of stand to have it on display during the feast--that would make getting a photo *much* easier.)

It is now twenty minutes till the final day registrations are officially accepted for Norrskensfest, and we have 59 people registered. (I guessed weeks ago that we might reach somewhere between 50 and 60 people--I think that is what we had last year, but last year we had royalty--we don't know yet if we will have any this year--the new Prince and Princess only won and were invested today--they aren't likely to see my email inviting them till Monday at the earliest, so I wasn't certain if we would see the same kind of numbers.)

The cloak is coming along nicely. I have been saying all along that I wouldn't start the writing around the cloak hem till everything else was done, but it turns out I was mistaken about that. While everything else is nearly done, there is still a fair bit to do on the second set of northern lights, but I just couldn't resist starting the writing anyway, and in four hours this evening I managed to get as far as the "s" in Norrskensbard in the phrase "Norra Nordmarks Norrskensbard" on the right hand side (the phrase will be repeated on the left hand side, too. So now the cloak is up to 183.9 hours of work, by 22 people, and I think what is left to be done is quite achievable in the next two weeks...

(finally making time to post about this)

Last weekend was a fun adventure--Mom and I drove Thursday evening as far as my friend K's house, which took five hours, because we dropped lord_kjar off at the airport on our way out of town. Twice. (We got to the airport the first time, and he said "Where's my back pack?". It was right where he left it, on the floor by the door at his office. As a result what should have been a 15-20 minute detour took pretty much an hour with there-and-back again driving. Luckily, he still caught his flight on time.)

We arrived late, so pretty much went straight to sleep, and did our visiting with people in the morning over breakfast. Then mom, K, and I hopped in the car and drove south. We stopped at Skulleberget, where I had planned to do a quick climb up the mountain, at least as far as the cave, while mom relaxed in the visitor center. Sadly, it turns out that the visitor center isn't open this week--never mind that it was last week, and will be again later in the month.

Undaunted we instead drove across the highway and took the small road in to one of the other park entrances, just because none of us had ever been there before. That road leads past some cute old farm houses and a small village with lovely views out over the fjord, and ends at a park trail head. Since mom isn't up for hiking we just used the outhouse and then got back on the road.

The next stop was at a hotel with lovely views of a bridge, in hopes of getting mom some coffee. However, even though they serve lunch, they wouldn't sell us a cup of coffee, so we kept driving.

The next stop was the winner--the museum in Sundsvall, where we and a few other SCA people had a guided tour of the Högom find exhibit (but first we ate lunch at the cafe and mom got her coffee). I first read Margareta Nockert's book on the textiles from that find in 1998, and it was a delight to see the display. Not that they have much of the textiles here--the rest are apparently in Stockholm, but what they have were wonderful to see. And they have the buttons! Ok, round decorative things that attach to a clasp, not buttons in the modern sense. But they are every bit as stunning as the photos make them out to be. I want some. (Ok, I now have some--mom bought me the postcard with a photo of them, because she loves me.)

After that we drove across town and walked about on the burial mounds themselves. The local SCA kids grew up sledding on those hills.

Then we went out to the SCA event, which was held in a cute little scout cabin in the woods on the bank of the river. Lovely setting, nice hall (save for the part about sleeping on the third floor but the only toilets being on the first floor, I prefer a shorter trip for those middle of the night runs to the loo).

Friday night I did a talk on the history of the SCA and read Dorthea's story about the first event. Saturday after breakfast they started with a lecture on various types of embroidery during various SCA periods by an embroidery/research laurel. Then those of us who were doing hands-on workshops each had a quick turn to describe the stitch or technique we had on offer, then we each took a table and people came to us to learn (many people rotated through more than one workshop). Some of them learned osenstitch by working on the cloak, others on a scrap of fabric they could take home with them to look at later.

This mixed class approach worked really well in terms of everyone getting a chance to try everything, and made for good energy in the room. However, the cloak may not have gotten as much attention as it might have if the workshops were totally separate rooms or something. Not that I can complain, as of today (three days after the event), the cloak is up to 109 hours: the musical instrument is nearly done and the first set of northern lights is nearly done on the green part and well along on the red. It is looking likely that we will be able to finish this before the event (13-15 Nov).

Saturday evening was a pot-luck feast, which turned out to be a great feast for all carnivores and cheese lovers, but I felt bad for the poor woman sitting next to me, who has so many allergies that she just eats vegan to play it safe--not so much on that table in that category.

During the feast the Prince and Princess held court and gave my friend K her award of arms, which pleased me greatly (especially as I hadn't checked the registration list in advance, so didn't know they were coming, so I hadn't sent any award recommendations myself). They also gave another friend of mine an award for arts and sciences, to which my reaction was "She doesn't already have one?!". They also did a very nice speech to the new people, welcoming them, and encouraging everyone else to do so as well, since new people are the future of our society.

Sunday we helped out a bit with cleaning, and then got on the road early enough that even with one stop to visit friends on the way home we still got here on time for me to drop mom and the stuff at the house and head to our normal Sunday folk dance class, where I was delighted to discover that we have a couple of new people!

However, much though I would have loved to stay and keep dancing, I had to leave a bit early to head to the airport and pick lord_kjar.

Monday was our first Finnish class (which I already posted about), and Tuesday was choir. Today some friends came over to help me work on the cloak, and tomorrow is Frostheim's A&S night at the uni. This weekend is the first one without something planned in a while, and I am looking forward to it. Perhaps I will finish unpacking from the event--I have been too busy doing stuff in prep for Norrskensfest in November to get to that.

In October of 2013 we found a "lada" (small timber barn) for sale on blocket, and brought it home. We didn't have time to put it up that autumn, so we stacked the timber by the side of the car port and waited till this autumn (2015) to put it up. I have never helped put one up before, and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it goes.

lord_kjar's little brother drove up from Skellefteå this morning, arriving sometime after 08:00, and at 08:36 we went outside and got to work. At that point the place we were going to put it looked like this:



It took the three of us 49 minutes to unstack all of the timber and sort it to the correct sides of the foundation (whomever took it apart wrote letters and numbers on the logs on the inside, so that it would be easy to put it back together). They carried all of the long timbers, and I moved the short ones (that go on either side of the door opening).

Another hour and 20 minutes later the walls were up higher than the top of the door, and I was getting hungry, so I went in and started cooking a spaghetti sauce for lunch while the boys kept working. They got the walls up as high as they go in another hour and a half (including drilling out old broken pegs and making new ones for the peaked part of the roof (which, of course, doesn't have any logs intersecting it from the side), by which time lunch was ready.

After lunch I helped them unstack and carry out of the shed the old boards we have from their dad for use as roof supports, which took about an hour. By that time my apprentice arrived, and she and I went into the house to work on the Norrskensbard Cloak project, while the boys got to work on the roof. We took a break after another hour for fika (blueberry cake!), and then more cloak progress inside, and roof work outside.

Then I was feeling hungry again, so I started a bread dough to make pizza for dinner, while my apprentice kept stitching. Then her partner arrived to pick her up (he had been spending the afternoon with his laurel), so I ran to the store to get a few pizza toppings.

The pizza was ready to eat about 10 hours after we started work this morning, by which time the boys had gotten the roof this far along:



and the cloak, which has now had forty hours of work was this far along:



I would like to point out how it isn't fair that the cloak has had four times as many hours as the lada, yet it doesn't look anywhere near as far along...