Common Kibitzing

But, of course, before sitting down with the computer and drawing program to confirm that it would work, I did my morning pilates, as I like not waking up in the night with sore hips, and the best way to keep doing this is enough of the right sort of movement.

I did try playing with the drawing program after, but it mostly convinced me that the chunk of blue really is a little too small for this morning's idea, and I will probably go with the plan I came up with last time I had the program open.

Since we don't start till noon today, we even had time to run to the local store before work, so now I have frozen berries and a few other things I wanted.

Today's temperature was much nicer than yesterday, and it even rained occasionally. 

Therefore I made some progress on the pot. I am fixing the problem with the outside curve. When I removed the rim and grove just under the rim, so we will be able to rivit on the handel, the sides became somewhat pumpkin like in their curvature. Now I am trying to straighten out the upper walls of the pot, so it looks like the surviving artefacts  in part because trying to make the inside curve to make the walls uniformly 1 cm thick sounds harder if I don't. 

Rod, the other Blacksmith arrived today. It is good to see him again. We will join him and his travelling companion for dinner tomorrow after work. I will just need to try not to eat during the second half of the day, to make it possible to be hungry thst late. Sleeping in may also help, which, given our work schedule here, is doable.

As we were driving home today we saw one of our colleagues walking down the street carrying a big bag of empty cans and bottles to return to the store for their deposits, so we gave her a ride. It is a couple blocks out of the way, but I wouldn't have wanted to carry that bag that far.

 

In other news, I am really loving the program Obsidian. I fell for it for the graph showing connections between notes, and I love that it is open-source, but the "daily note" feature has really made a difference in my posting regularly. Especially as I added a template with properties, so I can open the note in the morning, set the property "published" = "not yet", and add to it here and there during the day, then post later in the day, changing its published status to "yes".

Now I want to find an easy way to download all of my old Dreamwidth posts, and import them into Obsidian, preferably with tags and timestamps intact.

 

- I went back to sleep for another hour and a half after we spoke, then got up to do my morning pilates, have breakfast, and baked some naan bread to take with us today.

- we arrived just before out 12:00 start time, but couldn't log in at the café, as the tablet we use for that had re-started in the night, and no one knew the pin to wake it back up. So we set up our work stations and then one of the other workers mentioned there is another log-in tablet over at the boat house, so I walked down and clocked us both in for the day.

- carving progress for the day: got rid of the last of the ridge around the outside of the pot, and started working on the inside again. Had enough conversations with visitors that I didn't do so many hours of carving, but I probably need to adjust something in my work station as my back was sore by the end of the day. 

- highlight conversation of the day was a family from Colorado, with a teen, Oliver, who wants to go to university in Europe to study archaeology. I shared what I know of studying in Europe, and gave them my name to look me up on the Umeå University web page.

- after work I was too tired to even go to the store, so the evening was spent with yoga, relaxing on FB and updating my logs.

Our next stop was Nyksund, which is located at 69 N, 15 E.




It is a cute little fishing village that had become a ghost town in the 1970s, had a failed few attempts to resurrect it over the years, but didn't really wake back up till fairly recently, and is now a tourist destination.







With some nice views from the hill overlooking the town.



After a quick walk through the village we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. A cute place that clearly does double duty as a pub at different times of the day.  I ordered the tomato carrot soup with bread and butter, which was ok, but nothing to write home about. Þora had the fish and chips, after double checking that the fish is locally caught and breaded and fried on site. She seemed quite happy with it. Keldor had the goulash of the day, which the server first said contained fish (which is why I didn't order it, but he did), but a very short time later the server was back to say that it wasn't fish today, but rather whale. He said that was fine. Þora commented to me that I should try some, as whale is red meat, not fish. However, they eat fish, so even if one doesn't consider them "people", if one doesn't like the taste of fish, I strongly suspect that one isn't likelyto like something that eats fish. Keldor, however, said that the goulash was very good. He offered me a spoonful of just broth, I smelled it, and it didn't smell like anything I would enjoy, so I didn't taste it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

- still did my 30 minutes pilates workout before eating breakfast, packing lunch, changing to Viking clothes etc.

- arrived at the museum just before our shift started at 12:00. Checked the long house, my soapstone pot in progress was still there. Checked the barn, the pallet we had prepared yesterday to be delivered down the hill to our work station was still there.

- walked down the hill, no sign of anyone who might know anything. 

- Keldor walked back up the hill to fetch his axe and a few useful items

- while he was gone I ate my pastie. Then one of the guys working for drift drove by, so I chatted with him. He suggested I just call Elisabeth, so I did.

- a bit later she sent a message saying that stuff was on the way. 

- Keldor returned just before the pallet of stuff arrived, so we unloaded it, put the pallet in the little viking storage tent we put up yesterday, then put the boxes of metal bits for forging, and the bags of charcoal inside on the pallet, to keep everything dry if it rains. We put the benches and my box of tools in my work area, and hid my sandals and our lunch bags inside. (I changed into my viking shoes after we arrived. I know they will eventually wear holes in the soles, but I would like to put that day off as long as possible, so I use my Birkenstocks for the 1 km walk down the hill)

- then we checked that it would be ok, and got out the tent that they discovered had gotten moldy and opened it up to make a large, oddly shaped, flat roof over the stack of syones that is the forge. 

- to do that he used his axe to cut poles with a forked ends. They worked very well.

- the anvil delivery happened directly after the pallet, and they said they would be back with the bellows and my soapstone. They were. At 16:30.

- the time between finishing the roof and getting that delivery went slowly. The time after went much faster, as I was both working on my stone carving and occasionally lending a hand as he worked on getting the bellows set up.

- when I started making this pot, I added a bit of a rim around the edge  to make it easier to hold and lift. However the museum bought a handle for the pot, so it can be suspended over a fire. In order to rivit that to the pot I have to take away that rim and make the top of the pot flat. Luckily, I hadn't finished the inside, so I have enough stone available to do this.

- our shift ended at 19:00, and we walked back up the hill to where we had parked the car, then stopped by the store on the way home, where we picked up cat sand (which he will use to get the smithy working tomorrow), yoghurt so I cam make naan bread, and baking paper to roll out the almond paste we had coloured last night.

- after a short break we went to work on our cake for tomorrow, the *300-gram anvil.*

- the anvil is cut from layers of pound cake wirh raspberry maremlade between, and covered with a bluish grey almond paste. It sits on a tree stump, also made from layers of pound cake and raspberry marmlade, but covered with brown almond paste, and with bark made from chocolate sprinkles. We also lay bits of green almond paste around the base of the tree stump.

- now it sits in the fridge and waits for tomorrow evening's cake decorating contest. The name? Because my pound cake calls for 1 pound each of butter, sugar  eggs, and flour, but i chose to use 300 grams of everything, as that is an even 5 eggs.