Since my birthday happened to fall on a Saturday this year I booked the Gillestuga in Gammelstad for a party. The up side to this was a much larger room than we have at home, so it was possible to have both space for dancing and a bunch of tables pushed together in a square big enough for a dozen or so people to sit around and have all the food in ( Read more... )

A whole lot of days have slipped by during which I thought "no time/energy to post something today, tomorrow is soon enough". Oops. I still don't have the energy, but I made a bit of time by leaving Swedish folk dance early tonight due to being tired, so I will try to say something about what I have been up to, if for no other reason than to let ( Read more... )

I happened to glance at FB today at the right time to see a post from northernotter about the talk she will be doing on her hand-woven reproduction of the Skjoldehamn find next weekend. Clicking on the link reveals that the other speaker will be Lise Bender Jørgensen, who has published so many books on archaeological textiles. Of course I have to go ( Read more... )

The past couple of years our folk dance group has often had only 6 to 8 people in attendance each week, and sometimes even fewer. Therefore it was a delightful surprise to have 13 of us there tonight. :-)

( This got long (no surprise there), so: Friday summary )

This weekend was one of my favourite events in Norra Nordmark. Höstdansen (Autumn Dance) is an annual event held in the shire of Uma (Umeå), about three hours south of Frostheim (Luleå), and the same north of Gyllengran (Sundsvall). As a result it tends to draw folk from both directions, and there were between 40 and 50 of us on site, ranging from ( Read more... )

I have mentioned before that we are making svartvinbärsylt(black currant jam) by boiling berries with an apple, but no sugar, and how much I love it as a condiment on foods (much like Americans use ketchup). Recently lord_kjar's parents moved house, and when they did they gave us one of their freezers, and with it a few bags of lingonberries. Swedes tend ( Read more... )

I finally saw a link to a photo of me in my new dress--a tad blurry, since we were dancing at the time, but it gives the general impression...

We have confirmation from the supplier that the Argon Gas, which is necessary to run our laser ablation system, will actually be delivered on 17 April, and the installation of the Laser is scheduled for the week of 20 April. So, just over 6.5 months after being hired to run the LA-ICP-MS lab, I will actually have a LA-ICP-MS to run ( Read more... )

Tonight, at our normal Sunday evening folk dance session, I got to fly (like this) for the first time in a long time! That is just so much fun. I was enjoying dance before that moment, but adding that into the mix has me home after dance bouncing and full of energy! There are actually four of us in the group who want to fly, but only two these ( Read more... )