kareina

Kalika took no time at all to settle into the house, never looking at all uncomfortable with being here. She spent her first evening sniffing and looking at everything, and since then she just behaves like she owns the place.

When we do our evening yoga Kalika is content to walk under and around us inquisitively, but for this morning's zoom yoga and training session she felt that it was time to run randomly up, wrap her paws around whatever limb was in reach, and then gently bite it and give it a quick lick before running away again. This is slightly distracting.

However, she is really helping my fitness goals. I have long had a "rule" at work at the Archives: whenever I go through the library (which is on the way to the lunch room) I stop and stand on my hands. Likewise if I need to print something I stand on my hands while I wait, so I am typically doing at least 10 handstands a day when at work. However, now I am in the "try to finish my degree" phase, and only going up to Luleå to work now and then (4 weeks over six months), so I really needed to start doing handstands at home more often.

Monday it occured to me: When the cat comes in while I am working and tries to bite my drawing pen it is time to pick her up, cuddle her, take her to the living room and sit myself on the couch. She is one of those cats who enjoys being held when the human is standing, but as soon as we sit she walks off of us. When she does that I get up, do my handstand, and then hop up onto the chin-up bar and slowly lower myself back down. Once that later becomes easy I will start trying to actually do a proper chin-up.

She is fond of coming in to say hello while I work, so I think this new training regime will work wonders for my strength and ability to hold the handstand.

My gymnastics trainer asked us to list our main goal for the training, and then sub goals we will use to get there. I replied:

"Jag har mitt huvudmål: Att kunna stå på händerna hur länge som helst, och att kom till den hållningen med att lifta båda benen (rakt och långsamt). Men jag har ingen aning vilka delmål kan ta mig från nu till målet, och inte heller vilka månader skulle ha vilket delmål. Kan ni hjälpa till med suggestioner till delmålen?"

But it occurs to me that I may have friends in other places who can help with suggestions, too. What sub-goals would you suggest for someone who wants to be able to stand on their hands for a long time, and to get there by lifting both legs at once, slowly and straight? What is a reasonable amount of time between the sub goals?

• I can already do the slow, controlled, straight legs lift into a headstand (and when in the head stand have no problems with moving my legs into splits in various directions and bringing them back up again).
• I have no problems standing on my hands for quite a while against a wall, or with a spotter lightly holding one foot.
• I can do partial hand-stand push-ups when my feet are against the wall.
• If I have a very thick mat that is tall enough to put my head on while my arms are straight and my hands are on the floor, I can do a slow, controlled roll up with bent legs to the headstand with straight arms.
• I have no problems going (kicking up, one leg at a time) into a handstand in the middle of the room and rolling out of it onto my back promptly (though I prefer to only do that on a mat), and once in a while the pause before I need to roll is actually measurable in seconds (though not so many of them).

What is the next step to achieve the right combination of strength, balance, and coordination to simply stop in the handstand and hold it?

This has been yet another busy week full of progress on projects in addition to the normal round of social activities.

We have nearly finished a new wooden ice chest to take with us to Double Wars (we leave on Friday)--my old wooden ice chest is in quite bad shape from years of heavy use and several intercontinental shipping experiences, so it is time to replace it.

I finished nålbinding my sun hat, felted it, and have sewn it to a frame to dry in the shape I wish it to be. Sadly, I forgot to get photos of "before"--it was huge, floppy, and the brim was very, very ruffled--it covered my entire head with folds hanging loosely to my shoulders. After felting the brim was still ruffled, and was floppier than I want it to be, so I dipped it in water containing cornstarch, ran it through the centrifuge in the laundry room, and sewed it to the frame, where it sits yet. The sewing process got the brim to flatten out and become large--it now looks very much like the straw hat I had to leave behind when I left Italy because I didn't have space to bring it on the plane, and couldn't pack it safely into boxes to be shipped. Hopefully it will still look like that when I take it off the frame.

I have managed to accomplish some armour repair that needed doing, and even cleaned off some sword marks from the front of my shield. I had to, really. One of the black sword marks just happened to be positioned over the closed eye of the sleeping cat, exactly perpendicular to and centered upon the eye, so that it looked like the cat had and X instead of an eye--just like a cartoon dead creature. Very funny looking, but so not acceptable! (again, I didn't think to take a photo--somehow I never do. Then again, do I really want photographic evidence of a dead cat on my shield?).

We got the last of the fitting done for my 12th Century underdress done--there is just a bit of seam finishing left to do on that one. I did this one with the really, really long sleeves that runch up on the forearms. The upper arm is only just exactly wide enough to put my arm in it, which puts the square underarm gusset exactly in my underarm, giving me a good fit *and* full range of motion. We got the body to be exactly the same diameter as my ribs just under my breasts, which means that the gown is fully supporting--I can jump while wearing it and my breasts don't go anywhere. Yay to not needing to wear a bra! When I take in my bliaut so that it, too, fits properly across the shoulders and ribs this outfit is going to be so comfortable. Granted, it will then be very important to neither loose or gain weight in such a way as my diameter over ribs or upper arms changes, but since I am quite happy with my current shape this should be easy enough to manage (not losing any mass shouldn't be an issue--there isn't a whole lot available to loose over my ribs, anyway).

On Thursday we went to a sewing workshop with the local Folk Music and Dance group. The project of the evening was a traditional man's shirt, so that archinonlive and the other musicians will have appropriate costume for upcoming performances. I was very delighted to see that fashions in Northern Sweden never really changed. While the shirt cuffs are late period in design, with the full sleeve gathered to a buttoned cuff, the torso and sleeves are a straight rectangles, with a square underarm gusset--the same style they have been using for many centuries! We did take photos of some of the completed shirts that were available as models, and of the cutting pattern we settled on--used every scrap of that bit of wool--it was necessary to take one of the underarm gussets from the neck hole, because the end of the fabric wasn't cut straight at the store. I might make time to post those photos another day.

Friday we had a couple of people over for a gaming night as part of a mini gaming convention that a friend of ours runs. Sadly, our weekend was so booked we got to play in only the one game, but it was quite fun. We played While the World Ends, which was written by the guy who organized this mini con. This is the game we played at Gothcon early this month that I so enjoyed. ( It was fun this time, too )

This makes twice now that I have played this game, and I really enjoy it. It is much more like reading a book (or even watching a movie) than traditional role playing adventure games, but it is a shared activity with friends. Even though I think of myself as a reader not a writer, with the formal structure of the game it is easy to come up with things my character might do towards achieving his goals, and so it is easy to set the scene. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys gaming, story telling, reading, and just spending time with friends

Saturday morning was an SCA bbq and fighter practice. After practice the local knight authorized me, so if he has done whatever paperwork goes with that I am good to fight at Double War next week. In the evening we had a party for the choir. Not many of us could make it, which made it a fun night, as we were able to ( play games )

Sunday we didn't have fighter practice, since it was on Saturday this week, so we used the time for projects, and also skipped the folk music session in favour of project time. However, we did attend folk dancing in the evening. This is the last practice before our performance, the day after we return from double war, so we had live music and everything, and we ran through the performance set three full times, working out last minute details to make it all flow smoothly and prettily. I also picked up the costume I will borrow for the show, which will need slight modification to get the vest to fit me properly.

My goal to pedal at least 10 km a day, five days a week is progressing nicely. I didn't actually manage a ride a week ago Friday because archinonlive had the day off of work and I spend the time with him instead, but the week before that I did an extra 10 km, so it has all averaged out. I did manage this Friday, but only barely--I got distracted actually working on that paper from my research, and suddenly it was 16:00 and I hadn't gone yet, and it was necessary to start some soup to feed myself and the gamers. Luckily, about the time I went to the kitchen to start cooking archinonlive came home from work, so I left him to cook the soup, and I went for a quick lap around the lake (which is not quite 10 km, but I had done a bit more than 10 the day before), getting back just as the food was ready.

In other news, I have booked my tickets back to Australia--I will be flying on 30 June, the day my visitor visa expires here (assuming that there are no volcanically caused flight cancellations then, of course). I land in Sydney on 1 July, which is a Friday. I still need to book travel for within Australia, but the tentative plan is to head straight to Canberra to head that Monday to the Swedish Embassy there to submit my visa application to move to Sweden to live permanently with archinonlive (which paperwork *must* be submitted in one's home country--one may not apply for such a visa from within Sweden). Once the paperwork is filed with the Embassy I plan to visit Melbourne to see my mother and step-sister and her family (mom will be visiting Australia for around a month, so that timing is nice). Then I will go to Tassie to await the visa approval. While there I plan to meet with my PhD advisor and finish up paper(s) for publication. I have no idea yet when I shall be able to return to Sweden--the paperwork processing on their end could take a couple of weeks, or many months. I will be renting a room from mushroom_maiden while her usual housemate is in Iceland. With luck the timing will work out for me to head back to Sweden before the housemate returns from Iceland.

Didn't do anywhere near enough uni work today.

Did do a fair bit of thinking about what I want for myself over and above the degree though. One of the topics considered has been fighting. I have, betimes, really enjoyed SCA combat, but at other times failed to practice enough to be good at it, and, in recent years, let a little bit of discouragement prevent me from participating in that activity, and, eventually sold my armour. This was, perhaps, not the smartest decision I could have made, and I have sent an e-mail to see if she'd be willing to sell it back, since her back injury has prevented her from using it. I hope she will, but am not going to hold my breath. Part of what has kept me from fighting was not doing any training, so that when I did put on armour my opponents hit me with little to no effort. Therefore, starting now (as in as soon as I push send) I'm going to do a bit of training on my own. I've got what little I can remember from over the years, and I've just been reading some on-line suggestions. If I can't buy back my armour, I'll wait till the degree is done and build anew, but in the mean time I can work on unarmoured training. This will be in addition to uni work mind you, not instead of it. This time, I'm going to work on this goal till I get good. I shall get to the point where I am able to win an occasional tournament. Step one: do slow work/training on my own, and seek out lessons as they are available. Once the degree is done and we can move into town, seek out a martial arts class because of the overlap of all of the different forms. If anyone has specific recommendations as to styles which are better for translating to SCA combat, feel free to say so and why.

This new drive shall *also* help push me over the edge into finishing up my degree, and progressing my career there after. I have decided.