- woke 05:00, did 30 min Pilates, went back to sleep till 08:00
- got up, made a sign from the almond paste with letters of chocolate sprinkels, saying “The 300g Anvil” to add to the base of the cake for tonight’s contest.
- breakfast, pack lunch, get text message saying that I can start at 11:00 (same time as Keldor) today, the 10:00 start was when they thought I would be working in the long house, but now that I am down the hill by the forge, 11:00 is better, as most visitors take time to wander that far from the entrance.
- first “full day” Stone carving this year. A regular stream of visitors to chat with meant frequent breaks, of course. One the the most common questions I get is how long does it take to make such a pot. I reply that it os tough to estimate, as my job is both stone carving and talking to visitors, but I have worked on it at least three different weeks. Perhaps someone focusing on the carving could finish one on a week?
- Keldor was a little stressed today, as he thought he had brought his phone with him, but didn’t have it when we arrived. He tried going home to check, but the house door was locked, and without the phone he couldn’t send a message to learn the code for the key box. So he just returned to the museum and got the smithy set up and functioning and started working.
- As our shift ended I was seriously looking forward to the cake contest night, and he was thinking that if he doesn’t find his phone he will want to just stay home and feel sorry for himself. Luckily, he had, in fact, simply left the phone on the bed when we went to work, so he happily relaxed with the phone for a half an hour before we went to the Longhouse for the gathering.
- Wow, were there some amazing cakes!
our cake wasn’t a pound cake (1 lb each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour), but rather used 300 grams of each, so I called it a 300 g Anvil. In between the layers is raspberry jam, the coating is almond paste, and the sides of the tree stump are chocolate sprinkles.
This one, the Secrets of Borg (where the museum is located) is an interpretation of a burial mound, with a chocolate cake layer for the ground, and a really yummy spinach cake layer for the vegetation layer, as well as some archaeological remains.
This one, Everyone was Viking Baking, had a theme song (written to the tune of everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting—that song is not arranged the way it used to be when I was little, so I gather they filked a more recent re-make than the version I know)
This one, The Lamb Soup, is a beautiful re-interpretation of the lamb soup, bread, and thick cream that is served in the long house every day for lunch. It really looks pretty much like this, only not made of candy.
This one, Tiramisuggdrasill, is not only a lovely representation of Uggdrasil as a tiramisu, but also has the (not edible) Midgard Serpent, and was accompanied by a reading from the sagas, with music on the lyre, and “translations” of all of the allegories into prose.
There were many more cakes, but this highlight will do.