I have been gearing up to working longer and more enthusiastically as some major deadlines approach (which was severely interrupted by the Double Wars trip and recovery thereof), and that really showed this week. Yesterday I put in a 14 hour work day, but much of that was fun time spent hanging out with loved ones as they helped me with a ( project for workCollapse )
We were all having so much fun working on the project that we were still at work after midnight. She was sensible and hung up to go to sleep soon after midnight, but he and I kept going till nearly 02:00. I love it when work projects hold my attention so long!

Unsurprisingly, I woke up this morning thinking of databases, and wondering if I want to actually try to develop a database to hold all of my data,rather than the series of spreadsheets I am using now. I considered that back at the start of the project, but the list of all the different data types is so long and so complexly organized I gave up on the idea. Perhaps if I get that grant approved and the project goes on after November it will be worth the effort to do a conversion from spreadsheets to database.

Now it is time to head to the last choir performance of the semester: the farewell dinner for the exchange students, and we are the entertainment. This makes sense, since about half of our choir is exchange students this term. I hope we draw as many new exchange students next year, or our numbers will be sadly diminished. Luckily the slogan "learn Swedish, one song at a time" is a good one.

It is a sad fact that people moving to Sweden with a driver's licence from the US, or from Australia (I have both) can't simply trade in their licences for a local one, but must instead jump through all of the same hoops a Swedish young person must do to obtain their licence. However, one of those hoops is a fun one: The Slippery Course.

This is a half-day session learning how to handle your car in slippery conditions, or having fun sliding around in a car. When we arrived this morning we started with a short lecture, in Swedish, by a guy who speaks REALLY fast. Luckily, I could read the slides, but then I needed to ask google what a handful words were (Before today I didn't know that "breaks" were called bromsar)

After the lecture we first played with some props--they have a bunch of car seats set up on a metal frame that can slide on rails and then come to an abrupt stop--the slope of the rails is set up so that at the moment of impact we were going at all of 10 km/hr, yet still the jolt was very noticeable. The next toy was a car set up on a frame such that it can rotate on its long access. They had us get in, fasten the seat belts, and then they rolled us, first one way, then the other, then fully upside down, where they held us for a bit (while the young girls squealed) before turning us back right-side up again.

I don't know if they said so explicitly (since I followed only most of the Swedish), but I suspect that the whole point of this part of the class was to make us WANT to wear our seat belts when we drive. They also showed us some films involving car accidents, and they showed a demo of a skull on a spring, and the difference between a sudden stop with and without a headrest behind the head (hint: you really don't want to be in a car without one).

After that they took us outside and divided us into pairs, so that each car would have one passenger and one driver. Our teacher suggested that I go second, so that he could do the explaining in Swedish and I could see what to expect, that way when it was my turn he wouldn't have to think so hard about the English words to explain what to do.

Our first task of the day was to drive a short stretch of road just long enough to reach an assigned speed, then attempt to make an abrupt left hand turn through some flexible tall traffic cones. However, the road surface just before the turn was (intentionally) both wet and oily.

Our teacher had done a demo of the tasks we would be doing when we first arrived, before we even got out of the car, so we *know* that it is possible to make that sharp left followed by a gentle right without colliding with any of the tall traffic cones. However, when the girl I was paired with tried it the first time, using the assigned speed of 50 km/hr, she failed to make the turn properly, and we managed to slide sideways through all of the cones at once.

She tried it a few more times at slower speeds, and never did manage to pull that one off, though she got better with practice. The next task was to do a more gentle change of lanes and straighten back out in the new lane, again doing the maneuver on a slippery surface, with the target path marked by more of the tall traffic cones. This proved easier, yet still she hit the cones on the first couple of attempts, then, finally found a speed slow enough that she could negotiate the maneuver.

Once she proved that she could do it they had us turn off the anti-skid technology that the car comes with, and she tried it again. This time we not only hit the tall traffic cones, we also did a full 180 degree spin before she managed to regain control of the vehicle.

After that set of playing on her part (and she was loving every minute sliding around) it was time to switch drivers. And I discovered that yes, 30 year of driving experience does matter. While I never did manage that really sharp left without clipping one or two of the tall traffic cones, I didn't go through them all broadside like she did.

And when I switched to the change of lanes I managed to do the maneuver at all the required speeds with only some sliding into yet another lane before recovering, but never hitting the tall traffic cones except for the time I had to do it without the anti-skid technology. He asked us if, having done this course, we would choose a car with that technology, and we both said "yes please".

After our lunch break our group swapped driving courses with the other, and she and I did the other exercise. This time the game was first to make a prediction of how long it would take to stop this time, then get up to an assigned speed and hit the breaks at a specific point, then see how many meters it took to actually come to a stop. The course was marked so we could easily read it off. Then we did the same thing, at the same speed on the second course, which was slippery with water and oil.

The difference? Well, at 30 km/hr we each, in turn, managed to stop on the good road in 12 meters, but but it took her 45 meters on the slippery road (I took notes when she drove, and she when I did, so I only have the written records for what she did, but I can remember some of my numbers anyway). At 50 km/hr she was able to stop in 20 meters on the good road, but took fully 90! to stop on the oily one (but I did it in 70, so some of that is experience). They didn't let us try the slippery course at 70 km/ph, but on the good road it took her 30 meters to come to a full stop.

All in all I found the course to be entertaining, and rather valuable. I wish they had had something like that when I was learning to drive. Now that this hoop has been jumped through I need only finish doing the practice exam questions on line and then take the driving test itself. That has been scheduled for early July, so I have a deadline to complete the practice questions.

After the course, since I had set aside the full day for the course, but we got back to Luleå (the course is held in Piteå, 45 minutes south of here) in the early afternoon, I opted to use the opportunity to run a few errands in town, and met lord_kjar there (he has a cold, so had taken the day off of work).

This evening our choir did a recording session, for the first time since I joined the choir. It was much fun. We sang five different song (2 to 3 takes each) and had a great time doing it. We had a good turn out for the recording session--we had six each sopranos and bass, and four each altos and tenors. I am looking forward to hearing how they come out once the guys have finished editing them. Technically choir is over for the semester--our last rehearsal was yesterday, but today was a recording session, and Friday we perform at the Farewell Dinner for the Exchange Students (since a high percentage of our Choir are exchange students).

This weekend lord_kjar and I went out to one of his dad's properties to help with "ved" (as is written on our calender, or "wood", if you prefer English). I had no idea what to expect, but I have enjoyed "helping" since I was a very small child, so I was game to go along.

It turns out that we were cutting and splitting wood. Now, if that phrase conjures up images of axes and or small hand-held metal wedges in your mind, then you haven't played with the modern accessories that his dad has.

His dad has more than 100 hectares of forest, scattered in various sized patches in the region he grew up, and a number of the members of their family heats their homes using wood. Therefore he regularly cuts down trees, and when they are appropriately dry, he cuts them up and distributes it among those who need it.

The tool he has for this part of the project is a large machine that attaches to his tractor. ( photos and description of the day behind the cutCollapse )

They have finally announced the details for this year's European Textile Forum, which will be held at an Experimental Archaeology Laboratory near Mayen, Germany the first week of September. Given how many other long-distance things I have already planned to miss this summer due to time and budget constraints I suspect I won't get to this one, either. However, if it is 1/4 as much fun as the two Textile forums I have made it to (and I suspect it will be) then I can strongly recommend it to any of you who are interested in Medieval textiles, either from a reenactment viewpoint, or from an archaeological viewpoint--this is the place where scientists and hobbyists get together to share their research and enjoy doing textile related activities together.

Ever since we bought the house last November we have wanted to host some sort of SCA gathering here (larger than dance practice), and, at long last, one has been scheduled. On Tuesday we missed choir practice (since lord_kjar came home from Double Wars with a bit of a sore throat, and so probably shouldn't be singing). Therefore we suddenly had a free evening, so we decided to head to the Frostheim sewing night instead. We have been wanting to attend this local SCA sewing night since it started up last autumn, but it meets every other Tuesday, and we are normally at choir on Tuesdays. Somehow spending a week at Double Wars helped me to be even more keen to show up--one week of hanging out with SCA folk and working on sewing projects wasn't enough--I wanted more.

While at sewing night we all discussed plans for a summer SCA gathering & potluck, at which we could dance, sew, do archery, fighter practice, soak in the shire hot tub, or whatever else we feel for on the day. A couple of dates were suggested, and the one that worked for most of us present was Mid-Summer itself: 22 June. This is in direct conflict with the Drachenwald 20-year Anniversary event, but there are a number of us in the shire who would have liked to have attended that, but can't, so having our own revel on that day sounds like a very good thing to do.

If any of you have been contemplating a visit to Northern Sweden, this would make a grand excuse. The midnight sun is delightful--we are just far enough south that we do have a sunset at mid-Summer, but it never gets dark. So come join us!

The adventure started Thursday, the week before last. While I should have spent that day working I instead spent most of it packing and organizing stuff to load into the car that evening when lord_kjar got home from work. I am glad that I did, because even so we didn't have the car loaded and ready to go till nearly midnight that night, so we took an hour nap and then started driving just after 02:00.

Sweden is a long country--we live well to the north, but not all the way to the top. Double Wars is held way down south, but not quite all the way to the bottom. It takes a long time to drive that far. GoogleMaps says it should be 15 hours and 10 minutes of driving time to get from our house to the site. We sometimes drove slower than the speed limit (roof rack!), and on the trip south we stopped a total of 19 times. Since my phone has an app that makes it easy to log stuff I kept a record of every time we stopped and started again. Therefore I have added up the totals. ( Here is the summary of our journey/break timesCollapse )

Despite the frequent breaks (no single driving session was longer than 1 hour 35 minutes) we were both quite tired when we arrived on site. However, we arrived around 07:00 Friday morning, which was a fine time to select a camp site and set up the pavilion and sun shade.

I had expected to nap once camp was set up, but I got distracted with entertaining conversations and would up staying up till just after 21:00 that night. However, I then slept happily through to 07:00 (well, unless you count one mid-night toilet trip), which got me mostly rested and recovered from the journey and ready to enjoy the event.

Double Wars is an interesting event—it runs for two weekends and the week in between, but the number of people on site gradually grows during the first week until it maxes out on the final Friday. This year the event was a bit smaller than the last couple of years—everyone is assuming this is because a number of people were forced to choose between either attending this one or the Drachenwald 20-year Anniversary event later this summer, and many people choose that one (though I don’t think that lord_kjar and I were the only ones to choose Double Wars over 20 Year). In particular I noticed far fewer people from the UK and Germany than in other years, though there were still a decent number of Germans on site. On the other hand, there were at least four visitors from the US this year.

There were a large number of classes offered this year that looked interesting, but I didn’t manage to attend very many of them, since I kept getting distracted by interesting conversations. The first couple of days of the event I spoke a fair bit of Swedish with people, and was quite pleased that I could do so, even though I am still far from fluent. However, as the event progressed, and more non-Swedish speaking people arrived on site, I found myself involved in more and more English conversations, which is certainly easier on me, but somehow feels like I am cheating.

Like all good SCA events there was plenty of time for me to work on sewing and nålbinding projects, there was dancing, singing, and mostly just visiting with people. He participated in the archery, and I was kind of happily aware of people doing fencing and heavy combat in the background (we made no attempt to bring my armour, which I haven’t used since hurting my back last August, because it simply wouldn’t fit into our small car).

I didn’t bring my computer and made no attempt to work for the entire ten days we were gone. Neither did I check in to read LJ or FB, though I did look at the few emails that arrived in my in-box to see if they were important, since my phone tells me when they arrive, and I looked at my phone whenever I entered more food eaten into my food log. Instead the rhythm of the day involved waking up, tidying up the pavilion (hanging up yesterday’s clothes properly, instead of leaving them hanging over the rafters, making the bed, etc.), going for a walk, or hanging out and being social, or attending classes before lunch, then joining the others for the soup lunch.

This year the catering was being done by a professional, who fed us soup and bread for lunch each day—this was the one part of the meal plan I bought into—I brought my own muesli from home for breakfasts, and for my other meals I had also brought veggie pasties, “everything cake—a not very sweet baked thing I invented that has lots of different nuts and dried fruit in it, as well as a variety of different grains, oat cakes, raspberry tarts, cheese, fresh fruit, and carrots. Between snacking on these things at random intervals during the day and the provided lunches I did just fine for food.

After lunch each day there was more time for socializing (while working on projects), or attending classes, or going for walks before the evening meal. While I didn’t buy into the meal (it was served starting at 18:00, and I prefer to have by dinner earlier than that) plan my camp mates did, so I would always sit with them and work on sewing projects, and then we would go add warmer clothes for the evening.

We were very lucky with the weather this event. While the nights did get cold enough that I was glad to own a fur lined hood and wool tunics, it didn’t freeze at night, and the days were usually quite comfortable. It did get up over 20 C one day, but not painfully so. It did rain one night early on, but not till after I was asleep, and if I hadn’t seen everything wet in the morning I wouldn’t have known, since it didn’t make enough noise to wake me. Other than that it stayed partially cloudy/partially sunny all week, and only sprinkled on us slightly after we had taken down our pavilion and we were loading stuff into the car at the end of the event. Note that in Skåne (southern Sweden) spring was already well advanced—the grass we camped on was green, bushes were sending out leaves, and there were a fair few trees in flower before we left site. Up here it is still early spring—while nearly all of the snow in the yard has melted (save for where it was piled high after shovelling), the grass hasn’t yet gone green again, and the trees are only hinting at the fact that they might grow leaves. However, we don’t have much dark at night anymore—yes, the sun sets, but quite late, and it rises again quite early, so we don’t really have stars anymore. At the event I saw stars every night and always marvelled at them—to me they are supposed to be a winter phenomenon, not to be seen while the grass is green.

The event officially lasts till Sunday, but that day the only thing on the schedule is “clean site”, and we couldn’t stay that long. Instead we broke camp Saturday during the day, and loaded stuff into the car as soon as the battles for the war itself were over and we could bring the car up to the parking lot near the tent again (everyone had to move their cars from there before the battle, because the fighters wanted it for a playground). However, that got us to nearly dinner time, and court was scheduled for right after dinner, so we stayed on site till after court.

This meant that we started the drive home just after eight pm Saturday, and we got home just after nine pm on Sunday. We unloaded the car and put away the crucial stuff (emptied the ice chest, put the pillows back on the bed, plugged in phones and related stuff to be charged, etc.), took a shower, and got to bed before midnight.

I opted to work from home this morning, and, during the morning, actually managed to be productive and do work stuff. However, I took a break for lunch, during which I started reading ten days of LJ, and then I took a nap, and since then I have been happily distracted with finishing reading LJ, adding up the hours spent doing what on the journey, writing this post, baking bread, and generally taking it easy. So easy I opted not to join lord_kjar for nyckelharpa class tonight, which has given me a chance to finish typing this. Now I need to decide if I am going to go for a walk, return to uni work (lots of windows still open from that!), go practice nyckelharpa and/or hammer dulcimer on my own, start some event laundry, put away the stuff that is still sitting in the downstairs hallway after the event, or what… Somehow I doubt I have time to do it all before yoga and bed time.

Reading LJ today reminds me that I sometimes miss living in the West and attending events pretty much every weekend, but, honestly, comparing my week+ at Double Wars (with its nice, mild, weather, and no wind to speak of) with the descriptions I have read of Beltane, and I am grateful that I live in Drachenwald!

On the other hand, I do miss being able to be more active on a Kingdom and Principality level. People kept asking if we will be at 20-year (nope—not only can we not afford two major trips this summer, it falls into the wrong half of the summer for him to be able to take the time off of work—his company splits summer in two—half take their vacation in the first part, the others in the second part, and the following year they switch) or Visby Medieval week. The Medieval week is very, very tempting—not only is it a fun event in itself, it is also the site of the Nordmark Coronet tournament this year, and I would dearly love to make it. However, my body doesn’t really want another long journey again so soon, and we have lots of things we would like to do with the house that we wouldn’t be able to if we spent that much cash on a second major road trip, to say nothing of the time that wouldn’t be available for things like making the yard useable for camping events and putting in an archery range. Therefore we have decided that Double Wars is our only long-distance event this year.

If this link works, you can see one of the songs my choir sung this weekend.

This is the song we are singing:

Uti vår hage

Uti vår hage där växa blå bär.
Kom hjärtans fröjd!
Vill du mig något, så träffas vi där.
Kom liljor och aquileja,
Kom rosor och saliveja! Kom ljuva krusmynta, kom hjärtans fröjd.

Fagra små blommor där bjuda till dans.
Kom hjärtans fröjd!
Vill du, så binder jag åt dig en krans.

Uti vår hage finns blommor och bär.
Kom hjärtans fröjd!
Men utav alla du kärast mig är.

Kom liljor och aquileja,
Kom rosor och saliveja! Kom ljuva krusmynta, kom hjärtans fröjd.

And one of the other choir members ( translated it like thisCollapse )

In Sweden, the first of May is a holiday—spring is a big deal in countries where they have real winter. However, Sweden, being Sweden, since the holiday is the 1st, they celebrate on the 30th of April (they do that at Christmas, too—with the parties and Christmas dinner all happening on Christmas Eve). So, how do they celebrate spring here? Bonfires! Lots of them (do an google image search for "valborg"). The official celebration at the university involves a huge bonfire—the stack of wood they had set up and ready to burn was way taller than I am. It also has an official entertainment program. Our choir (which is a “student” choir for the university, but one needn’t be a student to participate) was the opening act.

Therefore, after a busy day working from home on my part (and getting caught up on laundry in between doing stuff on the computer) we headed into Uni around 17:00 to join the rest of the choir in one last rehearsal and warm-up session, and just before 18:00 we went outside to perform. Had we done this last week it would have been sunny and warm (daytime temps of +10 C (~ 50 F) or so), but yesterday was rainy during the day, and overcast for the performance, with temps only just above freezing. Despite the less than ideal conditions we still had an audience that was larger than the choir (and since we are up to five to eight people per voice these days, our choir is a fairly decent size), and we all enjoyed it—it was fun to sing, and our friends in the crowd said we sounded good.

After our performance we hung around to chat with folks for a bit, and then we returned home with a couple of friends from choir. They have bikes, so they followed us (we had driven in, since we weren’t done with dinner till after it would have been time to start biking). I also wanted a bit of exercise, but didn’t think I could spare the full 45 minutes it would have taken to walk home, so instead I had him drop me off on the side of the road when we were most of the way home, and did a nice 14 minute walk, which got me there only a minute or two before our friends arrived.

Our left-hand neighbours had their bonfire going when we got home (the right hand neighbours had done theirs before we left to go to uni), so we four went out to join them for a bit. I am pleased to report that I was able to participate in conversations in Swedish, and only had to fall back on English words twice while hanging out with them.

Then we went inside and fed our guests some fika (in this case sandwhiches, fruit, nuts, banana muffins (which I had put in the freezer after baking them as the batch was too big to eat at once) and cookies (which I had baked a week or so back, but which keep well). Since we were sitting around the table chatting, I took that opportunity to make my version of hais, which uses a much lower proportion of bread crumbs than the original (but always home-baked bread for the source of the crumbs), and more different types of nuts and dried fruit in addition to the ones mentioned in the provided link. I also never roll mine in sugar—it is better without.

Neither girl had seen this sort of food before, and they happily helped with the grinding (I used an old fashioned hand-crank meat grinder, since our food processor is broken, and we don’t have a mortar and pestle large enough to make this.) and sampling of the finished product. After that we retired to the basement, where we watched a Monty Python movie I had never heard of before—Yellowbeard, and I made some good progress sewing on my new undertunic. (I am so looking forward to wearing this tunic—it is a very soft white linen woven in a herringbone twill pattern.)


Since I had had such a low energy day on Monday, but felt fairly good when I woke up on Tuesday, I opted to start that day with a quick run. The forest path is still not really a pleasant option, since the snow remaining on it gives it the texture of soft beach sand, but there are wet patches in addition. Therefore I opted to just run to the end of our road (which is a dirt road) and back—only 13 minutes, but since this was the second time I have run at all since autumn, I am ok with that. This morning I woke up thinking of projects, and nearly started my day with sewing. But, when I went to get dressed, I saw yesterday’s running clothes hanging on the hook, and that inspired me to do it again. Today I did it in 12 minutes. Granted, my phone log keeping app doesn’t do fractions of a minute, therefore I have no idea if the change in time from yesterday is 60 seconds, or not quite two minutes (since I don’t know if yesterday was 13 min, 59 seconds, or 13 min zero seconds, or something in between).

Since today is a holiday lord_kjar and I will devote much of our day to projects, but right now "we" are filing my taxes (which are due by tomorrow). Which is to say he is dealing with the Swedish web form on his computer and I am providing moral support sitting next to him and keeping him company. That process is nearly done, so it is time to close this and get going with my day.