kareina

It has been a lovely day. I had a meeting in the morning, so acroyoga wasn't till 11:00. Ellinor couldn't make it, but Johan and I practised for an hour before I returned to work. It is amazing how quickly we have gotten back to were we were before we went home for the summer. It is a pity he can’t stay in Luleå this winter. Oh well, we have till Thursday morning to practice, anyway.

I managed to put in five hours of LTU work today, and really should have done Durham stuff this evening, but instead I went to the first Nyckelharpa night of the season, and even brought my dulcimer, so I got to play along with the 3.25 songs I know, in addition to making progress on my Viking coat. The coat is up to about 27 or 28 hours of sewing now, and I am really happy with it. It was delightful to see Birger and Siv again, to hear a bit about their summer, to share the story of Kaarina’s laureling song (I still need to write that post!), and to encourage them to come to Umas Hostdans event and Norsskensbard contest in October.

I normally work from home on Fridays (and not at all on LTU stuff). When I went to bed last night I was already up over 23 hours for LTU work this week, so I didn’t need to do any more LTU stuff for me. However, one of our PhD students was doing her defense today, so, of course, I went in for that. Two weeks ago I had been asked by a colleague in one of the other divisions of our department if I would present the laser lab to some visitors today at 10:00, to which I replied that A. had her defense at that time, to which he replied that, of course, he meant to go to the defense himself, so how about 12:00 instead, and I agreed. Some days later he wrote back to say that plans had changed, and he would be taking the visitors to a variety of labs starting at 13:00 instead, and so could be at my lab between then and 13:30, and was that ok? I forgot to change the calendar entry.

This meant that today I came in at 08:30 and had time to send two emails before the defence started at 9:00 (it having been pushed an hour earlier), during which I made some good progress on my viking coat in progress (nearly done with the second pass of sewing on the seams, leaving just cutting the neck and sewing on the tablet weaving and the decorative (and reinforcing) seam embroidery). After she finished speaking I and a colleague spent perhaps half an hour more chatting to one another about work, and then I returned to my office, where I worked on data reduction for the initial test soapstone analyses I had done some week back but haven’t had a chance to look at. Just before 12:00 I went downstairs, taking the computer with me, and opened an old power point presentation introducing the lab, then returned to the data reduction in progress while I waited. A bit after 12:00 I opened email on my phone (my computer doesn’t seem to know my password for the uni wifi network, even though my phone does, and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it, since I normally have a wire, but the lab doesn’t have a spare wire) and saw the message saying 13:00 instead of 12:00.

I didn’t feel like carrying the computer back upstairs, so I kept working where I was, ignoring the sound of the lab machines. About 13:27 my colleague called to say that since they had gone over time on some of the lab visits that they were going to have to miss mine, so I went back to my office and got in a tiny bit more data processing till the 14:00 gathering in the ficka room, where they announced that she had passed her defence and we ate cake (I had a larger piece than I should have, because cream! So much cream on that cake that I called it 45% dairy in my food log.) After spending the better part of an hour chatting with colleagues I returned to my office and got a bit more work done with the data reduction, till my alarm went off to tell me to head to Phire practice, where Johan and I would do acroyoga. (I am now at 6 hours of Durham work, and 26 of LTU work for the week. With luck I will be able to bring Durham up to a more reasonable hour before the weekend is over.)

Acroyoga, as always, was much fun. In the past 7 weeks we have seen some serious improvement. His flexibility has improved so much that he is now able to reach his toes in a seated forward bend (at least when I am sitting with my foot pressed against his, and we hold hands and pull one another into the stretch) and the shaking in his legs when he bases is mostly gone, but his arms still shake when doing head stands (but he can now hold a headstand, and is starting to manage handstands). Today we tried doing the roll over during the Jedi box for the first time. It is much harder than it looks to actually sit back up after turning over like that. I don’t think we can claim to have managed that part yet. On the other hand, without the rolling over it is getting pretty easy, even for me to base, so long as he remembers not to bend his arms or legs (which results in collapse). After an hour of acroyoga we set up the aerial silks and played with them. Since we were already well warmed up I was able to climb to the top on my first try. I am also pleased to report that the ankle that I twisted on May 16 is now so much recovered that I was able to climb the silks without it hurting, and it didn’t bother me at all during acroyoga.

After our session I realized that I really should have thought a bit before promising Ellinor, who dropped off the silks at the start of practice, but then went on to study for tomorrow’s exam, that I would take the silks home and return them to her tomorrow when we picked her up for the music session. This meant that I had with me my work computer (since I want to finish that data reduction this weekend), my viking coat in progress (which is enough to fill the basket on my trike all by itself), the rolling suitcase the silks live in, my lunch bag, and my glasses case. I managed to get it to fit onto the trike by putting the coat into the basket, the lunch bag into the suitcase, the suitcase balanced across the top of the basket and tied into place with my bike lock. Then I sat down on the trike and put the computer on my lap and started heading home. I quickly realised that it would be a very unpleasant journey that way, so instead of heading home I went to Caroline’s apartment and left the silks and their suitcase there, which meant that there was room for both the computer and the sewing project in my basket, and the ride home was much nicer. This means that David and Caroline will bring the silks with them tomorrow.

He plans on coming here in the morning to work on the sun shade modifications, and when Ellinor is out of her exam we will pick her up and head to Birger and Siv’s house for their annual “spelträff” (folk music gathering) for a couple of hours. We usually spend the whole afternoon, but this year we don’t feel like we can spare that much time, given what all we want done before we head to Cudgel War next month.

After we got home I was inspired to bake some oven pancakes, as I am running low of the last batch in the freezer, and I had bought milk for it last weekend, so it seemed like a good time to use it. Normally when I bake Swedish Oven Pancakes I forget to write down (or even notice) how much flour I use; I just keep adding it till there is “enough”. But today I paid attention:

1 litre of milk
6 eggs (medium)
a dash of salt
1 cup almond meal
2 cups oat flour
3 cups wheat flour

Whisk together the milk, eggs, and salt. Add the flours, one cup at a time, and whisk well after each addition. Pour into a well-buttered large shallow baking pan (mine measures 35 x 42 cm) and bake at 150 C (fan on) for 25 to 35 minutes (I prefer it to be just starting to turn golden when I rescue it from the oven, but David likes it actually crossing over to a light brown).

There is a huge variety of proportions that works for these. It can be done with fewer (or more) eggs, even only one egg if you prefer (you could probably even leave out the egg and it would still work). One can use more varieties of flour, or only one type. Since it isn’t meant to rise one can be quite flexible with which type of flour(s) one uses. I have done them gluten-free by using rice flour. I have done them dairy-free by using almond milk (ok, the one time I did it, it was both gluten-free and dairy-free, but I was generous with the eggs). One can make the batter fairly runny or fairly thick; it only changes how long it takes to solidify in the oven and modifies the flavour a bit as one or another ingredient becomes dominant. They are good if one mixes into the batter a bunch of grated carrot, or other vegetables, or minced or chopped meat, or chopped nuts, or saffron, or really anything you like tossed in. The traditional Swedish version is just wheat flour, lots of milk, and some egg (+ salt), baked and served with butter and lingon jam (or raspberry jam, especially if saffron was included in the pancake). The freeze well, and make excellent road food, since they are good eaten cold, and they are solid enough to handle travel.

For much of November we have had lovely winter weather. There were a number of good snow falls. Last weekend we had enough snow that I spent seven hours outside shoveling over the course of the weekend, and it was grand. On Thursday instead of the soft, gentle snowfalls we had been having we had a proper snow storm, with much wind. So much wind that we wound up with waist high snow dunes crossing the yard in some places, while in others the ground was scoured nearly bare of snow. Consequently, I didn't bother trying to do much shoveling on Thursday--only cleared the path between the door and the lamp at the edge of our driveway several times, as the snow dune kept filling it up again. The final time I cleared that path on Thursday was at midnight, when the wind was dying down, which meant that it was still clear when I got up the next morning. Good thing it was, too, since when the wind died down the warm weather swooped in after it, and on Friday we reached highs of +4 C, which meant much melting and the snow drifts turned very wet and slushy.

I am so glad that David and I have a tractor, and that we had no plans for Friday, as that meant after he got home from work we could spend several hours cleaning up all of the wet, slushy snow from the driveway before it froze again on Saturday. He drove the tractor, I used the snowblower to cut through the big drift in front of the doors to the shed in which it lives, and the shovel to clean up the areas that were hard to do with the tractor (like behind my car), and to clean us the stuff that spills out from the side of the tractor scoop. Luckily, we managed to get it all cleaned up before it froze again, and even more luckily, we got a tiny hint of snow today, to cover up the dismal grey of the ice that was left between the dunes. Can we please just stay winter now till spring, and get some nice soft snowfalls, without any rain or melting thereafter?

In other news our folk dance group had our last session of the year tonight, and ended as we always do, by inviting the musicians and everyone else in the local folk dance organization to join us. As a result we had seven musicians and 14 dancers, and it was a delightful evening. While I love all forms of dance, Swedish folk dance is my favourite, and the Swedish folk music played here in Norrbotten is the best music of it all. This is truly one of the biggest reasons I am still in Sweden after 7 years when I usually move every three.

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.)