kareina

My last work week of the year wound up being more work from home days than I had anticipated. Monday, as mentioned last post, we had snow and I opted to work from home so I could use my "friskvårdtimme" to get paid for my favourite form of exercise--moving snow from point A to point B. Over the course of the day I did 2 hours of shovelling, in four different sessions, which was enough to clear both the parking area for the van in front of the house, the shared driveway between our house and the neighbours, and the offshoot from there down the hill to our garage door. That latter I did in a 15 minute session with the snow-blower instead of the shovel, because I just wanted it done. Keldor's car is still parked in the garage from the last time he worked on it, and I don't want it to get snowed in and stay there all winter.

Tuesday I normally work from the office because we have a meeting, but I was feeling just a little not exactly healthy, and, in case it might be something contagious, I opted to work from home and attend the meeting over teams, and I slept a big chunk of the day I wasn't in meetings, which seemed to clear up whatever was wrong. In fact, I managed to get so caught up on sleep that after my visit to the dentist on Wednesday morning I didn't wind up going back to sleep afterwards, which I normally do. In hindsight, this wasn't so good--sleeping off the novocaine is better than being awake while one's tongue and half of one's mouth is numb. Especially as I got hungry and tried eating. I managed to get food down without making a mess, but I must also have bit the inside of my lip when I couldn't feel it, judging by the sore that appeared there.

Wednesday we also got a little more snow, but little enough that I got both areas cleared in less than an hour (which I broke into four sessions). Even though there wasn't much, it was worth doing it all, as we knew that more snow was on the way on Thursday. I had planned to go to the office on Thursday--there is archive work to be done, and that can only be done on site. But when the storm arrived on Wednesday evening it was coming in horizontally, so the windows were soon coated with a thin layer of snow, there was lots of wind, and the snow was the sort that stays in the air for awhile if stirred up. There drifts in front of the house, and on our road were 30 to 50 cm deep, and Keldor didn't try to take the car to work. I looked at the bus app, saw that all the buses came with a "will probably be late" notice, and decided I would work from home. Keldor went straight back to sleep after deciding to say home, since he can't work from home, and had no reason not to sleep. I can work from home, but I started with my "fristvårdtimme", and shoveled a single shovel-wide path from the door to the street, and then cleared the area directly behind the van, and a narrow path to the driver's door, in case we needed to go anywhere, it would be possible (not that I expected to, but better to be able to and not need to, than to need to and not be able to). Luckily, they had already done a quick plow of the road, so it was easy to push our snow across the street to the pile on the corner. It took 40 minutes to do that much, and I decided that was enough, and came in to do some work.

After work Keldor and I both went out to do more shoveling, and two hours later, with both of us working the full time, we had cleared the parking area in front of the house, the shares entry to both driveways, plus part of the downhill driveway to the garage door. By that point even I, who love shoveling snow, was feeling pretty done with the project, so we called it good and went in. Today is the first day of my winter vacation, but Keldor went to work to do the last things that would have been done yesterday. So I worked more on shoveling to the garage door, and got most of it done in the 40 minutes we talked on the phone. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be sunny and cold (it is only 07:30 right now, so another two hours before the sun will rise), and we should get a little more snow on Sunday, which will be nice.

So, for now, my world is white and beautiful, and I am happy. The 10 day forecast, on the other hand, doesn't look so good--they are threatening temperatures above freezing for next week, with a high of +6 C on Tuesday. I really, really, really hope that is wrong, and it doesn't start melting. Winter hasn't really properly started yet, I am not ready for more melting.

While my friends nd family in the Pacific Northwest have been dealing with a serious, headlines making storm blowing in off the ocean, we've been enjoying a storm of more normal proportions.

It blew in here on Wednesday night, mostly winds, and probably some snowfall, but mostly it re-arranged the bit of show we'd gotten earlier in the week, scouring some areas down to exposed grass, and drifting small to moderate snow dunes in others.

Thursday morning Keldor left for work as usual at 05:30 ish, mutterimg about the "dåligt väder". But as soon as he got on to the highway and saw that the blowing snow meant that visibility was only a few meters he turned around and came home.

I checked the bus app, saw that it was on the way, and running late. Thought of taking it as planned, and considered the possibility of it getting stuck or winding up in a ditch it couldn't see, and decided to work from home.

This meant that I could happily send my "friskvård timmar" (working out one hour a week, durring business hours) on taking the kick sled up to the store, and then shovelling snow around lunchtime.

I know I am weird, but I love being out in a snowstorm.

After work I did more work on thesis corrections, and started one of those major tasks that should have been done long since: making a list of data files used, describing them, and gathering them into an organised file structure. Can I tell you how much I wish I had done a data management plan when I was starting my thesis? But I didn’t know about them then.

But as my current job is helping researchers write a data management plan, it feels important to do a good job with my data management after the fact.

After putting down the computer for the night we went back out oand shovelled more. The wind has died down, and there is more snow accumulation, but some areas have deeper drifts than others, so it was smart to get it cleared back now, as it is expected to keep snowing till around noon tomorrow.

I really hope this snow lasts, but they are predicting temps as high as +5 C for next week, which sounds terrible.

I happened to glance at FB today at the right time to see a post from

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

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

This weekend's home improvement project has been prep work to consolidate our beds, in preparation for C moving in. When I first met

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

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

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

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

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

Today it has gone back below freezing, and has snowed enough I actually got out the shovel. I really love shoveling snow (with today's push-shovels), I think it is my favourite form of manual labour.

In other news I have managed to wash most of the shire tablecloths (there are still a couple of loads to go, but nearly done), and re-arrange the furniture in the office today. Moving furniture (and cleaning in the process) is also one of my favourite activities--it is almost as much fun as moving. Ok, so I am weird, but I actually like to move house, too--all of it: the pre-packing organization, the packing, the unpacking, and finding the best place for everything on the other end... I think this is why I like SCA camping events so much--I get to move house on a small scale. I kind of miss living in a place where there was a camping event every weekend.

We finally have enough snow out there to really feel like it is winter, and the world is every so much more beautiful! The year started with temperatures above freezing, but while that did lots of damage to the snow down in Umeå, where we spent New Year's, up here it only got crusty, and since then we have had lots of good weather and fresh snow, and I am much happier. The weather service says that it should continue to be mostly good for the next nine days (though it will warm up to zero on Friday), so with luck we will actually have a proper winter.

I am looking forward to my trip to Australia in February, it will be good to see people, and to get all that training for work, but I am sad to miss out on nearly three weeks of winter as a result. Why couldn't that conference been scheduled for just a bit later in the year--no one wants to see "spring" in northern Sweden--the couple of weeks when it all melts is icky, and I would be happy to be gone then.

I have been making good progress on my bliuat in progress--the slevees are done and ready to attach to the body rectangle. The neck is done and is attached to the body rectangle. The inset gores are nearly all done (two more seams there), and the first of the seven-triangle side gores has five of its pieces assembled. All I still need to do is attach the last few pieces, adjust the sides to the right size and sew on the lacing, and sew the trim to the bottom hem. No idea if this is possible before I fly to Tassie, but it is worth trying for that goal, since they have an SCA event my first weekend there.

First of all, I am really delighted with the weather we have been having lately. We have had six days in a row with temperatures below 0 C, and on Friday night/Saturday morning we got a couple of decimeters of snow, which, thanks to the nice weather, is staying nice and soft and fluffy and beautiful, and I am ever so much happier. This is so much better than the warm and rain we had for my birthday and the couple of days thereafter--it got so dark and dismal after the last of the previous batch of snow had melted away from the yard, fields, and forest (while leaving wet ice on all the roads and walkways). The Swedish weather service (via my phone app) says that we should have good temps for at least the next ten days (which is as far ahead as they predict), so it will be winter at least through new years. I hope it lasts longer than that, and I have started counting the number of days in a row we stay below zero.

Secondly, Frostheim Jul was fun! The hall was supposed to open at 11:00 for a crafts afternoon, followed by a potluck feast in the evening. I decided that we should bring the moraharpa, in addition to my hammer dulcimer and

lord_kjar's nyckleharpa and violin, so Saturday morning while I was outside shoveling snow from the walkway onto the sledding hill (to make it bigger) he went downstairs and built new arms for the stand we had built for the cello last week so that the stand would hold the moraharpa (since changing that one would be much faster than building a whole new stand).

He was nearly finished with that when it was time to head to the hall (we had the key, so needed to be on time!), so he drove me and my stuff (crafts projects, hammer dulcimer, and food) over to the hall, then he returned home and finished up the project and then brought the rest of the musical instruments plus the four or five things I had thought of that I should have brought but didn't.

I was alone in the hall for a while, which gave me a chance to get my stuff unpacked and set up some tables for craft stuff, and then I was joined by the weaver I have become a patron for (I have bought so much of her tablet weaving) and her husband, and we had a delightful time chatting and working on projects for a while. Then I decided it was time to start my broccoli pie and went into the kitchen about the time that the fourth person arrived.

E. is a delightful person--I first met her a couple of years ago when I was one of the staff members to accompany the undergrad geology students to Cyprus. She was the only one of the students on that trip with whom I really clicked--she just seemed like the kind of person who would blend in with my group of friends. When we landed at the airport in Luleå and one of my friends picked me up I found out that, actually, she is friends with him and a bunch of other people I enjoy spending time with. Since then our paths have crossed a few times, and, when she joined a student club for fire dancing and they decided that they wanted to become jesters the group joined Frostheim to get help with costumes.

What I didn't know about her before this weekend is that in addition to common interests in gaming, geology, and medieval stuff, she is also a very talented musician. She has been playing clarinet since she was nine, and this summer while at the Visby Medieval Week she purchased a Renaissance style olive wood clarinet which has the sweetest sound. She had it along this weekend, and she, I,

lord_kjar, and a couple of our other friends spent a good sized chunk of the day playing music together. For the songs I didn't know she would tell me a few notes to just play as accompanying cords or single notes, and it was so much fun. She is really interested in learning to play dulcimer, and she is a good enough musician that when I slid the sheet of paper under the strings to reveal which note was which she could play simple tunes right away. So we have planned that we will get together regularly come January for music lessons--she will teach herself to play dulcimer, and then teach me.

By late afternoon we had both the group of musicians at one end of the hall, and a group of crafters on the other--some people working on their own projects, others learning tablet weaving (from my weaver). Then, as time for the feast approached more and more people arrived. I forgot to actually count, but given that each table seats eight people we had to have had somewhere between 30 and 50 people on site for the feast (I am not certain if that count includes the kids, of whom there were at least seven of them who appeared to be having lots of fun running around).

The parents all packed up and took their little ones home fairly early, and when they started packing everyone else cleaned up too, which meant that we were ready to lock up the hall around 22:00. One of our friends, who lives a good hour or so north of here, had been enjoying some mead and had had enough that he shouldn't be driving, so I offered to drive him back to our place, where he could sleep over and head home the next day. He appreciated that--he had expected to sleep at the hall, like we did for Norrskensfest last month. I appreciated it to, since it meant we could put our chests and bags of stuff in his car, and the musical instruments in ours and get everything home in only one trip instead of two.

Sunday morning we hung out with him a bit, then had some time for projects before it was time to go to the airport to pick up our current houseguests--an old friend of ours who moved to Stockholm a couple of years ago, and a friend of his who is visiting from Colorado. They are out at another friend's house for a gaming session tonight, but we opted to stay home and relax.

I worked from home today, so got no exercise. Therefore I went out for a walk this evening. It was a beautiful moonlit night, so when I got to the place where our road crosses the water I couldn't resist turning left and heading out onto the frozen lake, enjoying the way the thin layer of snow atop the ice glistened in the moonlight. Such a beautiful and peaceful setting.

I thought about turning left again when I reached the bottom of our property, but it was such a beautiful night I couldn't bear to end the walk so soon, so instead I continued on to where the water passes under the main road, and took another left, and then again onto our street to wend my way home. Have I mentioned lately how much I love living in northern Sweden? Even though today was a warm day (+5 C!), the ice is doing ok and I can walk out upon the water and enjoy the view.

Then, after I got home

lord_kjar and I got to chat via skype with a loved one, and that was delightful, too. Now my daily yoga is done, and I need to get some sleep. I hope you all have had as nice an evening as I have.

The snow we had had in mid October was long gone, the fault of the +8 C temps we were cursed with the latter part of the month. But then early November greeted us with nice temperatures dropping as cold as -10, giving the ground a chance to get a decent freeze. However, with the lack of snow, the world was looking pretty dark and dismal--grass doesn't hold its green after freezing. Therefore I was delighted to see snowfall this weekend--the world is, once again, looking bright and beautiful with its thin white coat. There still isn't much snow, but it makes such a difference. My phone tells me that this weekend's warm temperatures (high of +2) will go away and we should have decent sub-zero temperatures for the rest of the week. With luck the snow will survive till the cold returns.

I think last winter's pathetic showing may have scared me for life--before last winter it never would have occurred to me to worry about snow being able to last--of course snow stays on the ground all winter and it never rains. But now I worry and look at the forecast--will it stay nice and cold, or will we have another winter of not nice rains destroying the good snow cover?

In other news, we had a great band practice on Thursday--we are ready to perform at the SCA event on the weekend. And last night's choir party was fun. Despite having gotten a slow start to the semester, with a shortage of boys for a while, we still managed to have a total of 10 of us here for the party, and it was five of each gender. I baked two loafs of cardamon bread for it--one with plenty of milk and butter in it, and the other, much smaller loaf with no dairy at all since one of the girls is allergic to milk. I also baked some more pears. I had done a small batch of pears for band night, and it was so good they asked me to do it again for the party. I used fairly large pears, one scant tablespoon of brown sugar for every two pears, and lots of butter--first a thick coating of butter to grease the glass baking pan, and then I used a cheese slicer to make thin slices of butter to cover the top of the pears. I also sifted in a hint of gluten free oat flour (one of the band members can't eat gluten) into the pan to help thicken the sauce, and sprinkled on a bit of water to keep it from drying up before the liquid started cooking out of the pears. I baked them at 150 C, and, once they warmed up and started forming sauce I stirred them occasionally to keep the top layer from drying out or browning. Everyone else brought enough food to the party that there are some pears left over, which is a good thing, because I am getting hungry for them just typing this up.

lord_kjar has been hard at work making some nice chests that are exactly small enough to fit into the trunk of the car so that packing for events will be easier. The first one is done and the second is coming along nicely. I wish I could be helping with the project, but while he does that I have been working on the edits to my paper for publication, gathering info for a class on the History of the SCA. I also want to put together something in the way of a hand-out for a hand sewing class. In my imagination I make small hand-sewn samplers of all of the stitch types

hrj has accumulated on her web page on Archaeological Sewing. However, the class is next weekend, so that is probably not going to happen, even if it would be totally cool.

When I woke up and looked out the window this morning at first I couldn't tell if there had been a heavy frost or a light snow, but then I saw that the snow was still falling from the sky (but couldn't have been doing so for long, given how little had landed--besides, the sky was clear and starry when we got home last night), so I got up and dressed and went out to enjoy it. Beautiful! It kept falling for the 30 minutes I was out enjoying the forest. By the time I got back there wasn't yet 1 full centimeter of accumulation, but it is still coming down, so am hopeful that it might amount to something and stick (it has been -3 to -9 C all week, with no snow yet (other than the brief dusting we got at the beginning of the month on a day it was +3, so didn't last at all), so the ground is cold enough to keep the snow from melting, if we don't get any more bad (read: above zero C) weather. (Ok, so after all of the warm spells of last weather, which meant we never got decent, fun to play in, snow, I am a little paranoid.)

Last night was a folk dance evening--one of those gatherings that are a huge part of the reason I live in Sweden. Picture if you will, an old fashioned one-room school house, filled on one end with musicians playing violin, nyckleharpa, bass, clarinet, and even tuba, and the rest of the hall filled with dancers. We actually had more musicians than dancers for most of the evening, so the sound was fabulous. The occasion this time was a folk music course that had happened during the day (we didn't attend--the course was full before we had time to even ask about it), so the evening dance was scheduled to give the musicians an opportunity to keep playing, and they seemed to really enjoy it. Unlike some of the big folk dances that happen during the summer Spelmannstämman gathering of musicians, this event attracted only people who either wanted to dance or wanted to play--there were no people just standing around watching. However, we had an odd number of dancers. I know this because there were a number of dances where I danced by myself, since everyone else was already dancing with someone or playing a musical instrument. Luckily, I also enjoy dancing by myself, so it was all good.

The fact that I have been getting up early so that I can do the 45 minute walk to work and still be there by 07:30 (and sometimes even earlier) means that I have also generally been going to sleep fairly early. This, not surprisingly caught up with me, and as the clock neared 22:00 last night I was getting pretty sleepy, though, of course, still dancing, if not with quite as much energy as when the night was young. I was contemplating if I should

lord_kjar and our housemate, C, if we should call it a night and head home so I could get to sleep, but before I got around to asking the musicians did one final number and started packing up. I remember a time when I would have been disappointed to have the dancing end so early in the evening, but, on this occasion I was delighted, as I really was pretty sleepy, but I also didn't want to miss any dances. If they were done playing then I wouldn't miss any.

When I walked into our music/dance/living room tonight to do my yoga I looked out my window and saw a beautiful clear stary night with a large, bright moon causing the snow to sparkle. So I did the logical ting and bundled into,my snow pants, boots, down coat, hats and mittens and went out to enjoy it. There is something magical about doing yoga outside on such a night; I love it! -15 C is so much nicer than those super heated rooms some people do yoga in.

I stayed out till some clouds started coming in. They didn't take long to cover the sky, and, if I am very lucky they will snow on us. Now I am going to do a bit more yoga, witout clumpy boots on, and then go to sleep; there is lots I want to do tomorrow.

I went for a walk in the forest at midnight; the landscape transformed by the new fallen snow. Even at that hour, on a cloudy night, the fresh white blanket provides plenty of visibility for walking. I often say that one advantage to our home is that we can pretend to live in the country while still being only 4 km from our offices. Midnight on New Year's eve really drives home the fact that, nope, this is NOT the country! There was no place on the 40 minute loop I walked where I could not hear the explosions of fireworks as I walked. However, the good news is that from the Nature Reserve trail, where it wends its way along the shore line, one can see five or six different fireworks displays across the water in different directions. Only their largest and most brilliant explosions, of course, but it sure was pretty, and, at that distance, the sound was only noticeable, not painful like it would have been if I had taken the trip in to see any of the displays closer to hand. Perhaps next year I will bring some friends out there on purpose to watch...

Happy New Year to one and all--may this one prove to be a good one for you.

The last couple of days have been unseasonably warm. One of my friends today said that she heard that yesterday was the warmest day on record for Sweden in the last century. I believe it. When we were driving to Boliden at one point the thermometer in the car said that it was +9 C! This is not a reasonable temperature for this far north this time of the year--it is supposed to be winter already. This afternoon it was raining, and nearly all of the snow was gone from the yard (though every place anyone has walked or driven or done anything else to compact the snow it was solid, very wet, ice), and there were even standing puddles! Ick! (Note: the work we did on the yard this summer was worth it--none of those puddles are anywhere near the places we walk, unlike what happened when we bought the house last year.)

However, tonight while we were at dance practice it finally cooled back off enough to permit the rain to turn into snow. So now we have a wet snow accumulating on top of the wet ice and sticking to it just enough to provide traction and nice, safe footing. It is now possible to walk without fear of falling, and the ground is once again white and beautiful, and I am much happier. Not that it is actually cold, mind you, it is only 0 C, but so long as it doesn't go above zero again this snow should stand a chance to stick around. I sure hope that it does.

Dance practice was fun--since it was the last of the season we were in costume. There were only six of us in attendance, but we enjoyed dancing, and ate pound cake with raspberries and cream. I love dancing, but I am not going to try to run dance again next semester--the most we ever got to show up on a given week was six people, a couple of times it was only 4, once no one showed up besides

lord_kjar and I, and one other time we canceled in advance because the ones who usually make it knew in advance that they wouldn't be able to. If we get more people showing interest in the future we can try again then. I still have the Swedish Folk Dancing, after all. So it isn't like I am not doing any dancing.

After dance the huge fluffy flakes of falling snow was so pretty once I got home I got out my spark and went for a a quick ride/kick down to the end of the road and back. Fun! It is a 20 minute walk to do that distance on food, but kicking down the road with one foot on the sled runner meant I could go there and back in 12 minutes.

Now I need to go do my yoga and get to sleep--our choir has its annual Lucia performance in the morning, and we need to gather at 06:30 to get ready for the 07:30 performance. Then we have a second gig at 09:00 at a business across the street from the uni before I can really start my work day. Then, in the early evening we have one more performance, and then a choir party at our house, so it will be a musical day.

hovering just below freezing, and I have been longing for some real winter weather, where it cools down, snows, and stays that way, without any melting till spring. I suspect it is still too soon for that, but we had enough snow this morning to nicely cover all of the ice from the last couple of thaw-freeze cycles, and I am quite cheerful about the beauty of the world under its fluffy white blanket, just on time for my birthday. Now I just hope that my phone was mistaken when the weather widget predicted temps above zero for tomorrow again.

Since it is my birthday I started my day with a walk in the forest and loved every minute of it. Then I got to play with one of the best birthday gifts I have ever gotten.

lord_kjar managed to solve the last of the issues with the program he has been working on for me. The project is one for work. In addition to my 3D modelling project I have been working on, I also have lots (127!) of thin sections from rock samples collected from drill holes in my project area. Every now and then over the past couple of years I have made time to take photos of these samples through the microscope and while at it I wrote down notes about the minerals present, their sizes and relative abundances. This information has all been recorded in a commercially available photo database that an archaeologist friend of mine once recommended on her blog.

Some months back it occurred to me that since all of that information was in a database it should be possible to extract it from there and print photos and notes for each thin section to a pdf. Sounds nice and straightforward, doesn’t it? Sadly, that database program turns out to be far better suited to looking at the photos within the program than it does to extracting the information from it via a script. It was necessary for him to try quite a few different approaches before it was finally possible to extract the information and present it in an easy to read format, without also extracting an amazing amount of gobdly-gook that seems to be related to photos that have been moved from one folder to another and/or deleted at some point in the past. Luckily, he was finally able to figure out the key to make the report-generating code ignore that stuff, and now, at long last, I have a lovely document that summarizes all of the important information for each sample alongside representative photos, and, best of all, if I do any edits or changes to the information in the database a new pdf can be generated with a push of just a couple of buttons.

His willingness to do all of the programing for me, so that I could focus on creating the geological models is one of the nicest things ever done for me. Oh, sure, he actually enjoys that sort of project, but that doesn’t stop it from making my life far easier.

In other news, after a long and busy work week last week we had a lovely and relaxing weekend. We drove down to Umeå (three hours south of there) and spent the weekend visiting friends there. On Saturday we spent the morning relaxing, then prepared food to take to a potluck feast, went to a winter market (where I bought some of my favourite Finnish squeaky cheese, so my freezer is once again restocked), attended a Christmas concert performance by the choir of the friend we were staying with, and attended a little local SCA potluck feast.

Sunday we went for a walk and played in a really good playground which has climbing structures so large that those of us kids who have adult-height bodies can still have fun playing on them. It even has a flying fox! Then we started the drive home as our friend went off to yet another choir performance, and managed to get home at a reasonable hour.

Monday I did a full 11 hours of uni work, which was enough to mostly finish putting together the presentation I will be doing Wednesday for the geologists at the mine summarizing the past two years of my research (these slides will also form the basis for my conference talk in January). Today I finished up the last couple of slides and attended our final choir rehearsal before Friday’s Lucia performances. Friday evening we will be hosting a choir party at our place, and in between all that, I need to return to writing up my end of project report.

Saturday we slept in--I got nearly 10 hours of sleep, which was delightful after too little sleep last weekend and no chance to catch up all week. After breakfast we took a walk in the forest and explored a new path I hadn't taken yet. As I suspected it might, it came out of the forest in the next clump of houses up the main road--the folk at the end of that side street have a nice homestead with several outbuildings and a number of horses (which is, doubtless, part of the reason that path is so wide and well plowed, so that they have a nice place to go riding). The other properties on that street have smaller plots, so I am pleased that when a house came up for sale it was the one we got, which actually has a bit of land.

After lunch we ran some errands and then just enjoyed time visiting with one another and chatting with a friend on G+. I started some bread dough late enough in the day that after it rose I opted to just shape bread rolls, brush them with butter and put them into the fridge to bake for breakfast.

Today dawned very bright and sunny, making the snow on the ground and in the trees sparkle and glow. It was much too pretty to stay indoors for long. While the bread rolls baked I mixed up some pie crust dough, and then was hit with inspiration--rather than using the makeshift aluminum foil pie crust shield I had made for my huge pie plate I decided it was time to make a proper one.

I have been carting around with me one huge cookie sheet that I haven't been able to use. While it fit in every oven I ever had in the US, it was too big to fit in an oven I had in Australia, way too big for the toaster oven I had in Italy, and still too big for the ovens I have had here in Sweden. Why keep storing something I can't use, when I can cut it up and make something useful out of it? If it ever happens that I can afford a full sized oven again I will also be able to afford to replace the cookie sheet then.

Therefore I set the huge ceramic pie plate I inherited from my step onto the cookie sheet, traced it, then drew one larger circle, which I indented with lots of little triangles, and one smaller circle, which I left smooth. From there it was a simple matter to cut along the lines, bend the many little tabs (in between those triangles I cut out) down over the edge of the pie plate, and suddenly I had a nice, sturdy, easy to use shield to put over my pie crusts when I bake them to keep the crust from overcooking while the filling isn't yet done.

This completes my set of shields. Mom brought me a pair of store-bought aluminium one-piece shields from the states when she visited last September--they fit my small pie plates. One of my friends from high school sent me one set of segmented aluminum shields that fit my medium pie plates and my tart pans, and now I have this one that fits the huge pie plate. ( photo of it, on the pie, in the oven )

I had intended to test the shield straight away, but by that time

lord_kjar was done with his breakfast and ready to head outside, so I decided I could play first, and finish baking later. We started with snow shoveling, which I rather enjoy with today's modern shovels, since it is basically going for a walk, and I love walking.

Then, since part of the shoveling we did was clearing the path back out to my sledding hill (the wind had completely filled it in with last weekend's snow, and we hadn't made time to clear it out) and depositing yet more snow on the top of the hill, it was necessary to pull out our "sled" (still only a normal camping foam mat wrapped in large plastic trash bags with a rope fastened to one end--we haven't had any luck finding a proper sledding sled large enough for an adult butt in any store in Luleå) and play for another 40 minutes. ( two sledding photos under cut )

I am still not going as far as I managed last week sledding in the moonlight on well packed old snow, but we managed to pack down the new snow enough to get some decent runs in. After sledding I had a quick bowl of left over soup and then finally baked that pie. I am pleased to report that the new pie shield worked very well, and was so easy to use.

After enjoying some of the pie I looked out the window and noticed that the early evening light was particularly beautiful--I love that time of day when the sun is just down and the sky ranges from nearly white on the horizon through gradually darker shades of blue to nearly black overhead. So I decided to go out for a quick walk to enjoy it. I got half way down our nicely packed driveway, and realized that I own a spark, so I went back to the shed, got it out, and went for a kick instead of a walk.

I took the road down to the lake, and was delighted at how quickly one can kick one's way down the road while standing on a runner (switching legs often, of course, so that the work is evenly distributed). When I reached the lake the view was so pretty, with stars and planets starting to show nicely overhead, but much of the sky still more blue than black, that I decided to follow the snow machine tracks out onto the lake.

The snow there is not nearly so well packed as it is on the road, so I couldn't actually ride the runners and kick myself along, but I did not that walking along leaning on the spark handles meant that the runners took just enough weight that I didn't sink into the snow on the track at all (unlike when I walked home that way on Friday and it felt like walking on beach sand). Shortly before I drew level with our house I saw that a snow machine track turned off and headed towards the woods below the houses, so I followed it, and it came out in our next-door neighbour's driveway, which gave me a nice little 20-minute loop back to home.

That left us just enough time to visit briefly with a friend on G+ and snuggle a bit before it was time to head to folk dance class. Dance is always fun, but it seemed especially enjoyable this week, since we had missed it last week due to issues relating to not sleeping Saturday night while working on my spark.

We practiced a few old dances and worked on some new ones. One of the new ones was particularly difficult and most of us had problems making the timing work. Then, on the drive home I realized how to make it work--the music is kind of waltz like, so if one counts 1-2-3, 2-2-3, etc. instead 1, 2, 3, etc. it works better. Then I realized that the "long step" we need to take must actually take two counts of three (long in timing, not just slightly longer distance to step). ( If I am correct in this then the counts/steps for both parts is probably: )

Current Mood: cheerful

Last Sunday morning we went in costume to the movie theater with others from Frostheim, where people were waiting in line to buy their tickets to the Hobbit premire, and entertained them a bit. Then, in the afternoon we had the choir "Julton" performance in town, at the big brick church. It was rather different from last year, when we were performing in the smaller blue church. Last year it was just two choirs joining together, and it took an hour or two out of the day. This year there were rather more choirs performing, and we had to performances at both 16:00 and 19:00, but we needed to arrive at 13:30 for the rehearsal, which meant spending over five hours there, to sing three songs on our and four with the other choirs. This was a rather large chunk of time. We had fun anyway, of course, but there are other things we would have liked to have done with part of Sunday, too.

Monday was my birthday and nyckleharpa class in the evening. Since it is the last class before we break for the holidays it was more of a music session than a lesson, and we brought a cake to share. Normally I like to bake a new birthday cake for my birthday, since I love to eat cake batter, but there was simply no time this year. Luckily, we had backed cake one day last month, and decided at the time that we didn't need to eat both layers by ourselves, so we popped one into the freezer. We took it out of the freezer in the morning and went off to work for the day (I love my walk to work!) This meant that we had just enough time after work to split the cake, blend some mango with raspberries and cream to fill the middle, then frost the cake with freshly whipped cream, and decorate it with sliced kiwi fruit, blueberries, strawberry, and raspberries before we had to head to class. My but they were surprised when we showed up with it, in the nice fancy glass cake plate. They had made lussebullar and pepperkaker, so the mid-class break had rather more food to share than normal. Sort of made me wish I was hungry/interested in food in the evenings. However, since there was so much to choose from it meant that there was some cake left over for me to have at lunch the next day.

Tuesday evening was choir, which was our last rehearsal for Wednesday morning's Lucia choir performance.

Wednesday evening we went to see the Hobbit, in costume, because we had free tickets from being entertainment on Sunday morning.

Thursday we got up at at 05:00, so we could be at uni by 06:30 so that we would be in costume and ready for the 07:30 performance. After the performance, followed by more lussebullar and pepperkaker, I went and did some microscope work, followed by picking up my holiday gift from the Uni. This year the uni presented us all new carry on suitcases, and mine came with a bonus package--a hand-held battery operated luggage scale (good up to 50 kg). Today they sent an email explaining that the orders had been placed at different times, and that as a result some suitcases came with an extra something, and if we happened to have gotten one think of it as a lottery win.

Thursday evening we hosted the party for the choir at our place. This was much fun. Eight of the kids made it out, and we played twister (I did really well there--daily yoga helps), another fun game that involves singing an entire verse of a song that starts with the letter provided before someone on the other team started singing one starting with that letter. As we played I felt like our team was well behind, but, at the end of the alphabet (which we went through in random order) our team was only one point behind. We also did a little medieval dancing to show them what it was like.

Today I worked from home, and was glad I did--there had been a fair bit of snow + wind during the night, so it would have been a harder than usual walk. Indeed, all of the paths we had shoved in the yard here had disappeared in the night between the fresh snow and the wind redistributing the older snow. I opted not to bother doing any shoveling during the day, because I wanted to wait till closer to when

lord_kjar got home from work. That turned out to give me an unexpected advantage, as I mentioned earlier, as we have the best neighbour.

lord_kjar got home after 19:00 tonight, and I rather expected him to be too tired to do anything besides sleep this evening. Much to my delight, he came home motivated, so we finally attached the back to the paperback bookshelf in the bedroom, and added hooks to the back to hang clothes from, and put up a lamp in my new walk-in closet. Only one very full week after the shelves were built...

And you know what is really great? We have almost nothing on the calender this weekend--we just need to clean the apartment on Saturday and go to folk music on Sunday...

now this is more like it

Yay, snow!!!

last minute adventure planning for the win!

Oh, now that is much better

real winter, at last!

Frostheim Jul and wonderful winter weather

a beautiful night

Snow!

Dancing snowflakes

You can keep your hot yoga

midnight walk

Oh, now this is much better!

Birthday Snow!

just a delightful weekend at home

It has been a busy week

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June 2025

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