Went to Þórólfr's birthday party today. On the way there we stopped by Jula to buy a wooden box the same size as we already have for feast gear, which we will modify to fit the chamber pot I bought yesterday. 

At the party I started sewing my new silk tunic. I think I will like it. After the main crowd thinned down to few enough to fit at the table we played a game of Flux, followed by Cards Against Humanity. 

Then home and packed the sewing into the backpack for tomorrow. Now there is time for a quick game of Qwirkle before yoga and bed.

Ewww... on the way to the bedroom I found a worm, a normal garden worm, on the floor. The cats must have brought it in to play with and then gotten bored. Keldor, who has handled hundreds of worms in a lifetime of fishing picked it up, wuth his bare fingers, and carried it outside, and reported that it was still alive. Poor thing. I hope it makes better life choices going forward than crawling into the cat enclosure.

This evening we finly took the couple of large jars of dried mushrooms (*goliatmusseron*, also called matsutake, and *karljohanssvamp*, which google says is called penny bun)

and ) and ran them through the food processor to make 2 liters of mushroom powder. That should last a while, even though we put it in most things we cook. Luckily, it is mushroom season, so Keldor is often out collecting them on the way home from work.

I sat down on the couch to do a little carving on the Skellefteåyxa mould while talking with Keldor durring his drive to work, and couldn't find a good focal distance through the magnifying lamp. Then I remembered that it works better with my computer glasses than my normal (progressive) lenses, and pushed the lamp up out of the way, so I could go get them and realised that Skaði had come to sit on the arm of the couch next to me. In such bright light the brown of her undercoat really shows!

Since I worked from home, I managed to wash the bedsheets, so sleeping tonight will be wonderful. 

The vacuum cleaner I ordered arrived today. A Dyson V16 Piston Animal, which comes with a way to wall-mount it. Problem: no walls with enough space! I did several laps around  the house, holding the vaccum, looking for a suitable location. It needed to be convenient to grab the vacuum when needed, but not in the way, with electricity near enough so that the battery will be charged.

Several more laps around the house later, I was hit with an inspiration that not only solved the where to put the vacuum problem, but also several other problems that have been bothering me at a low-level backgroundsort of way. Implementing the plan took several hours:

First I emptied my textbooks off of the narrow bookshelf that has lived in the entry area between the bedroom and the office/craft room. Those books are now in boxes, waiting in the van for a chance to take them to my office, where they will add some colour to the grey bookshelves there, and look nicer behind me in zoom calls than do empty shelves.

Then I took everything off the wall on the other side of the entry: mirror, sword, shields, axe, hat rack made of moose antlers. Everything. Well, save the halberd. That was close enough to the kitchen that it didn't need to move.

Then I slid the empty book shelf to the side, and moved the painted armour box to where it had sat, put the mirror on the wall between the doors above the box, the hat rack above that. It all looks much better stacked like that than it had spread out actosd the wider wall.

Then I emptied the wide bookshelf in the office and brought it out to the entry, placing by the living room door, where the painted box used to stand, and filled it with the hardcover fiction it had been holding before it moved. I even made an improvised bookend to hold the books on top.

I haf noticed while cleaning the shef after emptying it that there are two holes on the top of the shelf on each side. I believe that model comes with an optional extra small cabint or shelf and those holes are for pegs to keep it in place. We don't have those sorts of pegs (or, perhaps just don't know where they are), but those holes are exactly the right diameter for pencils, so I looked at what we had in the way of wood scrap, and came up with a cunning plan.  I took the small thin board I had used for test painting when I did the ceiling project, which looks rather like a deliberate modern art thing, with its bold gold curve and diverse silver nebula like splotches on the midnight blue background, and screwed it through an appropriately sized spacer and to attach it to a wider bit of plywood. Together that stand reasonably stable on the top edge of the shelf, surrounding two pencils sticking up out of the holes to help keep them in place. I wouldn't trust those pencils not to break in an earthquake, but for normal use it should be fine.

Especially as the first two books adjacent to that improvised bookend wall are a couple of thick books (the Complete Chaucher and a Swedish Literature collection) that stand quitestablee on their own. Then filled the shelf with other books (we already had a metal bookend that clamps to the shelf for the other side.)

Once that bookhelf was full, I slid the chest of drawers that had been in the office corner beyond the wide bookshelf (but shallower than the narrow shelves) out enough to put the narrow book shelf between it and the corner. This solved the problem of easy access to those drawers.

Then I filled the narrow shelf with the last few books that don't fit on the wide shelves that are now in the entryway, and then put all the bags and baskets full of projects in progress and UFOs that have been over piled on top of the tredel sewing machine, the other chest of drawers, and even the floor. Thus solving another problem, the office looks much better, and it might be easierto find stuff!

Then  I finally hung the vacuum on the wall next to the bookshelf and hung the round shield between the vacuum and the halberd and returned the awasto its hooks above the shield, feeling lucky that I didn't need to move them to balance the space.

Then I hung the sword over on the wall between the bedroom and bathroom,  next to the axe that was already there, and put the other shield below them.

With that the project was done, I asked google for electricians in Lövånger,  and the top hit was a national company that had  an easy to use web form. I filled it in, explaining, in Swedish, that I  need an outlet on the wall near the vacuum, and that there is already one on the other side of the wall. I attached a photo of each side of the wall, and hit send.

A very short time later (at 20:57!) my phone rang. It was someone from that company, calling from Stockholm, with an estimate on the cost and, when I said it was ok, gave me a promise to send someone next Thursday (I will be away for work Monday to Wednesday) to do the job. 

I truly didn't expect anyone to see my initial message until tomorrow  so I am delighted it went so quick.

 

 

The event already being in full swing, we didn't try to drive down the small tack to the site (which they discourage people driving on all the time, but certainly not during an event).

 

However, when we were at the Shire storage unit on the way to the event to pick up archery targets, we also grabbed the collapsible modern canvas wagon. This made it much easier to take everything down the hill.

 

This was Keldor’s first time sdeeing the Larp village, and he was suitability impressed. It is such a cozy site, with a number of cozy timber houses. No electricity and firelight help that feeling.

 

We played games. The musicians played music. I danced. There was lots of singing. Good food. Delightful people. 100% recommended.