Woke at 08:00 (so 8.5 hours sleep) And did my morning pilates. Then I finally solved a weeks old problem. Some weeks back I bought an e-book through the Swedish company Adlibris. When I tried downloading/opening it the app said that for this book I need to activate Adobe ID on the phone. I was quite certain I had previously done that, so I looked up the password, entered in my email address and password, and got a cryptic error message (en fel inträffades). So I tried the “if you don’t have Adobe ID already, sign up here” button, which took me to a login page, where the above mentioned email address and password worked. Tried opening the book, right back to the same “you need to activate” message. I cycled through that a few times that day, gave up, and ignored it for some days, tried again, same result, then tried again yesterday, still didn’t work, so I emailed Adlibris customer service. This morning I had a reply suggesting two other apps I could use other than their own, tried one, and it worked just fine. Of course, I have no time to actually read the book in the next few days, but now I could, if I wanted to, and that is good. Solving that problem took us to time to get ready for work, so I packed lunch (less than I normally bring, since we had a dinner date, and my only hope to be able to eat is to make certain I don’t get enough to eat during the day, as I know that the second my body thinks it has had enough food for the day it totally loses intresset in food).
We started our day up at the longhouse, as Keldor needed to borrow the cordless drill so he can patch the hole in the cauldron, and it was with the woodcarver’s stuff there, and I needed to meet Elisabeth to discuss her thoughts for the soapstone carving workshop we are having during the Viking Festival.
Then we went down the hill and set to work. Keldor determined that the cauldron is in even worse shape than he had thought, as the plate next to the one he was patching is so thin that it started to split from the vibrations when riveting on the patch.
But he carried on, got the patch in place, and then gently hammerd together the split. Hopefully, if they cook a nice thick oatmeal in the pot the porridge will fill the remaining cracks and make the pot water tight for a little longer. They want the cauldron for plant dying of fabric during Festival.
I started the day by going over to the cafe and getting some cardboard and making a couple templates to show the correct inner and outer curves of the soapstone pot I am working on.
When I started the pot three years ago I first set it asside after a day or two of carving so I could make the forge stone. Then I had a day or two after finishing the forge stone to work on the pot again. So I went for speed carving, knocking the corners off as quickly as possible, and making it kinda round on the outside.
“Kinda round” as used in that sentence is nothing like the shape it should be. So, once I had the template I set it against the outside of the pot, saw that while the corners were rounded away, it was still a little more square than round. So I decided to start with narrow strip in one of the corners, and began tapping away the high bit, then used the file, then checked the template on it, determined which part was still too high, took that down a bit, and repeated, till I had a trough in the edge just enough wider than the file to be able to slide the file back and forth through it. By the time the outer surface of that trough had the right curve it was more than 1 cm deep at the deepest point. Then the fun bit started! Taking the chisel to the side of that trough to extend the curve around the side of the pot. By the time I had worked my way 1/4 of the way around the side of the pot (to what had been the side of the squarish block when I started) I only needed to remove a few millimetres of material, as opposed to the well over 1 centimeter thick that needed to be removed from what was left of the corner.
Of course, as I worked, so many different people had stopped to ask what I was doing that I only managed to fix the outer curve of one qudrant before our shift ended and it was time to pack it up for the day.
Then we hurried home, showered off the rock dust (me) and forge soot (him) changed to clean clothes, and headed over for dinner with Rod and Lucy.
My trick of stopping eating when still hungry worked, and I was able to eat, but I was also feeling kinda rather grumpy towards the end of my shift, not having had my normal regular pauses to eat a little whenever I was hungry, and I had to work very hard (with variable success) not to take it out on Keldor, who, being warned that I was trying the experiment, was very tolerant of my failures to maintain a pleasant tone while my tummy was being a drama queen, convinced that we were dying of starvation, so we managed to avoid bickering.
Of course, as soon as we arrived it was such a delight to see Rod again and start to get to know Lucy it was easy to maintain my personality on a pleasant setting as they bustled around with the final preparations of the meal.
They fed us spaghetti with two sauces to choose from, one vegetarian (which I took), and one with meat (everyone else) and a lovely fresh baked bread, about as thick as focaccia, but a nicer texture, and a lovely garlic oil coating. I ate far too much of it, but my mouth was happy, and my tummy decided we aren’t going to die. I even managed to taste a little bit of the desert cake wirh extra cream. (Everyone else had a larger piece of cake than I took.)
They are staying in a cute little cottage that is now an AirBnB, and was likely the orginal house on the property (it sits next to a larger house, where the hosts live). It is on the shores of a lake across the fields and on the far side of the strip of woods from the museum. I have no idea if there is a short cut to the museum through that forest, but if so, it would be much faster to walk than going around by the road (but the road is only a couple of minutes by car).
Rod had a pile of his knives for sale. The man identifies as a blade smith, and he really is tallented. These are all period appropriate style for the Viking Age, and very fine grained pattern welded. So beautiful! Nice sheaths, too!
He also showed us the tools he made for doing chainmail, and clearly, he also has points in “make tools”, as they are stunning. There are some surriving examples of Viking Age chainmail, and they are much finer size rings than is currently popular in reenactment. So Rod’s tools are designed to work with the smaller rings, and they have some maile i progress as a demonstration. Their rings are as tiny as the aluminium rings that Daniel uses for his art (like Keldor’s banner), but made of iron (steel? I didn’t ask about the carbon content). The cutter he made has a tiny slot in in, just big enough for the wire they use, and they cut the rings with a overlap. Then they use one of the other tools to crimp them together. The interlace pattern is quite dense, and I can see how a large piece would be very effective armour. (I will try to remember to get photos during festival)
We stayed and chatted with them till after 22:00, then headed home so they could get some sleep before they set up for festival tomorrow.
We were both tired enough that we didn’t join our colleges for a birthday party after dinner, but just came back to the house, where I typed this till too tired to type more, did a very short yoga session, went to sleep and woke atround 04:00, took my morning vitamins and resumed typing
Now it is neatly 05:00 I will post this and do my morning pilates and then go back to sleep for however long I feel for, as we have the say off.