kareina

It has been just over a week since I turned in my thesis, and oh the contrast in time spent with other human beings!

Of course, that time started ramping up a little even before the thesis was submitted, with the arrival on 21 Dec of my apprentice, Bjarni, who had decided that with their parents out of the country for the holidays it was a good excuse to come spend a few weeks with us. They knew I would be focused on my thesis, but there was still a little time each day to chat, and they were very encouraging of my work, and settled easily in the "routines" of the house.

On Saturday 30 December, as I was in the final push to get the thesis done, my friends Hjalmar and Sofie, who live these days in Uppsala, but had been up north in Tornedalen with her family for the holidays, arrived to stay a few days. It is always a delight to see them, so I paused my work long enough for hugs, and then dove back in, and they happily sat in the kitchen chatting with Keldor and Bjarni for some hours as I worked.  I managed to get the thesis submitted, and then stumbled, zombie like, out to the kitchen around 20:30, where they all had the energy to celebrate for me, and I enjoyed listening to them, but not really managing to participate much in the conversation. I managed to stay happily awake (for certain generous definitions of the word awake) till midnight, at which point I went to bed and slept nine hours!  I rarely sleep more than seven, even when not trying to finish a thesis, and, of course, during that last push to finish I hadn't gotten more than a few hours at once, just enough to keep going. Sleeping nine hours felt really good, and gave me enough energy to re-submit the thesis with the research paper draft moved back to chapter nine from the appendix (but not enough brain function to keep from breaking Scrivener as I posted the other day). Then we did a little house cleaning--I did vacuuming while Keldor took all the rugs outside and beat them, and then mopped the floors, finishing not long before the first of the party guests arrived.

For my Thesis has been Submitted/New Year's Eve party we had 10 people total (listed in order of arrival, as best as I can remember it): Me, Keldor, Bjarini, Hjalmar, Sofie, Geri, Linda, Lena, Patrik, and our neighbour Isabell, along with her dogs Texas and Boston, dropped by for a bit (the cats were already mostly only hiding before the dogs arrived, then they really made themselves scarce). It was a lovely, low-key gathering with lots of conversation and food, and votes as to where we should fly with the frequent flyer miles we had been offered.

Oh, yes, those miles...  Once upon a time, 20 years ago, when I was living with Colin in the Bay Area, he had been working as a junior attorney at a very large law firm, and hated it, even though it paid quite well. So he quit, spent a little time looking for a job he would like, and then decided to start his own law firm and dedicate himself to helping people. He is a very good attorney, but not so interested in doing the background paperwork that needed doing. I had no office experience, but I love spreadsheets and tend to be a very organised person, so I helped him set up a system to track his hours and create invoices, and did other odd jobs to help get the firm going. Then I moved to Australia to help out my family, and his firm did well enough he was able to hire an SCA friend to work as a real office manager, and over time he hired more and more SCA people to keep the business going. On years the business does well they go an office adventure trip somewhere together, for fun, team building, and morale. 2020 was one of those years, and tickets had been purchased. That trip, of course, didn't happen, and the airline converted the tickets to frequent flyer points so that they could reschedule the trip for a time when pandemics aren't interfering with travel.  The trip continued to not happen as the pandemic kept being a thing, and, by the time it was reasonable to travel again Norwegian Air was no longer flying to the states, and people at the law firm were too busy to try to figure out a way they could use the miles anyway.

Sometime in mid December I got a message from my friend Erica, who works there as a legal assistant, saying that she's got these miles that are going to expire at the end of the month, and would I be interested in having some heavily discounted plane tickets? I replied "thesis--no time to think about where I would go till it is too late". She understood, and I promptly forgot the conversation. Then, after I turned in the thesis, and posted to FB that I had, she sent me a new message saying Congratulations! and that there were 15 hours left till those miles expire, and was I interested? My first reaction was not really being certain I had the energy to even look and see where Norwegian flies, let alone considering where I might want to fly, and when, and why.  But it seemed a shame to let the miles go to waste, so I asked the party if anyone needs Norwegian Air miles for anything. Linda said that her partner Marcus hadn't yet bought his tickets to return to London (where they live these days), so I had her call him and say that if he could find flights he wanted on Norwegian to let us know. In the meantime Erica added me to their "family" miles program.  He found flights that suited his needs, so I logged in, saw that yes, there are 9000 some odd points available, which will soon expire, and we booked the flights with his miles, he used his credit card to pay the taxes, and then there were still 7000 some odd points available. That flight booking having worked so well I now had the energy to face the thought of looking for flights for myself, so I went out and asked Keldor if we want to fly anywhere, and we consulted the Drachenwald Calendar.  

He's never been to Ireland, and one can't drive there, so both Spring Crown and Strawberry Raid caught his attention, and he asked the party for a vote, which of the two should we choose?  (assuming the miles are enough to cover it).  They asked what the two events are, and we explained that Crown is Crown, but Strawberry Raid is Drachenwald's premier fighter training event, held at a castle, which is now a private home owned by SCA people.  It was pretty unanimous that the castle wins, and Geri said "that is one I would happily attend, too", to which I replied, "let's go see if there are enough miles for you to come with us". Because Geri isn't certain how their summer school term schedule looks yet, we looked at the flights that are closest to the actual event dates, which, sadly, mean arriving kinda late in the day of the first day, and leaving kinda early on the last day. Then we chose the "flex fare" option for extra luggage, and the opportunity to change one's mind.  That option, for three people made the base price high enough that after one applies the miles the cost would still be around €1000, which, even divided by three was a bit more than we wanted to spend for an impulse buy adventure, so we canceled out and returned to the party.  Where we decided that perhaps, if we took a couple of days before and after the event for vacation the flights might be cheaper. So Keldor and I returned to the computer and looked. Sure enough, if we booked a few extra days at each end of the trip the base cost was reduced quite a bit, and if we took the mid-level tickets which come with only one checked bag instead of two, and doesn't have the option to change your mind the total cost for two tickets after applying the miles was only €100 (which is just the taxes, to which the miles can't be applied).  After that purchase there were still just over 2000 miles left, so Geri decided to have one more look.  It turned out that by downgrading their flight choice to the mid-level price it also came in to reasonable cost for the taxes, so we bought those tickets, too, and we will meet them on site.  That finally used up the last of the miles. Upon hearing that we managed to use them up, Colin told Erica "tell her this is her belated bonus for helping me start the frim".  It is a good belated bonus, and I will enjoy the adventure.

Having accomplished the computer tasks for the day, I returned to the party, and gradually became more and more zombie like, as I hadn't truly recovered from pushing myself so hard to finish the thesis, and re-submitting it and buying the tickets took most of the energy I had gotten back from sleeping so well the night before. Yet it was delightful to lay there on the couch and listen to my friends talking with one another and occasionally be petted.  As the clock rolled towards midnight Sofie changed into a fancy dress--all silver sparkle formal, with matching silver sparkle high heels, and Hjalmar changed into a nice purple shirt.  Inspired by this I got out my blue wool bliaut and put it on, and Keldor took out his 1800's linen shirt and black vest, so we had a handful of us dressed up for the occasion.

At midnight we went outside and watched the fireworks, which one can just see from here--I think they are shooting them from the ice behind the church, and I managed to stay kinda awake and listening to the party till 02:00, at which point I went to bed and slept for eight hours (not counting waking briefly when Keldor finally came in at 06:00 when Geri finally went home). 

Monday was time to enjoy Hjalmar and Sofie's visit, and the first day that I had the energy to get out a sewing project. I had missed sewing while working on the thesis, and felt a little jealous of all of the crafts projects Keldor had been doing while I was spending long hours writing (some time in the smithy making new things, some time adding really pretty handles to knives that had been made long since, some scroll blanks, some painting on the walls of the house--he's been busy), so it felt really good to start stitching again. I am working on a new tunic for Keldor, inspired by the Byzantine style. Black linen for the tunic and "gold" brocade (a fancy table cloth we found in a second hand store shortly after he announced he wanted a tunic in that style, after seeing one at 30 year).  Hjalmar worked on a sheath for the medieval kitchen knife Keldor had given him. (they gave us some period drinking glasses, from which Keldor has been happily drinking every since).  We also made some yummy ice cream. Hjalmar is allergic to dairy, so we used 400 ml of coconut cream, to which we added 1 small egg, 1/4 c sugar, 3/4 c almond meal and a little finely chopped roasted coconut flakes. This freezes REALLY fast in an ice cream maker, and went very well with the berry compote that Hjalmar and Sofie made. We also baked pizza for everyone save Hjalmar (who can't eat gluten or most grains, so he had some of the left over meat and veg soup). 

Tuesday Keldor had planned to go to work, but when he woke it was -35 C, and he decided not to even try to start the car, but just sent a message saying "nope" (they understood), So we enjoyed the final morning of Hjalmar and Sofie's visit, and plugged in their car early enough so that when they were ready to go it started just fine.

Wednesday Keldor did go in to work, but wasn't able to accomplish much as someone had unplugged his company car during the holidays, so it wasn't warm when he arrived, and he couldn't get it started. In addition, the building out at Rönskar where their changing room is had frozen earlier in the week when the city provided heat failed and much of that part of town was without heat during the worst cold snap of the year. I, however, managed to start my slide show for my conference presentation next week.

Thursday we drove to Umeå for Ingemar's funeral, which was a lovely, if sad, occasion. Even I, who didn't know Ingemar as well as I would have liked, since he was too soft spoken for me to hear in normal conversations, teared up seeing my friends crying as they each said their final goodbyes. Then we all gathered at the Uma SCA "lokal", a basement apartment they have rented since the 1990's where they store shire property and have monthly potluck gatherings and regular gatherings. I spent all of my time there in the outer room, where the food was, because that room had enough light for sewing, and I was happily working on Keldor's tunic, but there were always some people out there to talk with, and I really enjoyed the evening, even though the reason to gather was a sad one.

Friday Keldor returned to work, where the company car still won't start, and it turned out that with the return of heat to the building where their changing room is the pipes, which had frozen, thawed enough that the sewage began seeping out the cracks in the pipes, so that the room, and everything in it, including his work clothes, smelled like shit, literally.  So he got help pushing the company car into the workshop, where it would be able to warm up over the weekend, and he put his work clothes into a plastic bag and brought them home, where he put them through a four hours serious wash cycle to get the smell out, and then went to the cellar to engage in craft therapy to recover from the bad morning. (it worked).

Saturday we went over to Angelika's for fika, which was really fun (and good sewing time), and then we came home and watched more of the History of Sweden documentary as I continued sewing.

Today (Sunday) we will take Bjarni to the ferry in Umeå and do some grocery shopping while we are in town, and then the holidays will be mostly over. Unless you count the conference and 12th Night Coronation next week.

My beloved apprentice, Astrid, and I have started meeting every Wednesday via Zoom to catch up and work on crafts projects together. As of two weeks ago we decided to open the invitation to the rest of the shire, and the Known World, to join us, and put it onto the Drachenwald Kingdom Calendar. So on Wednesday I had about 2.5 hours of time hanging out with good friends via zoom. Thursday evening Kjartan was at the house and we picked spruce tips together to turn into syrup and we spent a fair bit of time thereafter hanging out. Friday the Norrskensbard hosted a bardic circle on Zoom, which had a small enough group that everyone had plenty of chances to contribute if they wanted it. We sang from just after 18:30 till around 01:30! So much fun. We had visiting bards from other Kingdoms, all of whom are good, and some of whom are amazing, and everyone was welcoming, supportive, and friendly.

Saturday morning I had my normal Zoom meeting with my sisters on three different continents, which, as always, was a joy. Saturday afternoon I got to join a "Crafternoon" in An Tir.

Today I had a three and a half hour skype call with a dear friend I hadn't heard from lately.

Between all of these calls I have managed to put in more than 21 hours of nålbindning (Dalerna stitch) on the bag that will be used to cushion our ceramic water jug when taking it to events. Perhaps one more long call, or several short ones will see it done.



In between all the calls I have also worked and made progress in the garden, cooked food, and tidied up the house.

I tend to be one of those people who keep using the same computer for at least 8 years. ( lots of issues related to changing computers slowly over the course of months behind the cut ) Again something that he will be able to solve when he gets home, but that won't be till tomorrow, at which point he may or may not have time/energy. However, his not being available gave me time to type up this, for your entertainment.

Since I am here I may as well include an update of the past few days, too. When last I posted it was Wednesday of last week, and I had no plans as of yet. How quickly our days fill up.

Thursday I did my workout in the morning, biked to the office to water my plant in the afternoon (this time my key opened the door no problem, unlike the time I tried a week or two before), went straight back home, curled up with a e-book and audio book in Norwegian for a few hours, helped David re-arrange stuff in the shed so that we can fix the back wall next, and enjoyed hanging out with him a bit afterwards.

Friday I helped out my friend Louise and her mom, both of whom needed to go grocery shopping, but neither of whom has a driver's licence. Normally her dad takes them, but he is out of town, so she asked me if I would. She also said we could use their car, so I biked over there, we drove out to the big grocery store, and each got our own cart and agreed to meet at the bench by the door when done. They warned me that they would take a while, so I wandered slowly through the store and picked up the few things I needed, and stopped to chat with my friend Siv, whom I ran into in the dairy section. Eventually I paid for my things and went and sat on the bench with my e-book and audio book for a little while till her mom joined me. I had just enough time to eat the croissant and pear I had bought specifically to eat while I waited before she arrived (she was convinced that she would be the last one to the bench, but she beat Louise by about a minute and a half).

After that I had dinner and then helped David with some yard work, did some things around the house, and got in a couple hours reading in prep for my interview. That night I enjoyed visiting with a friend on line, and it was really good to catch up and connect like that. Sleep is clearly optional.

Saturday during the day I was productive, with some uni work, some harvesting red currants, some cooking, a workout, etc. In the evening I got in three hours of soapstone carving, and decided that the outside is now done enough to start on the inside.

Sunday morning I baked a yummy carrot-red currant crumble (with an oat and almond topping). During the day we went to "Grundet", the island on the Luleå river where the local SCA now has its home (and storage of stuff). There were about 30 of us from Frostheim there, some doing archery, some (including me) sitting in the shade with sewing project or just talking or playing with the baby, some in the smithy making stuff, etc. We were there some hours, and then I came home and relaxed for about an hour before some of my friends from Phire came over. We did some music, some acryoga, ate some of that crumble, and played games (cards and Quirkle). After they went home I did my yoga, then got some cuddles from a friend who dropped by for a bit. He went home at 23:30, and I expected to go straight to sleep, but another friend was feeling down, so instead I spent a couple hours chatting with him (and doing duolingo lessons in between typing), and finally got to sleep at 00:55.

today (Monday)Much to my surprise I woke up full of energy at 05:15, so I got up, packed my computer and some food, and biked in to the office, arriving well before 07:00. I worked till 08:30, and then I biked to town to take my dance shoes to the shoe repair shop, which has just re-opened after their summer holidays. I got there just after 09:00, and showed him where I have worn through the outer sole of the shoe, and explained that I am heading to Norway at 05:00 on Thursday for another folk music/dance festival, and asked if it would be possible to have them fixed before then, or if I should keep them and bring them to him after the trip? Luckily, he said he can have them done by Wednesday afternoon, so I left them there and enjoyed a pretty ride back to the office, where I worked for another couple of hours, then went and took a nap in the massage chair in the next corridor while it ran the "recover" program, and then, when it stopped 20 minutes later (and woke me), I pressed the "refresh" button and sat through another 8 minutes of that massage before I was ready to return to the office for another two hours of work. Not a bad first day back after holidays!

When I heard that the Crown had decided to elevate aryanhwy to the order of the Laurel at Ffair Raglan I wondered what gift I could send that could be accomplished and sent down in the very short amount of time available. Then I remembered that she had once commented to me that she wants my SCA wardrobe, and we have talked about the possibility of making her a bilaut one day. The embroidered belt I wear with mine didn’t take that long to make. Then again, there isn’t much embroidery on it. I always planned to do more stitching, but never got to it. That belt shows fairly well in this photo.

Luckily, that week my friend Villiam posted to the Phire text message group that he wanted some help with sewing his costumes to take to Visby Medieval Week. Several of us had time that Saturday, so we agreed to meet then. In the meantime I went back to look again at photos of the statue that inspired my bliaut. This time I noticed that the pattern appears to be an upright, a diagonal, an upright, another diagonal, with the same slope as the one before… (Mine, on the other hand I did diagonals pointing opposite directions, not in contact with one another, and no uprights, so more like the pattern in the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry than this statue. I don’t remember if that is because I didn’t have a high enough resolution to see the pattern of the belt, or I just didn’t look at it again before stitching, or what.)

Therefore on Saturday 28 July he and Sara came over. She worked on a bit of sewing for the Phire Pavilion that they also needed to take to Visby, and he first did some fitting on his new wool jester outfit, which had already been cut and assembled and just needed a little bit of taking in to fit, and then we cut out a pair of linen shorts for him to wear with his jester costume. Then I started embroidering laurel wreaths, uprights, and diagonals onto the belt fabric, while he sewed the shorts. Every so often I would pause, help him pin the next seam and return to my own stitching. Sara finished her task after a few hours and went home, while he and I kept working till almost midnight. Of course, I have no record of what % of that day was helping him with his project, and what % was working on my own. He returned the next morning and we spent another seven hours sewing (me on the belt, he on a linen under tunic this time). On Monday (30 July) I went to work in the day, and he came back over at 16:00 and we worked till 02:00, when he joined me for yoga before biking home.

I knew that I needed to get the belt sent off reasonably early on Tuesday in order for it to get there before the guy who agreed to take it to the event for me was leaving home, so despite my late night on Monday I got up early on Tuesday and spent a few more hours on the belt. I have no idea how many hours total it took, since I did alternate between stitching and helping him with pinning and cutting fabric for most of the project, but I did wind up doing way, way more stitching for her belt than for mine:



I managed to finish the stitching by 14:00 on Tuesday and went in to the grocery store by the uni to post it. The lady there said that while they accept DHL packages for shipping that one needs to go to a computer and fill in the DHL form and pay first, then print out the shipping paperwork and bring it back. She also said that she recommended this approach, since if I went regular Swedish express post the delivery would be “Thursday or Friday”, and my contact needed it by Thursday at the latest. So I went to my office across the street and filled out their form, and got stuck in a loop wherein the web page asked if I wanted someone to come pick up the package, but the drop down menu had only one possible answer (Ja), and didn’t want them to pick it up, I wanted to drop it off. I tired several times, but couldn’t get around that, so I called DHL, and they said just say yes, then in the “instructions to pick up person” box say that you will drop it off yourself. However, don’t take it to the post office at the grocery store by uni, bring it out to the main drop off point by the airport, it will get there much faster. So I called Villiam and asked if he wanted to see how the belt turned out and come along for the ride to the airport. He said yes, so I picked him up, and off we went.

After the package was sent he went back to my place with me and started working on his Visby sewing again, and I returned to my Viking coat in progress, this time working out how I wanted to attach the tablet weaving. It was another hot day, so we worked in the basement, where it was nice and cool, and I was willing to work with wool, and I made good progress in attaching the trim. We once again worked till about midnight, and before he went home.

Wednesday was another day wherein it was too hot to work at the computer, but Thursday I finally passed an intelligence test and moved my computer to the basement, where it is nice and cool. I did manage to pick some red currants on Tuesday and again on Wednesday evening, and put them into the dehydrator, so now I have lots of berries for adding to my muesli. On Friday evening Villiam came back for more sewing, and we had time to do some acroyoga too, since the projects were all getting close to done. He had a gaming convention on the weekend, but on Sunday it was finally cool enough to do some baking, so I baked a red currant cake so that I could re-stock the freezer with yummy snacks. I let him know that I had, and so on Sunday evening he came over after the convention, arriving at 22:00 just before it started raining. He stayed till midnight and then decided to bike home in the rain so that he could finish packing for his flight to Visby the next day. I offered him a ride, but he was happy to bike. Though he tells me that it rained heavy enough that he needed to put his shoes into the dryer for two hours to get them dry again afterwards.

On Monday I took the car to work so that I could take him and all of the Phire equipment (including the new pavilion, juggling clubs, staffs, poi, etc.) to the airport. He had four bags to check, so we went nice and early, dropped them off, then went for a half an hour walk in the forest near the airport before taking him back for the flight. This week my feed has been full of photos from Visby, and from Raglan (and, to a lesser extent, from Pennsic), and I am kinda envious of everyone who is at these events. I have seen one photo of a Phire workshop at Visby which shows Villiam’s new costume (the tall, thin, guy in orange and bright green, wearing the hood).

However, I am making progress on catching on on the work hours I got behind due to the heat (and so glad that the heat has finally eased off here—it is actually cool enough today that I can wear sleeves).

So far the best story I have heard from any of the events that are happening this week is Aryanhwy description of how they surprised her with her laurel. I wish I could have been there to see it myself. However, I suspect that even though express shipping to get that belt there on time was expensive, I would have spent way, way more than that to attend Raglan, and I just don’t have that kind of leeway in my budget right now—I need to save it for trips related to my research.

Speaking of research, it looks like I may get to do my sample collecting trip in September with my cousin Carola, who lives in southern Sweden. I hope that works out, she is delightful, and it would be fun to get to know her better.

Wednesday I worked in the morning, but was tired enough by lunch that I just took my trike home and took a 1.75 hour nap. When I woke I wasn’t inspired to work, so I did useful things around the house till time to head to Parkour, where it was only Anton and I, so he trained on flips and gave me some exercises to start getting better at vaults and then to improve my handstands. After that I went home and had some inspiring emails from my advisor in Durham, so I settled in to work for the evening, taking a break for yoga, then back to work till a bit after midnight. Even so I managed to get up on time to trike in to the office Thursday morning early enough to meet the service technician who was here for routine maintenance on the laser. He also changed us over to the new bottle of ArF gas, which gives us much better laser power than the old bottle (as expected). He was getting close to done with his work when it was time for me to head over to meet Johan for our lunch time acroyoga session, and had just finished when I returned. So I called him a cab and sent him off to check out the church village in Gammelstad before he needed to catch his afternoon flight.

Then I did a few more hours of LTU work before biking home, curling up with a book (in Swedish) for an hour, and then settling into an evening of work on Durham stuff. I did take a break when David came over to work on the Server to sit in his lap a bit and visit for a while, but then went back to work and failed to notice when he went home (though part of that is being hard of hearing, and thinking he had said he was going back downstairs to do something else with the server, when what he really said was that he was going to go home).

I managed to reach a breaking point and go to bed before midnight, which meant I got up today just after 07:00. I managed a couple hours of Durham work today, and a couple of loads of laundry, but didn’t get as far as the vacuuming or dusting that would have been nice to have done. But then, before I knew it, it was time to head to uni for the Ore Geology seminar, which took nearly two hours this time, since it was a presentation of one of our PhD students, who is getting close to wrapping up his project and wanted a chance to discuss various big picture thoughts that tie in to his research. This meant that I needed to hurry straight over to Phire practice from the seminar, where I had much fun doing acroyoga with Johan (there is a noticeable improvement in just the just the two weeks we have been practising together, but then we did meet three times last week and four this) till the Phire officers pulled him aside to get his information to become a member of the group. However, by then Ellinor and Bjorn had arrived, so we were able to do some of the standing acroyoga stuff with him. He was feeling a bit tired, having just spent 2.5 hours in the gym, but was still able to toss us around fairly easily.

After practice Johan and I came back here and played a couple of games of Go. I haven’t played since I lived with Colin, who is a serious Go player (4-dan at the time, no idea if that ranking has changed in the years since). Colin had started teaching me the basics of the game, but even when he gave me a nine-stone advantage he was still able to win. It has been long enough I needed a refresher on how it works. The first game I only managed to take like three of his pieces and he captured quite a large handful of mine, and when we finally counted points I had 30 to his 120 something. The second game I was more confidant in what I was doing, and tried more things. I still lost, but this time I managed to also capture a good handful of his pieces (as he did with mine). At the end of the game I had only 17 points, but he had only 60 or 70, so I didn’t mind dropping my score in half since his did, too.

After that we played Othello. He had played before, but it had been years, and he very kindly gave me the corner early on, since he hadn’t remembered how very important they are and he was enjoying the early part of the game where the board was mostly his colour. As a result he managed only 22 points, to my 42. Somehow, I think that the next time we play that game I won’t have it so easy. He is certainly never going to hand me a corner so early in the game again.

After that I drove him back to Porsön and then continued on to the grocery store to stock up on a few things, managing to finish up just before they closed. Now it is just after midnight, so perhaps I should do my yoga and think about getting some sleep. My advisor has sent me some more feedback on the grant proposal we are working on, but I think I had better be fresh before trying to do anything with it.

Today we went to a gathering of musicians, held at the home of the couple who teach the nyckleharpa course. Theirs is a lovely old farm house on the Luleå river, about half way between the cities of Luleå and Boden (so about 20 or 30 minutes drive from our place). I always love visiting them, since their house and property are so beautiful, and it is even more fun when they host one of these gatherings.

Picture, if you will, a beautiful summer day with one group of five to ten musicians gathered at the porch to the house, all playing, another group of 4 to 8 musician a short way across the yard, under the trellis, also playing, another small group gathered inside the house to play, in the room that is furnished authentically for when the house was built, sometime in the 1800's, and other small groups scattered here and there for conversation or yet more music.

I set my hammer dulcimer up inside, in that beautiful old fashioned room, and spent a the first couple of hours after we arrived with it, either playing or, more often, showing it to others and encouraging them to try playing it. Most people had never seen one before, and it was fun to share it with them. Not everyone was willing to try, but most of them were. I taught one friend, who had come out with us, how to play a simple waltz on it (with the ironic name of Svara valsen). Another guy is one of those confidant musicians who knows he can play anything, and he did--I think he was making up the tune as he went, but he sat down and just started playing with confidence, and it sounded great.

I took a break from demo mode when food was served, and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing and occasionally chatting with people (and still, sometimes, taking them in to see the dulcimer and try it), and also spent a bit of time reading, and even got in a half an hour nap on a couch listening to the musicians on the porch. All and all a wonderful, relaxing day.

The only people I spoke English with all day was David and the two friends we drove out there with, and only rarely had to ask people to repeat themselves, so, clearly, my Swedish is getting better. However, my accent must still be strong, since pretty much everyone I spoke with asked me where I come from and how long I have been in Sweden. However, by the time we got back in the car to head home I was really ready for English again. I look forward to the time when it is as easy to speak Swedish as English, and wonder when it will happen. No doubt sooner if I keep making the effort.

Next weekend is the big Spelmansstämman event where our folk music group will be performing, and there will be dances in the evening. After that we only have Midsummer's dance performance, and the folk music season will be done and we can focus on the Earth Cellar. (Hopefully lord_kjar will have time to go fetch his dad's tractor sometime between now and then.)

Still loving falling into an already established social life. This morning archinonlive's parents came over for a visit. This was the first time they'd seen him since his birthday last month, so they brought cinnamon rolls, and we baked a cake. This cake was sweeter than I normally go for, since he thought his parent's would prefer a sweet cake, but since it was filled with fruit (bananas and raspberries) and cream and frosted with more cream and decorated with segments of mandarin orange and kiwifruit I happily ate a slice anyway. (His dad had 4ths of the cake over the couple of hours we visited, so I think he approved). I like his parents, but wasn't able to talk as easily with them as with his brothers and sisters, as they don't speak English as fluently as the kids do. They left at mid-day, which left time for lunch and snuggles before heading over to gaming.

I'm enjoying the gaming--the group of people are fun, and the characters they are playing all have distinct personalties. After gaming some of us stuck around for dinner (and a few others joined us), which was early enough that I was still able to eat. It is nice to enjoy a meal with others now and then. After that we came home and practiced reading aloud to him from children's books. I really appreciate his patience in being willing to do this with me. While I'm still not good enough in Swedish to want to attempt to speak it in front of witnesses, trying (and failing and getting corrected till I can say it correctly) while curling up in the lap of a loved one is very nice.

I am very happy here, and really enjoying being in a relationship again. I know that he must have some points upon which we aren't compatible (everyone does!), but though I've been here a month, and we had a month of video conversations before I arrived, we still haven't found the places where we are incompatible. Even our taste in colour is matched; I have to look closely at the clothes after washing them to determine whose is whose because the colours are identical. Now that I've got a local phone number he gave me an old mobile phone he had lying around to put my Italian SIM card into, in case I get any calls to that number. Normally I prefer a plain phone--no fancy wallpapers or themes for me, I'm content with a solid colour (blue is good) with no embellishments. This phone came to me with a weird blue wallpaper that has some sort of blue ball in the middle, and swirls of other blues around it. Wanting something plainer I spent some time trying to find something I'd like better. Eventually I gave up and commented to him that I'd failed in my quest to find anything on the phone that is prettier than the one he'd used. He agreed that it wouldn't have been his first choice, either, but it was the best of what was available.

Tomorrow is the SCA fighter training in the morning, music and folk dancing in the late afternoon and evening. If I'm really lucky I'll also find a bit of time in between to do some uni work--last week's effort was back up to the kind of hours I think I should be working (well, if you count Swedish homework as well as geology stuff), and a few hours on the weekend will help keep the average number of hours worked up where I want it.

This weekend's SCA event was much fun! I didn't get much sleep this weekend though. In order to catch my flight on Friday morning it was necessary to leave my home around 03:30, to catch the 04:00 bus to the airport. Having lots to be done before I left, I got only a short nap before leaving. I did, however, manage to nap during the 1 hour bus ride to the airport, and again during the 2.5 hour flight. I landed in "Stockholm" around mid-day (the RyanAir airport is actually 1.5 hour bus ride from there), and was overjoyed to see that unlike Milan, where it was raining, there was Snow in Stockholm. This made for a much more pleasant walk (~30 min) to the home of the event autocrat than my morning walk had been. When I arrived I was put to work in the kitchen, and spent a very delightful afternoon visiting with people there and making stuff. The crust for the apple tarts is RICH. One huge block of butter (full kg?) to 5 dl of flour and 3.5 dl of sugar. Tasted yummy (I cannot resist eating pie crust dough, or short bread, which this is more like), but it was amusing to look into the oven and see that the crusts were literally boiling in oil when we baked them. Alas, I never did get to try the tarts--they were served with the evening banquet, and I'm not interested in food at that hour.

After the kitchen work to be done had largely wound down I helped folk load a car of stuff to go to the event, and walked the few blocks to the site with one of the other helpers. Met a few people, and enjoyed listing to people practice singing in the stairway (this school has Amazing acoustics in the stairway), but was so tired I wound up going to sleep before 10:00pm, and slept through till 07:30. Saturday during the day was all classes--I attended the morning singing class, and then switched to the intermediate dance room, where I discovered that they'd had to make some changes in the schedule. One teacher was sick and couldn't make it, and the other stuck in Frankfurt due to weather problems or something cancelling her flight. However, there were enough people willing to cover that we managed to keep dancing all afternoon. I confess to skipping out on the second half of the galiard variations class because I needed a nap.

I did my yoga during the break between classes and the evening ball. However, having failed to do my 1000 the day before I left, I opted to keep luggage light and didn't bring a 1000 to read. Felt kind of naughty and kind of nice to not have that responsibility on the weekend--made me feel much like I did at events back before I started that PhD project, when the SCA was the largest single time commitment (with the possible exception of sleep). The evening ball was much fun-we did many dances I am very fond of (some of which I'd not done in years), between dancing there was much interesting conversation with a variety of people, and we even got a back-rub chain going at one point.

My flight home was scheduled for 09:30, which gave me a choice--the 05:00 bus, or the 06:30 bus. Given the 1.5 hour drive to the airport I opted for the earlier bus--the 06:30 bus would have arrived before scheduled departure, but if there were any delays at security I'd risk missing the flight, and Ryan Air won't hesitate to take off without people who are in the building but not at the gate. However, as it turned out, I could have taken a much later bus--due to weather at the airport my flight didn't actually take off till after 14:30! However, I used the opportunity to get naps on the bus and at the airport, so I'm not as tired as I might have been. I now have a few days to do as much work as possible, and on Thursday evening I take off to the UK to attend an SCA event there.

I am certainly on night shift these days. This is probably good as I am doing most of my non-work stuff (including reading e-mail, boking travel, etc.) in the mornings, and don't settle down to actual work until I've been up for a number of hours. As a result it is needful to keep working late into the night, to get a reasonable number of hours of work done each day. This, of course, results in my sleeping in (because plenty of sleep is a goodness), which, in turn, means that it takes until the "day" is well advanced before I actually start working. Funny how completely my schedule turns from one extreme to the other, in such a short time, too--I spent the first half of October fully on day-shift, getting up by 06:30 every morning, and often noticeably earlier than that. Have I mentioned recently that I love having a flexible schedule? It is nice to be able to switch back and forth like this, because some days I do have more energy first thing in the morning, and others I really do have more energy late into the night.

So, booking travel? Yup. I now have three more adventures planned between now and this job ending with the end of the year. I'll be meeting blamebrampton for some Italian sight-seeing next week. The last weekend of November I will fly to Stockholm for their St. Cecila music and dance event, and the first weekend in December I will fly to the UK for the Fintheath Yule Ball. Yes, that is correct, two SCA events, two weekends in a row. At first I thought I'd only get to do the one in Stockholm, because the one in the UK cost more than twice as much for tickets. But then I noticed that if I fly Thursday night instead of Friday during the day I could get tickets which were only €10 more than I paid for the Stockholm trip. Yah, €55 to €65 is still a bit much for a weekend, but I love dancing, I haven't made it to very many events this year, and I'm worth it.

Since I didn't land the job for which I interviewed a couple of weeks ago it is now looking likely that I will have a few months off between this job ending and whatever is next starting (I've got lots of things to apply for in the next few weeks, but they are all August start, not January). The prospect of a summer vacation is very appealing, and I'm looking forward to it. I just hope that my savings is enough to see me through the vacation and still move to wherever I wind up going. At this point the tentative plan is to rent a van and move my stuff from Italy to Edinburgh to clovis_t's house sometime in late December. I will then use his place as a home base and do some travel (details to be determined later!) while I keep applying for jobs, and try to get thigns written up for publication (yes, the PhD research should have been published long since, it hasn't been, but I'm doing better than one of my FB friends, who hasn't published 9 years after competing his PhD). If I'm not yet done with stuff for this job I can always return here after getting the stuff to Scotland and meet with my boss to finish up.

In other news: I have determined that it is possible to do nålbinding with both hands at once. I got the idea from a friend who knits two socks at the same time, doing a stitch on one and then on the other (I think). She says that this way she doesn't have to count or remember what she did to ensure that they are both the same. Since I learned the Finnish stitch from a left-handed person I first learned to do it left-handed. But then I needed to teach some right-handed friends who weren't able to follow what I was doing. Therefore I worked out how to do it in my other hand, and can work with either hand, now. So the other day I tried, and it turns out that it is possible to have one thread on one hand, and the other on the other. Take a stitch on one side, pull it through, and then start the next stitch, leaving the needle between the thread and the thumb to hold it in progress. Then grab the other needle, take that stitch, pull it through, and start the next, leaving the needle between the thread and thumb to hold it in place. Return to the first needle. Repeat. It helps if the two needles look very different, so you remember which one is for the left hand, and which for the right.

However, so far I've only done a little bit with this technique. I don't know how it will go when there is a better part of a sock hanging off of it. I'll try to remember to report back once I know.

I've also done a bit of sewing this week! I haven't touched the underdress in progress in ages. I generally prefer to stitch when I have company, and for months now I've been doing nålbinding instead of sewing when I have company. But with some upcoming SCA events I decided to look and see if there was any hope of finishing the underdress any time soon. It turns out that when last I left it I'd completed: finishing the neck line, attaching the sleeves to the body, and assembling and hemming all of the sets of gores I'd cut. So yesterday I hemmed the body piece and cut the slits in the body rectangle to take the gores, and started sewing the first one in. This means it needs only those four skirt gores attached, two small square under arm gores cut and attached, and the sides sewn shut to make it usable. I'd also like to cut and assemble two more sets of skirt gores and set them in, but it isn't needed, it would just make for a fuller skirt.

Work progress has alternated between plugging along and hitting interesting snags. Today's snag was odd enough that I've sent an e-mail to an international mailing list for users of this particular geology modelling program in search of help. No idea if anyone out there has tried this technique, or if they will be able to offer a suggestion to make it work, but it is worth a try.

Oh, today was Tuesday, wasn't it. On Sunday I chatted (IM) with a local friend I've seen all of three times since moving here and she suggested we meet up on Tuesday. I completely failed to contact her again today to make it actually happen (to be fair, she didn't contact me, either--no wonder we never actually see one another--this is what happened all of the other times, too). No wonder I have no local social life, when I can't remember that I'm supposed to contact people to do things with them. Somehow it was easy when I lived places with a local SCA--just show up to dance practice, fighter practice, or other meetings, events, or activities, and I'd see people! Often that would lead to other plans to do other fun things with people. Yes, yes, I can remember what it was like to have local friends I saw. My social life is rich, and rewarding, on line. Not so much so in person this year...

Spent this morning getting started on chapter three, which meant needing to spend some time creating figures, which meant spending quite a bit of time fighting with ArcMap (which program I've never been properly introduced to, but have sort of half learned to do a few basic tasks on my own) trying to tell it that the the data I obtained from the departmental computer for Tasmania geographical information (coast lines, rivers, roads, etc) is *not* in an "unknown coordinate system", but actually uses the same Australian grid as that under which the samples were collected. Alas, despite some clear directions in the program "help", the buttons that are meant to be there simply didn't exist, and I was unable to do it. Eventually, I decided to have the samples also plot as "unknown coordinate system" as well, and lo and behold, suddenly both the outline of Tasmania and the samples plot in the correct place with respect to one another! I now know where on the coast these samples were collected (some back in 1984, some in 2000, but all by people who are currently in the department, so there is a chance I can get photos of the rocks in the wild, if they can find them).

Once I figured out where the samples came from, I started the writing, and only had time for about 300 words before it was time for clovis_t and I to head to his parent's house for "tea" (which is what Australian's call their evening meal, even though for many families, his included, no tea is consumed). We had a lovely evening--there was one other guest, Mike, who is down visiting from Adelaide to help Peter with some tasks in his vineyard for a bit (I think in trade, Peter having just returned from a trip to help out with Mike's family's vineyard up there).

The conversation flowed, the food was good, and I made good progress in converting that lovely blue wool knit dress into a cardigan--the front is slit & hemmed, and half of the neck line cut and hemmed. I still need to finish the other half of the neck, either slit the sides to the hips, or add side-gores to give it a bit more room in the legs, lengthen the sleeves (using the fabric from the turtle-neck I removed from it), and add pockets and buttons and it will be ready.

After we arrived home again (around 22:00!) I settled back in to work, and managed to pretty much double today's words written, so my total for the day is 656 words and three figures/tables referenced. Not bad for a day where I took a number of hours off in the evening (which is normally my best working time). Time for yoga & bed!